Machine-to-machine systems resurrect a mobile rivalry

April 23, 2013

Just as the mobile world seems to be finding peace and harmony around LTE, the age-old feud between GSM and CDMA is flaring up again.Now, the battleground is M2M (machine-to-machine) communications, the emerging use of wireless to link devices such as smart meters, medical devices and vehicles. Though many M2M applications are new, they don't all need the latest networks. The older 2G networks that were at the center of the GSM-CDMA rivalry are perfectly adequate for simple M2M data transfers, so carriers are angling for contracts to serve M2M customers.Sprint Nextel says its CDMA 2G network is here for the long term, unlike those of some GSM carriers. That's important because M2M applications tend to remain online far longer than most other uses of mobile. On Monday, Sprint said it was expanding its collaboration with Swiss component maker U-blox to help extend the lives of existing 2G M2M products.Sprint's piece of the pitch is that it plans to keep operating its 2G network, which runs on so-called CDMA2000-1x, through at least 2020. It will even keep investing in the 2G technology, implementing 1x-Advanced, a Qualcomm technology for carrying voice traffic more efficiently and freeing up more capacity for data, said Russell Mosburg, Sprint's director of M2M solutions engineering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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