canderson
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An issue of semantics vs. actualities. What you describe is why you can overlay a GSM system on top of a TDMA architecture, but let's be real -- TDMA by itself, without the additional GSM technology designation, is used to define Nextel's architecture vs. that of AT&T. Don't try to take a Nextel phone to a GSM network, or an AT&T phone to Nextel's network. Better yet, let's actually clean this up...
GSM implies that there's TDMA under the hood. All GSM systems are inherently TDMA multiplexing systems.
TDMA implies nothing whatsoever about GSM. All TDMA systems are NOT inherently GSM.
The fact that GSM overlays onto TDMA is one of the reasons that I think Sprint has some interesting choices ahead of it. As it has absorbed Nextel with all of its TDMA infrastructure, you have to wonder if they'll just steal all of the Nextel bandwidth for their PCS system, or whether they'll consider leaving some of that bandwidth available for finally adding some GSM capability for our foreign visitors as they phase out the iDEN system.
And again, I'd remind you that while we were all fiddling around with analog here, Europe was going digital with what was available at the time. First to the table often gets the biggest market share.
