To get some things straight about the industry first:
the GSM and bluetooth being more popular overseas and outside america is due to the fact that those countries don't have radio / tv broadcasters hoarding up bandwidth.
Long ago the FCC allowed frequencies to be bought up and reserved them for Radio and TV which phones don't fit into.
It's hard to say what is fair in this case....do we take the frequencies back to use on phone? who do we give them too? do we reimburse the radio or tv company?
It's more complicated than this quick picture...but that's the idea.
The FCC set aside four different bandwidths for cell phones, analog: 824.04 Mhz to 893.97 Mhz with 832 channels in that spread and also 1900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz and 1500 Mhz for digital use only.
TDMA is used at both spectrums but is an older technology. Companies that use it are slowly moving away from it to GSM.
GSM is basically narrowband TDMA and offers more capacity per channel.
iDEN is another version of TDMA and GSM which doesn't offer as much capacity per channel but allows more data products to be offered per device, such as data/fax, two-way radio, etc.
CDMA is the best of all technologies offered right now in the US. It offers all the above and has a larger capacity then all the others. W-CDMA is next in line and will probably be offering everything possible and will take over and the prominent technology in about 3-5 years.
Companies bid for different bands when the FCC puts them up forsale. It is kind of like buying a web address.
Well, it's interesting to note that Verizon is heavily in debt (like everyone else), and Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon anyway. Vodaphone is Europe's biggest wireless provider, and it's GSM.
The W-CDMA stuff for the future should prove interesting.
Humm, Verizon Wireless is actually doing very well. They are the only wireless company in the black and growing at a crazy rate. There subscriber network is about to hit 37 million which is about 12 million more then Cingular, the number 2 company. Verizon Wireless could pay off its debt if it wanted to but instead they invested about 3-4 billion on improving the infrastruture and planning for the future. Closest company only spent about 1.5 billion last year.
Vodafone does own 45% of VW and Verizon owns the other 55%. VW is a private company as Verizon is not. They are two seperate companies.
P.S. Sony Ericsson has stated they will no longer produce CDMA phones for North America.
That is a shame because about half of the users in the US use CDMA. Verizon Wireless will be going all digital within the next 5 years and is already starting to phase out analog service.
Edit: VW is also coming out with CDMA/GSM phone that can be used throughout most of the world. I have heard only rumored dates but with the next 18 months.
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