Why does Verizon still use CDMA instead of GSM like other carriers?
CDMA is a more reliable signal and the towers do not have to be as close to each other for hand off as they do for GSM. To get the same coverage as VZW has now they would have had to put up way more towers than they have.
Unfortunately not gonna happen. LTE is the technology of the future.
It would have been nice if they were GSM from the start. So many handsets are GSM only & they tend to be less expensive.
At the time of AMPS being replaced with digital technology, which opened the doors for SMS, MMS, and Internet access, you had the choice between GPRS / GSM or CDMA. CDMA at the time was vastly superior from a network capacity, privacy, and performance standpoint. 1xRTT could carry data fasted than GPRS, and handled load balancing in addition to voice privacy and time slotting afar better.
I'm sure some payout from Qualcomm was also involved, given their CDMA tech is widely used and is a proprietary competitor to an otherwise global standard.
But hey. That old CDMA network isn't going to go away until everyone stops using it. Start using VoLTE phones and use exclusively LTE, and you'll get all of the benefits of GSM.
I agree and disagree and I'll tell you why. To me depending on where you are GSM has better penetration. At my moms house in a major city and her house is near town my Verizon phone could not get a signal and I had to steal wifi or go outside to even try to make a call. With my T-Mobile service it works excellent. It all depends on the area but for penetration I thing GSM is better.
Because you can't flip a switch and viola change technology. They are going to decommission their lower networks, but they still need to convert people to VoLTE then they can kill the old networks. All carriers are hoping to do this in the very near future(within 10 years)
IMHO, it's more secure than GSM, You cannot just swap in your sim card to use a CDMA mobile phone. Perhaps Verizon is using Japan's wireless W-CDMA market as a model.
WCDMA or UMTS is GSM upgrade path. Don't let the CDMA in WCDMA confuse you. They are not one in the same. EVDO is CDMA upgrade path. Verizon is currently running a hybrid system since they introduced LTE.
