Did wireless plans just get more expensive??

[gorcorps]

Some of this was touched on in an earlier thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2366535

Basically all of these changes can benefit family plan users, but people who are on their own are better off sticking with a subsidized plan... unless they use a ton of data. I really wish ATT would be more like Sprint and allow people in the family plan to get and pay their own bill. I'd like to jump on a family plan but as it is now I'd have to pay somebody else my share and they'd pay the whole thing. It's just cumbersome.

 

[bearxor]

Yeah I disagree heavily with the CDMA statement. It was clear in the 90s and 2000s that it was a disadvantage. You can't just judge the choice as good because technologically it was great back then. Adoption matters too (look at VHS vs. BetaMax).

The fact that you can swap SIM cards in a GSM phone means its carrier agnostic. CDMA phones helped tie the whole US cellular industry in to carrier branded phones. Worse, the manufacturers created US only phones, completely different from the worldwide market. Very few people here even remember the awesome phones of 2005 (Sony Ericsson K750), or 2006 and the Walkman phones, or 2007 with the Nokia N95. What's worse is the US was stuck in the dark ages up until after the iPhone launch when consumers started demanding phones across all 4 major networks. Even today we see people whining about "Is XYZ phone coming to Verizon???"

Even today people still don't understand you can just BYOD and think I'm being ripped off by buying a $349 Nexus 5.

This whole subsidy, locked device, contract model has really screwed the US market up. It's not that subsidies are bad. You see subsidies in Asia and Europe. Yet people are completely open to the idea of BYOD. In the US it's a completely foreign concept, so you can't just blame it on contracts and subsidies. That's only part of the problem.

You're focusing on the one aspect of GSM you care the most about as opposed to all of the advantages CDMA had 15 years ago.

CDMA was meant to be the next step from AMPS, a system already widely deployed in the US. This meant less cost to get a digital network up and running as most of the same infrastructure could be used. CDMA had better range on each node, allowing vast rural expansion, something that wasn't a factor in Europe. It has more efficient use of bandwidth, allowing more calls for each tower, thus cheaper to deploy. Soft handovers between frequencies and towers as opposed to "break then make" for 2G GSM systems.

There were a ton of reasons why CDMA became more prolific than GSM in the US and I'd imagine that "carrier lock" was way down on the list. More in the column of "bonus side effect".

 

[Raduque]

There were a ton of reasons why CDMA became more prolific than GSM in the US and I'd imagine that "carrier lock" was way down on the list. More in the column of "bonus side effect".

Especially when you consider the fact that in Korea and parts of Japan, CDMA carriers use (or used to) sim-like RUIM cards and you could move them between devices.