Jason J. Canty of Verizon Wireless, a ten-year veteran in telecommunications, must have hit a chord with our meeting attendees as our January meeting ran over an hour and a half. There were plenty of questions from the floor as Jason explained the evolution of wireless telephony. Three technologies are used in the design of cell phones in the USA. Verizon and Sprint use CDMA. IS-136 TDMA is used by AT&T, and GSM is used by Cingular. Some older technology analog cell phone systems are still active in the USA. Each technology is not compatible with the others. The location of technology hardware on cell towers determines the geographic areas of cell phone coverage and these differ by company. Each technology has its benefits and shortcomings, but the more robust solution is CDMA and its next generation CDMA2000 or CDMA2k. The GSM technology is used in Europe, and is not compatible with systems used in the USA. (See authors note at end of this article.) Jason offered the following when planning to purchase a new cell phone:
Jason topped off his presentation
with some cell phones he had with him, along with web page displays
of cell phones, at www.verizonwireless.com. After the formal
presentation Jason stayed around to answer more questions on
a one-to-one basis. |
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