The politics of Celluar Technology

Since I'm heading out of town today to attend a conference on the future of data on CDMA networks, I thought I'd throw down some explanations of radio technology in layman terms.



When it comes to cell phone technology it boils down to this... The US is Red and the rest of the world is Blue.  Phones for the Red networks don't work on Blue networks and vice versa.  The Red and Blue networks both offer two basic services; Voice and Data. 



Voice is of course the original reason for Telephone Companies in the first place.  In the 90's we experience this little phenom called "the Internet" and suddenly Telephone Companies were suddenly interested in Data.  We all fondly remember the days of modems and dial-up.  Some of us are still living that dream... *cough* Then came digital access and then some fool decided that even wired digital access wasn't convenient enough and Telephone Companies delivered "wireless."



So back to Red and Blue networks... Wireless was a "Big Deal(tm)".  It was the greatest growth business for the Telephone Companies in a 100 years.  At the time it happened, Blue networks were established and Red networks were "experimental."  Europe went Blue and the US went Red.  Red worked better, but Blue was cheaper.  Countries often chose the cheaper techology.  Thus the world went Blue.  Just to clue you in, Red networks are CDMA and Blue networks are GSM.  Means a lot to you I'm sure.  Now this data thing... Blue networks did data right from the start--only no one cared at the time.  Red networks delivered data right when it mattered and it worked better than Blue.  However, since Blue had been technically doing data longer, Blue carriers had more kinks worked out.  You could use Data on anyones  Blue network.  This is called Data Roaming; much like Voice Roaming.  Now here's where the Red networks fell on their sword.  They didn't make their data work on other Red networks.  We're working on it.



The problem is now that Red is so popular (in the US and a few other places), there are a lot of Red carriers.  We all have to agree on changes if we all want to make money off you (the consumer).  All phone companies are big with too much money.  That makes them believe they are important.  Important people tend to want to dictate more than cooperate.  So that's where I'm going this week.  The Red network "lets all cooperate" shindig.  A 2 day festival of every CDMA carrier trying to be compatible while at the same time angling for a technical advantage over the other carriers.  The corporate expense budgets are going to flow...



Also worth mentioning in closing is the "Holy Grail" of this story.  Getting Red data users to work on Blue networks.  Technically we don't care about Blue subscribers... being a Red network and all.