Thread: Nokia N97 Announced
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SD69 is offline SD69
2008-12-03 , 23:30
Posts: 1,513 | Thanked: 2,248 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ US
#63
Originally Posted by qole View Post
You've got to be kidding me. It's that easy to do an end run around the (supposed) costs and certifications required for mobile voice devices? It seems to me that, if this were true, the carriers would all be taking advantage of this and selling handsets that used the ostensibly data-only standards to do voice. Wouldn't that be cheaper for them?

I don't get this.
The data and voice are independent in HDPA. GSM is considered 2G and HSDPA is 3G backward compatible to 2G.

It's not as easy as just popping in a new radio chip. There are an awful lot of codecs, handoff algorithms, etc., in 3G that have to be present and supported by suitable drivers. Evidently, its basically a severe retrofit to get this to work with a linux kernel and not easy to do. I think Nokia (and others) are working hard on it thought.

As for the carriers, VoIP over the 3G data channel is much less efficient than separate voice channel with its dedicated codecs, etc. Aside from device costs, it wouldn't be cheaper for them because of the network management issues.
 

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