From: stephen@sprunk.org   
      
   On 22-Apr-15 11:18, Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   > Stephen Sprunk  wrote:   
   >> On 22-Apr-15 09:16, John Levine wrote:   
   >>> Quite right.  [GSM] was developed by ETSI, where E stands for   
   >>> European.   
   >>   
   >> It was developed by CEPT and later transferred to ETSI.   
   >   
   > That would be the consortium of European post offices, not a   
   > world-wide standards-making process, so your earlier statement was   
   > wrong. ...   
      
   It's a de facto world standard, with 85% of the market and used in 212   
   countries.  That it wasn't developed by ISO and made a de jure world   
   standard is moot.   
      
   >> GSM isn't particularly clever; the point was that everyone (except   
   >> the US) quickly standardized on GSM, so they got economy of scale,   
   >> and for commercialization, that's usually more important than   
   >> cleverness.   
   >   
   > That's still ridiculous. The United States had the world's largest   
   > market for cellular service at the time,   
      
   No, it didn't.  NMT in Europe had a larger customer base than AMPS in   
   the US, and the problems scaling up NMT to deal with customer density   
   were what led to the development of GSM.   
      
   NMT wasn't used as much outside Europe as GSM is today, but it's notable   
   that the first NMT deployment was actually in Saudi Arabia.   
      
   > so don't give us your  "economy of scale" nonsense. In Europe, they   
   > formed a consortium to avoid different standards in neighboring   
   > countries,   
      
   Europe already had a single standard with international roaming in 1981;   
   the US hasn't achieved that even 30+ years later, even domestically,   
   because we _still_ have competing standards.   
      
   > As GSM is an evolutionary change to TDSM,   
      
   No, GSM is a completely different beast from D-AMPS (aka TDMA).   
      
   > and not a revolutionary replacement,   
      
   GSM _was_ a revolutionary replacement for NMT.  Contrast with D-AMPS   
   (aka TDMA) that was an evolutionary replacement for AMPS, as you might   
   guess from the name.   
      
   > In any event, your argument doesn't work because you have to pick   
   > and choose your costs and ignore other costs. There are major   
   > infrastructure costs of the cell phone network that don't scale up,   
   > like erection of towers and equipping them and connecting them to the   
   > telephone network. Sure, individual parts benefit from mass   
   > manufacture, but a whole lot is individually customized on a   
   > per-location basis.   
      
   Some parts benefit more from economy of scale than others, yes, but that   
   doesn't mean that it's irrelevant as a factor.   
      
   > The main cost is dividing and managing available spectrum.   
      
   ... which the FCC does in a remarkably inefficient and expensive way,   
   further adding to the costs here.   
      
   >> ETSI standards often get used elsewhere simply because the rest of   
   >> the world (except the US) doesn't see the point in developing   
   >> competing standards.  GSM, for instance, was deployed in Australia   
   >> in 1993, not long after Europe's first GSM network went live in   
   >> 1991.   
   >   
   > Oh, bullshit. It's whichever manufacturer reaches the market first.   
      
   No, it isn't.  There are many examples of one vendor being first to   
   market and getting stomped by later entrants, particularly if the later   
   entrants join together to create an open standard and thus get better   
   economy of scale.   
      
   S   
      
   --   
   Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein   
   CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the   
   K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking   
      
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