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One data point: FOMA [1] in Japan was the world's first commercial 3G service to launch. Was it the "winner" of that "war"? No, it was basically an incompatib
by 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
One data point: FOMA [1] in Japan was the world's first commercial 3G service to launch. Was it the "winner" of that "war"? No, it was basically an incompatible fork of UMTS [2] that in the end was used by nobody except NTT Docomo, who had to retool a few years later at considerable expense to be compatible with the global standard.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_A...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS
- ulfw 7y agoand similarly in the US Wimax was Sprint's disastrous entry into 4G https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold-look-back-sprint-wimax-network-tag2 https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold...
- nradov 7y agoWhich has left Sprint crippled to this day, to the extent they need to merge with T-Mobile to fund a 5G network. The rest of the industry has well learned not to jump too soon.
- qtwhat 7y agoThis answer and the answers below ignored one simple point: 5G is a global collaboration (3GPP), not a regional experiment, which includes operators around the world and vendor around the world (not true, few from American..). You can basically call 3GPP the dictatorial organization, simply it is the only organization truely working on the cellular technique. More importantly, it is getting stronger, and the ecosystem getting more diversified as more OTT and devices vendors like Google, Tencent, Alibaba, Apple, all joining in. Face it, US is being left behind.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoFOMA was an UMTS implementation also shepherded by 3GPP. This didn't stop it from being incompatible. Put another way, the W3C is supposed to set global standards for web browsing, and we all know how compatible browsers are...
- setr 7y agoAfaik, browsers have pretty solid compatability these days. I mean, they’re all chromium skins, but nonetheless
- qtwhat 7y agoTrue. But note that in 3G and 4G period, there are a number of systems that are not compatible to each other, like UMTS vs CDMA, LTE vs WiMAX, while 5G is the global one.