back to article HP latches onto Qualcomm's Gobi chipset

HP is to incorporate Qualcomm's Gobi chips into its laptops, supporting both CDMA and GSM 3G technologies and making Wi-Fi connectivity redundant. The Gobi chipset is designed to provide the international traveller with connectivity everywhere (or at least everywhere with 3G, except Japan) and, by reusing as many components as …

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  1. Anton Ivanov

    Whalesong... Whalesong... And strong drugs

    Have you actually used 3G in the UK?

    I have a Vodafone HSDPA card and I use it every time when I go to London and back. If you get 64Kbit sustained you should sing, dance and open the champagne. Most of the time you sit on GPRS speeds of sub-20K. If you have to use the damn thing for work you actually need WiFi

    The sole reason for this knee-jerk idiocy by HP is Apple. It is simply playing with the operators the "jump as far from iPhone as possible" game.

    Anyway, try to use 3G on a PC for real work for a day or two and pass whatever you are smoking...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "so very few devices support both"

    Most operators operate both a GSM and CDMA network; such as T-mobile, Orange, O2 and so on. There are only the likes of Three who piggy-back someone else's GSM network for GSM (2G) services and only offer a CDMA (3G) network.

    Likewise with the devices; if a device supports 3G (CDMA) I bet all that it will support 2G (GSM) as well. I am yet to see a CDMA-only phone here in the UK (albeit the GSM+CDMA phones that Three take and then disable GSM use, which is different).

  3. Mage Silver badge
    Boffin

    Two kinds of CDMA

    The early 2G stupid CDMA the US uses instead of GSM. Then for some poltical reason 3G/UMTS adopted the brain dead W-CDMA. On a loaded sector CDMA degrades horribly and cell shrinks. A faster version of 2G GSM was needed, not a wider bandwidth faster version of 2G CDMA.

    EDGE uses GSM system to achieve near 3G speeds and HSDPA sacrifices numbers of 3G voice calls to get x10 speed on W-CDMA / 3G, but only if one user is on. With 10 users on HSDPA the speed can be less than EDGE.

    Then there is the problem of frequencies. 850, 900, 1800, 1900 and 2100 depending on if USA/Europe 2G CDMA, GSM or 3G/UMTS/W-CDMA

    Some nokia phones seem to do most.. but wrong 3G frequency for USA. Mine does do US CDMA (2G), US & EU GSM and EU 3G. I think not USA 3G. So my phone has 3 kinds of radio for Voice (quad band refers to GSM), a fifth band for 3G (2100) and same band 2400 for BlueTooth and WiFi, which brings it up to 6 bands and 5 radios.

    3G is rarely called CDMA, it's either 3G, UMTS or W-CDMA (20MHz).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @ Mage

    CDMA2000 1xRTT is 2.5G and EV-DO (also CDMA) is indeed 3G. So not all "stupid CDMA the US uses" is 2G.

  5. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    So, WiFi works, it's widely availabe and understood....

    So let's stick more unnecessary security holes into our laptops just for bragging rights? Sorry, I don't see it as a selling point. I've tried 3G PCMCIA and embedded on Orange, O2 and Vodafone (Voda was miles better, BTW), and to be honest unless, I was desperate, I'd head for the nearest WiFi hotspot, WiFi working fine in the UK, contintental Europe, the US, etc.

  6. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    Hey, don't hate on the CDMA tech.

    Indeed. The 1X CDMA tops at 144kbps, which is not so good. But that came out in the late 1990s, and in the current CDMA infrastructure is used for voice calls with data all on EVDO.. Current data tech is EVDO Rev A, which can theoretically get a bit over 2mbps (still using the same 1.25mhz pair as a CDMA channel.) I have an older Revision 0 card, and I got 600-1000kbps typically while travelling* with ocassionally nearly 2mbps. In Manhattan it was slower, fluctuating from 400-900kbps. And people that use Sprint comment about Verizon Wireless' relatively poor data speeds, their typical speeds are apparently even faster. It might be weird for the US to use CDMA technologies, but I've never gotten data speeds as low as 64kbps on 1X let alone on EVDO.

    *Speeds while travelling because I don't have EVDO at home yet, only 1X 8-(.

  7. retroneo

    Japan has 2 GSM 3G networks

    Japan has two 3GSM HSDPA networks, Softbank and DoCoMo.

  8. David S

    HSDPA, CDMA, EVDO, GSM, UMTS, GSM...

    ...Now I know what a "civilian" hears when I start talking geek...

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