I don't know about vastly inferior. I'm not really even sure you could make a case that one is better than the other, really. GSM call quality tends to be poore

I don't know about vastly inferior. I'm not really even sure you could make a case that one is better than the other, really. GSM call quality tends to be poorer, but only because GSM uses less bandwidth per call. That's not really a problem with the codec, just a decision by the cell companies. Besides, all my calls these days are over 3G GSM, which uses much more bandwidth, and those calls sound great. On top of that, since GSM uses time division (as apposed to time division, which keeps the radio on for the whole call), batteries last a lot longer on a GSM device. I remember when I first switched from a CDMA network to a GSM network. I was amazed that my phone would last the better part of a week when I was used to charging it every day. I could see this being tough on device makers. People really hate phones that can't hold a charge. But they hate large phones even more. CDMA does seem to penetrate buildings a little better, in my experience.