GSM races ahead of CDMA
Amsterdam: Six vendors of GSM and related products have complained to the European Commission as they believe Qualcomm is overcharging for the royalties which it earns for its relatively small contribution to the WCDMA system.

They said usage of the European GSM system for mobile phone communications is growing faster than US' CDMA mainly because it is cheaper and more flexible. Over the last three years 25 mobile telecoms operators have decided to replace or upgrade their CDMA networks to GSM or its successor known as the Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) system.

GSA industry association of GSM and WCDMA equipment vendors said in a survey of the sector that CDMA operators were facing falling market share and are switching to the GSM while there have no instances of a network operator abandoning GSM in favour of CDMA. The survey found that operators have been switching to GSM or WCDMA because the technology is available in cheaper handsets as there is more competition among GSM chipmakers. CDMA chips are only supplied by Qualcomm.

GSM vendors include Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Philips and Alcatel. Also, GSM technology is used worldwide whereas CDMA networks cover mainly the Americas and parts of Asia. Also a GSM caller cannot connect over a CDMA network and vice versa.

Operators which have recently decided to switch to GSM include United States-based Chinook Wireless, KTF Co. Ltd from South Korea, Reliance in India and Telstra from Australia.

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) had a global market share of 13 percent in the Q1 of 2006 up from 10 percent in 2000.
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