CDMA
Submitted: Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:40
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Member - Wim (Qld)
Telstra considers scrapping CDMA mobile phone network
The board of Telstra is meeting today to decide if the CDMA mobile phone network will be scrapped, as part of the company's review as it moves to full privatisation.
About 1.3 million Australians use CDMA, many of them in regional Australia.
National Farmers Federation Peter Corish says Telstra is considering a number of alternatives and he is confident the legislation recently passed by the Federal Government will protect rural mobile
services.
"We saw a lot of problems with the rollout of the CDMA network and there was significant costs imposed by forcing farmers to actually change over their mobile phone system," he said.
"So we'd want to ensure that this new technology, if in fact it is going to be rolled out, is rolled out in an effective way and that includes it being cost effective to farmers and rural Australia in general."
Communications Minister Helen Coonan says she welcomes any Telstra commitment to deliver 3G, the next generation of mobile phones, to regional Australia.
But independent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde says 3G will require more
infrastructure than current systems to operate in rural areas.
"The most logical change would actually be to start looking at wireless broadband," he said.
"Now I'm not saying that that necessarily is the way that Telstra is looking at it but that would be the only technology that would make sense for me, if Telstra wants to quantum leap away from where it is now in regional Australia and utilise a totally new technology."
Now this will be interesting.
Regards
Reply By: Sand Man (SA) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:50
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:50
IMHO, when Telstra are fully privatised, they will soon go BUST because knowone in their right mind would subscribe to their remaining service offerings.
They are NOT the leaders of the Telco Industry they once were and certainly not the cheapest. Glad I'm not a Shareholder.
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Reply By: Sand Man (SA) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:51
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:51
IMHO, when Telstra are fully privatised, they will soon go BUST because no one in their right mind would subscribe to their remaining service offerings.
They are NOT the leaders of the Telco Industry they once were and certainly not the cheapest. Glad I'm not a Shareholder.
AnswerID:
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Follow Up By: Sand Man (SA) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:52
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 14:52
Ran spell check on this one!
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Follow Up By: Redback - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 08:12
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 08:12
Well the first one was more correcter ;-)))
Spell check doesn't fix grammar??
Knowone as appossed to no one.
Sorry
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Follow Up By: Rojac - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 19:57
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 19:57
So this may be the reason why there are public telephone boths starting to "sprout" up where they weren't before such as Bower on the road to
Morgan (SA)
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Reply By: Member - Chrispy (NSW) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 15:15
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 15:15
They will be prying my CDMA mobile from my dead, withered hands.........
CDMA is the only network I can rely on where we are in
Cooma.
Damn Telstra!!!
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Follow Up By: Truckster (Vic) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:25
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:25
Do you think they give a bleep ? when its fully privatized, its all about profit.
Im also CDMA.
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Follow Up By: Member - 'Lucy' - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 22:59
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 22:59
Are you really.
Wouldn't have thought so as I tried to ring you today and got that Sus message.
I'll try again tomorrow.
Capt'n 'A's is on the near future agenda
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Follow Up By: Truckster (Vic) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:37
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:37
the phone is at the olds place, i left it there this morning :(
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Reply By: phil - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 16:24
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 16:24
There is no other technology, except satellite, which can provide anything like the coverage that CDMA can. It was designed to provide coverage in areas where there is a low density of users. Just like Australia out of the cities!
The latest wireless broadband system, Wimax, can just give a claimed 48km range to a fixed base. I would expect less to a mobile. 3G range is much less than GSM in the real world because it uses a frequency of around 2GHz as opposed to 800Mhz for CDMA and 900MHz for GSM.
I have already written to Tony Windsor asking him to oppose any closure.
Phil I
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Follow Up By: joc45 - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 20:22
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 20:22
Phil,
I seem to recall reading that Telstra have been sussing out phone mfr's to see if they can supply 3G phones in the current 800Mhz CDMA band. This would give similar coverage to CDMA, assuming there are no timing delay limit issues like GSM. But the takeover of the band would mean the end to CDMA.
Gerry
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Follow Up By: timglobal - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 20:43
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 20:43
I think this is very old news. 3G is backward compatible with CDMA or GSM - in fact it's often referred to as WCDMA. There is actually unlikely to be a need to upgrade the rural cellular
infrastructure, so much as expand it more.
See here FAQ
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Follow Up By: BenSpoon - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 00:22
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 00:22
After hearing the full interview with a minister over it today I doubt they will change it. He said they made a huge loss on the initial CDMA rollout in rebates for rural customers to change to the "new technology". Now that they need to actually make a profit on the books, I cant imagine them coughing up for new base station and handset rebates and they would lose too many customers if they forced it with no incentive. I dont know if WiMax will come in any time soon either- many of thier existing regional backhauls are capable of that sort of bandwidth. Alot of their exchanges dont even have ADSL capability where there is a worthwile demand, though this is changing.
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Reply By: Member -Dodger - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 17:13
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 17:13
When Telstra is privatised it won't be long until it's user pays.
Then you will see the whole phone system change to max the profits.
Country people will get it in
the neck, mark my words.
It was all leaked out on ACA the other week.
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Follow Up By: Truckster (Vic) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:31
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:31
It was all leaked out on ACA the other week.
between the bad plumber and dodgey killer homosexual 4wders? ;)
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Reply By: V8Diesel - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 17:52
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 17:52
If that is the case, they'd better come up with a good alternative or surely Telstra will be in breach of one of the central agreements regarding privatisation.
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Follow Up By: Truckster (Vic) - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:31
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 21:31
They will
water down the conditions to allow them to do anythin before they sell it... otherwise nobody would want it...
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Reply By: Snowy 3.0iTD - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 18:37
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 18:37
Does anyone have an email address for someone in Telstra relevant to this issue/decision? After having switched from GSM to CDMA about four years ago and the immense improvement in coverage it gave me I feel pretty annoyed with this, annoyed enough to start and email protest/petition.
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Follow Up By: Member - JohnR (Vic)&Moses - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:00
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:00
Snowy, the press tested a digital phone near the chairmans
home a couple of years back. No luck at all. He lives in the country where CDMA is the go, so I can't imagine the 'Don' will want to part from it lightly. Apparently the change would require a considerable upgrade in tower numbers to give the coverage.
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Reply By: sudsy - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 19:29
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 19:29
If I end up with something worse than CDMA then Telstra can simply stick their mobile service up their quoite!
I can certainly live without the convenience out here and the excessive fees.
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Reply By: warthog - Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:30
Thursday, Oct 20, 2005 at 23:30
We got out of telstra after they voted the bill through the senate, was only in it because of majority public ownerhip.
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Reply By: Member - John C (QLD) - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 08:04
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 08:04
When will Bill Gates and his freinds getting the low orbit (100 to 150k) satellites working?
Maybe that will be an alternative.
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Reply By: Volante - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 13:19
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 13:19
will never happen
nothing else that is cost effective with the features and range of CDMA is on the horizon.
the cost of CDMA infrastructure already in place would be billions of dollars
you would need 2 to 3+ 3G towers for every 1 CDMA tower to give the same amount of coverage
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Follow Up By: Member - Wim (Qld) - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 13:33
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 13:33
Volante.
Agree with your comments.
Intrigues me that it is even being discussed or has the reporting been inflated?
Regards
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Follow Up By: Volante - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 17:49
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 17:49
Wim would have to be inflated or referring to something other than the general CDMA network
there was a report on the local ABC radio last week that 7 new CDMA towers are scheduled for installation before Jan 06 in SW NSW.
Telstra are also expanding the CDMA WLL system at full
bore. I have a CDMA WLL modem for use in the CDMA WLL regions.
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Reply By: gone bush - Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 15:59
Friday, Oct 21, 2005 at 15:59
i hope not just bought my 4th cdma phone yesturday and wouldn't like to be without the coverage.
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