said by DaveDude:
Sprint should have gone full GSM 5 years ago. It could have maintained a cdma roaming network as well. But being globally competitive wasn't sprints plan. -captain hindsight.
Before you go all gsm fanboi...and your use of "GSM" is probably incorrect as well.
GSM is dead. AMPS is dead,
The current format of previously GSM based carriers Tmetro etc. is UMTS... and guess what...
UMTS is a W-
CDMAGSM is an inferior product and always has been on the RF side.
GSM != UMTS and UMTS !=GSM they are not interchangable.
The future will be LTE and VoLTE when ever they quit arguing.
The progression from GSM->UMTS->LTE is a far simpler versus CDMA 1x-CDMA EVDO-LTE. Not a big deal, but not as simple a path.
And just because SIM is easily swappable on GSM & UMTS, CDMA carriers could have doen the same thing, R-UIM, but in the US they SPECIFICALLY CHOSE NOT TO! Purely for greed purposes.
Additionally understanding why GSM was chosen in place of CDMA at the time by the various PTT's of UK/IE/EU is purely political, anti US political. Not for a better product. And eventually they had to come back to the CDMA camp any way! HA!
GSM != UMTS and UMTS !=GSM they are not interchangable.