News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Apple SIM. Parent comment

Re:Apple SIM by wil421 on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @07:19PM (#16693707)
Not really a fair assessment. The 4 larger mobile providers are spilt between GSM and CDMA in the past CDMA phones wouldn’t work abroad, except maybe China. You would even have to buy a CDMA version of the iPhone. The big 4 just buy up all competitors and usually one tries to buy one of the others.

Geographically the US is much more expansive than the EU and more robust.

I would not compare infrastructure I would compare the regulations. The telcos created the tech and most likely the laws.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple SIM by spiralpolitik on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @09:55PM (#16694572)
Regulation was the key difference. The EU mandated a common wireless standard (GSM) to be in use across all countries. The US let the market decide and ended up building 4-5 largely incompatible semi-nationwide networks.

Thankfully time, technology, and consolidation has now reduced that down to 2 (CDMA/LTE - Verizon, Sprint, GSM/LTE, AT&T, T-Mobile). LTE will eventually consolidate that down to 1.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple SIM by arcticbull on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @09:22PM (#16694379)
CDMA is winding up in the US also as all providers move off to LTE leaving their legacy infrastructure to die off at scheduled EoL.
[ Parent | on HN ]