Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (
More info?)
Steevo@my-deja.com wrote:
> Well, there are issues about the subsidy of new phones by the
> carriers. If that were ended it would be completely appropriate to end
> the practice of locking phones, and transfer between carriers would
> then be appropriate as well.
>
> I sure understand if the carrier gives you a free phone they want
> their gotchas. It's business. But if you pay the real price of a
> phone you should be able to do what you want.
>
> In the GSM world the same shenanigans go on, but the unlocking of some
> brands of GSM phones has become commonplace- even free. So there go
> the subsidy lock issues.
>
> Which should result in a couple of appropriate and welcome changes,
> phones would then cost what they cost, you would have to pay for your
> phone. Rates would hopefully decline. Cellular rates have been
> historically very high. This is now starting to be resolved.
>
> We should all switch to GSM. Then you can put your chip in any darned
> phone you want. You can have a PDA phone for the work week, and a
> smaller phone for weekends. You can put your chip in a PCMCIA card
> and use it in your notebook computer.
>
> Much better idea really. AT&T was leading the way. Oh well.
R-UIM slots are starting to appear in CDMA phones, maybe. Late model
Nokia CDMA handsets have slots that look like SIM card slots. Two
theories exist:
1) Nothing. The port is nothing, and is a carryover from the GSM
handsets. Because Nokia makes so many different models for so many
different markets, carriers and technologies, they try to make parts
that fit several different handsets to reduce costs.
I don't much like this theory because it requires more parts in the
phone. If the phone had the molded-in parts of a SIM holder, I'd believe
it, but the phone has the contacts, hold, latches and visible on my new
PM-6225 the circuit board traces and solder joints. Implementing CDMA
should mean a new circuit board. Those aren't that expensive to
prototype anyway. There's no good reason for a CDMA circuit board to
have smartcard contacts soldered on just because they match a slot you
have molded into your phone for another market.
2) It's a R-UIM slot. Qualcomm has developed the R-UIM standard to bring
the GSM user subscription/handset dichotomy to CDMA. With R-UIM, your
subscription information and contacts are on a smartcard with the same
form factor as a GSM SIM card. The standard is, in fact, designed to be
compatible with GSM SIM cards, allowing GSM and CDMA subscribers to roam
on each other's networks, with compatible hardware, of course. There are
some very readable whitepapers at Qualcomm's site. The idea is that
you'll never need to do another ESN swap on your CDMA handset.
All of this needs the go-ahead from the providers. It's no small feat
either. They'd have to change a big part of the way they do business.
Sprint makes much noise about not making their handsets obsolete. (Most
of this is true, excepting handsets that do no support different IMSI
and MDN numbers in markets that require it) They would either have to
drop that claim or find a way to support both types of handset. While
internet profiles are supported, I don't recall seeing anything on PTT
support. Can a GSM user use PTT? Can a Verizon PTT user buy the same
handset as a Sprint PTT user? They can't now, but if regulation tries to
make handsets carrier-portable, what then?
--
-mike