Not only Telstra had a total shut down of its CDMA system 3 days ago, the strongest CDMA backers including South Korea's Samsung, LG and local phone companies are gradually shifting toward UMTS. Qualcomm has been arrogant in its business practice and lack cooperation with its technology partners. They are being punished. Verizon will switch to LTE in 2009. That will take about 56 millions subscribers away from CDMA. Telus & Bell Mobility in Canada will be upgrading to non-CDMA system and most other countries will go with GSM for their upgrade. CDMA may very well be a continental U.S. local technology.

I am totally neutral between CDMA & GSM initally but during a summer parade where there were over $350,000 people in a very small area, 3 CDMA users nearby asked me to lend my GSM phone so they could make a quick call. I asked them why. They told me that they either had very low volume, no connection or call being dropped after a few seconds. My GSM phone was slightly static but the connections were made in all 3 instances. I later learned that it's CDMA's characteristic not able to handle high volume of calls. If you do get a connection, the volume became very low because of the nature of "spread spectrum" technology which Qualcomm(the inventor of CDMA) uses.

I have given meanings to the 2 competing technology:

CDMA - Calls drop in multiple areas

GSM - GOOD, SIMPLE MOBILE

Besides, most CDMA phones are made cheap and they are expensive due to low production(less demand world wide, no economies of scale).
GSM users have more selection, more choice: world-wide roaming, style, colour and functionality. Can you take your CDMA phone to Spain or France? I can honestly say Apple will not likely to make iPhones in CDMA version.

CDMA is on life support and nobody is rescuing them !

Rogers & Apple just reached an agreement on April 28, 2008 to introduce iPhone sometime in 2008. Chances are a lot of Telus subscribers will ditch their CDMA phone in favour of the trendy iPhone, especially the young and fashionable population.

Australia’s largest cell company, Telstra has officially shut down their CDMA system today(April 30, 2008). Telstra runs 2 GSM based 3G system, one runs on 2100M Hz(the European & Asian frequency) and another called Next G, running on 850M Hz.(the North Amercian 3G frequency). Hats off to Telstra !

I think Telus management should take their heads out of the sand to get some fresh air once in a while - AND SMELL THE COFFEE(or ROSES). CDMA is on life support and nobody’s there to rescue them !