Being a CDMA user is a bittersweet deal. In the U.S., the two big CDMA carriers (Sprint and Verizon) get a good amount of awesome devices that don’t make it to other carriers. On the flip side, once on those two CDMA carriers, venturing to other carriers globally is an incredibly limited experience. Globally speaking, CDMA is the ugly duckling. GSM and SIM cards rule! For a little while a few years ago, “Global” version of Verizon Wireless (and a few...
Well all knew it was coming: The day in which Sprint would formally announce that they had abandoned WiMAX hardware. Welcome. Today is that day. At a conference held earlier today, Bob Azzi, Sprint’s Senior Vice President of Networks stated that the carrier “will not release any more WiMAX enabled devices moving forward”. Sprint’s 1900 MHz spectrum is now being prepped for the carrier’s ongoing switch to LTE, and the carrier is also in the...
CDMA users: Your cries for a CDMA-enabled Lumia device have been answered. Nokia officially announced the new Lumia 610C and 800C devices. These initially Chinese-exclusive handsets will bring everything we’ve come to know and love about Nokia’s fantastic Windows Phone hardware to China Telecom (800C in April with 610C following in Q2 2012). The devices are “exclusively tailored for the people of China”, according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. The 800C...
LTE is a wonderful thing. Even more wonderful, however, is VoLTE (Voice over LTE) — a technology that will transition voice from GSM/CDMA to the much higher quality LTE spec. Currently, carriers use a mixture of EDGE, HSPA and CDMA technologies paired with LTE radios to shuttle voice and data amongst multiple networks. It’s a band-aid type of solution as a single network in today’s modern world would not only be simpler to maintain and operate, but allow...
As smartphones become more mainstream and widely adopted, the necessity of having a separate $20-$50 data plan attached to each device/line is greatly reduced. What carriers really need to do, as they already do with SMS and voice minutes plans, is offer a shared pool of data. Rumors of such services being added to existing plan options has been rumored for U.S. carriers AT&T and Verizon for over a year now. And while no firm date has been mentioned yet regarding when...
