CDMA telecom 027 network.

anyone got anything to say about telecoms CDMA/027 network. Im looking at ditching vodaphone and moving across to CDMA.

cheers.

The phones are shit, i'd go with tdma 025, cheaper call and plans

I've heard the "the phones suck" thing from lots of people now, people on CDMA that is. Apparently they look flashy and are light (in general) but the User Interface sucks and some of the phones are buggy. No sim card = bad also. Having said that, when we were away travelling the country the coverage on my sisters CDMA was markedly better than my 021.

025/TDMA is old technology quite frankly, I wouldn't touch it with a 70ft pole, especially if you actually want a phone better than a Nokia 6120. *smile*

You can pick up Nokia 3310s at bloody good prices now as well, and having one - I am bloody impressed with the phone. With a Li-Ion battery it's as light as most of the entry level CDMA phones.

Until the CDMA get's upgraded to full "1X" compatibility, the WAP access is a joke, only slightly faster than the GSM access on a Vodafone. That's if you're even remotely interested in WAP of course. Apparently Telecom have put the 1X upgrade back to about June/July. Not sure about this though.

But then again, I despise Telecom on most counts, so I'm a tad biased.

telecom should sort out there rural telephone lines before the start mucking around with there money on other stuff.

the go on about 99.9999 % on having a great service yet it takes for ever for net to connect and when it is online it so farking slow.


99.999% my arse.

The phones aren't that bad... I've got a few of them and they all seem OK copmpared to my GSM phones (I use an Ericsson r520m for day to day stuff.. Kyocera QCP3035 gets the prize for the most fully featured phone I own.

Fair call, as I said, just my opinion and I'm, biased. My sister's got the Prepay Hyundai one they're offering (sorry can't remember the model number).

I guess I've always had a soft spot for Nokia. They known how to make a user interface and menu systems and their phones are always full of 'nice touches'. Testament to this is that the 5110 (and deriviatives) are still strong as a decent phone to have these days. Sure they're a bit heavy, but they're fucking solid phones.

Apparently Nokia have relented on their earlier convictions and are now going to produce CDMA phones in 2002. I'm not sure which 'version' of CDMA they are producing for, however.

Fair call on the soft spot for nokia bit voice! My brick's been bashed, thrashed, drowned and mashed...yet the faithful old darling keeps on beeping! Sorta hard to download ringtones on the tdma network tho. Still, a good hard search on the net turns them up.

Yeah, pity my typing and grammar/spell checking sucks today.

So you can actually get tones downloaded via tdma?

Oh yeah! Got an old 5120i and went to 2thumbswap.com...gotta have an airnote address tho.

Oh...and the tunes are pretty shite! But "city bird" and "ring ring" were driving me cahrazee!!!

CDMA bites dick, it needs alot of improvements until it becomes a reliable network such as existing established ones!

Heres some problems Ive run into on my CDMA phone. Samsung.

-Phone took a little knock battery doesnt connect properly anymore so I have to put it under something heavy when charging it.

-Each time I turn my phone on it sends back old voice mails and old text messages which deletes the current ones.

-The internet access button is in the middle of the phone, and by force of habbit press it to access another feature of the phone, but it starts up the browser.

So all in all not a wise move!

Oh and how about the 38% return rate on the phones....Lack of REAL international roaming, A hell of a lot more people developing for GSM networks, A lot more phones from reliable manafacturers.

CDMA is great for data speeds but kinda lacks on quality of call. Its all good at the moment but when more and more users are on the network at one time the call quality drops and switching between cellsites at the moment gets kinda dodge in th wops

Telescum were going to use GSM but didn't want to lose face against their strongest competitor in the mobile market.

If you are getting a phone try not to get one that has a fold down flap or joystick control as moving parts on a cellphone are a BAD thing

Jeff:
I think you will find that the next major network upgrade by Vodafone will actually be a rollout of WCDMA. THe CDMA network is technoogically superrior in that it makes much much more efficient use of radio bandwidth than GSM.
You will find that most major network vendors will be moving to a Code Division variant on the way to their 3rd generation networks.

WCDMA and Cdma are totally different dude don't let the name fool ya.... CDMA and GSM are both dirvitves of TDMA really really similar both are code division although I will be the first to admit that CDMA's division rate tends to work a hell of a lot better than GSM hence faster data.

GSM is heading towards WCDMA via UTMS in a round about sort of way

Area 51 - if you are looking to make the move to CDMA i reccomend you hold off for afew more months. The network is still in its 1st stage. Right now you will get a data speed of 14.4kbps, increased coverage on TDMA (025) and international roaming (fully new to Telecom). Admittidly there is only America, Australia, Japan and Brazil you can roam to but more are on the way. Should be moving to 1X within the next few months. This means a data speed which has been tested of up to 152kbps, better handsets (nokia looking to release soon as have been tested and passed on the network). Even more fruity is when CDMA hits 3G (1meg!), this is going to blow all your minds !!!

Even better i have just found out that Japan is looking to have 4G up and running fully by 2007 ! This is mind blowing as 4G is only a concept !

Jeff:
No. No. No and No.
CDMA != TDMA... ever, in a million years.

I could write oput a full explanation of why you are wrong but instead I'll just post some links.
http://www.arcx.com/sites/CDMAvsTDMA.htm
Note particularly the section on spectral efficiency. Also note that most GSM networks, while TDMA based also use FHSS to increase the available timeslots across a frequency band- this is not however anything to do with CDMA- hell, if it was Qualcomm's patent lawyers would be having a field day!

A run down on WCDMA
http://www.ericsson.com/wcdma/

Cheers
Chris

You guys dont just talk on phones do ya!

true..... damn you caught me out!!!!!!!

Good question to ask, considering we have peeps who work for Vodaphone and Telecom !!!

Sir Trance - the samsung N105 is a cute little phonee but yes as you said above is shit. Has run into many problems. This is not CDMA however, just a handset problem. The Nokia range should be out in the next few months when CDMA hits 1x.

Jeff! *grins*
We should catch up and talk phones this weekend in welly...I'm there Fri,Sat,Sun nights...

Yea the 105 is kinda blowy... I have 1 that works and 1 that doesn't...
If ya after data then it's def gonna be worth waiting for 1xRTT handsets.

I think that GSM still has it in the sexy handset dept- T68 is my pick at the moment... but in terms of network Technology CDMA is the more advanced technology- the only thing is it is being run by Telecom who, given that I have been waiting 2 weeks to get ADSL turned on, don't seem to be capable of a piss up in a brewery.

Yeah, Telecom are fucking terrible.

In still think Nokia is where its at in terms of UI design and functionality. It'll be interesting to see if they hold their own through the 2.5G and 3G transformations....

Ohhhh the T68 is the shit though the game defender screws up with its GPRS connex ....

But the whole full colour thing is the best!!!

Yeah we could met up and sit round discussing phone geek talk

And I fully agree that CDMA is the better technology though a lot more development neds to be done to stabalise the voice side of things.

lol@phone geek talk..

I think Area51, everyone to their own eh!! We all like different things.

I use an 027(samsung) for work and I dont think its worth swapping over, stick with 021.
Problems so far- keeps dropping calls, bad interface, reception not as good as was lead to believe, when texting you have to type in the number instead of going through the phone book.

Our works trialling palms with cellular modems on the cdma network so we'll have to see how that works.

021 anytime, much user friendly auto-roaming

Area51 - so have u swapped yet? I did a while ago and so far so good. Do what you want, im not into the browser issue much, so a phone is a phone to me.

Turtle - this is the phone you are talking about, not the CDMA network.

email me at GavinH@xtra.co.nz and ill help you out with any questions or concerns

When travelling GSM totally rocks ... especially if you have access to a tri-band phone to use in USA/Canada. Before that I could roam just about anywhere in the world but had no phone whilst in the US. It does get a bit expensive when you're travelling but it's insanely handy for business and making connections with people when you can give them just a single phone number.