[NCLUG] Data Through Cellular Technology?

Michael Dwyer mdwyer at sixthdimension.com
Tue Aug 13 09:09:21 MDT 2002


John L. Bass wrote:
> I had a lot of talks with Nokida, Voicestream, and other US GSM players a few
> years ago ... one of the topics was why some phones where vendor locked and
> others were not. The reason stated in each case was that the providers had to
> eat the cost difference between the GSM phones and competitive TDMA/CDMA phones
> so they could sell service at market prices. The only way they could do this
> was with the vendor lock function ... so a VoiceStream phone could not be used
> in say Southern Bell's system before the contract terms were up and they released
> the phone to you. Part of the cost difference was various royalties on GSM
> technologies that the other two systems didn't have at the time.

Maybe TDMA, but not CDMA.  I would suspect that the CDMA phones are even 
more expensive, owing to the licencing fees manufacturers must pay to 
Qualcomm for the CDMA chipset.  All the Sprint and Verizon phones are 
subsidy locked.  Once again, I point you towards the CDMA FAQ about 
subsidy locks:
http://denbeste.nu/cdmafaq/phone.shtml
http://denbeste.nu/cdmafaq/glossary.shtml#Subsidy lock




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