GSA Survey Confirms More CDMA Operators Turning to GSM

A new survey by GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association, confirms that a number of CDMA operators are facing falling market share and responding by switching to the GSM family (GSM/EDGE, WCDMA-HSPA) for business growth. Some operators choose a dual system strategy, but most prefer to migrate their whole customer base to GSM, which is the global standard for mobile communications.

The GSA survey confirms 25 operators who are deploying or operating GSM/WCDMA technology either as an overlay, or as a replacement of the existing CDMA systems.

No instances have been identified of a network operator abandoning GSM in favor of CDMA. The vast majority of TDMA operators also chose a migration path to the GSM family.

The case for GSM is compelling, taking into account GSM's unrivalled economies of scale (2 billion GSM subscriptions - June 2006, and over 81% share of the global market), feature rich services, the high number of GSM/WCDMA terminals, low subscriber acquisition cost for operators, ubiquitous international roaming, and future-proof evolution to 3G and beyond enabled by 3GPP open-standards EDGE, WCDMA-HSPA, and LTE (Long Term Evolution).