NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, April 4, 2005

Economists say more than 1 billion of the planet’s 6.5 billion folks are doing just that.
But phone service can help lift people out of such poverty. And for many of the world’s poorest people, mobile phone service is the most viable. Landline networks are faulty or nonexistent in many parts of the Third World.
Thus, many companies in the wireless field see an opportunity with low-cost phones. Efforts to make such phones are one of the industry’s big initiatives this year. It’s an effort that, for now, greatly favors proponents of the global system for mobile communications or GSM standard over its only main rival, CDMA, which stands for code division multiple access. And that helps GSM-focused cell phone chipmakers Texas Instruments (TXN) and Freescale Semiconductor. (FSL)
“GSM is much easier to get down to those low price levels,” said Bill Krenik, chief engineer in TI’s cell phone chip business.
Story found here.