In addition to increasing the efficiency of transmission, TDMA offers a number of other advantages over standard cellular technologies. First and foremost, it can be easily adapted to the transmission of data as well as voice communication. TDMA offers the ability to carry data rates of 64 kbps to 120 Mbps (expandable in multiples of 64 kbps). This enables operators to offer personal communication-like services including fax, voiceband data, and short message services (SMSs) as well as bandwidth-intensive applications such as multimedia and videoconferencing.
Unlike spread-spectrum techniques which can suffer from interference among the users all of whom are on the same frequency band and transmitting at the same time, TDMA’s technology, which separates users in time, ensures that they will not experience interference from other simultaneous transmissions.
TDMA also provides the user with extended battery life and talk time since the mobile is only transmitting a portion of the time (from 1/3 to 1/10) of the time during conversations.
TDMA installations offer substantial savings in base-station equipment, space, and maintenance, an important factor as cell sizes grow ever smaller.
TDMA is the most cost-effective technology for upgrading a current analog system to digital.
TDMA is the only technology that offers an efficient utilization of hierarchical cell structures (HCSs) offering pico, micro, and macrocells. HCSs allow coverage for the system to be tailored to support specific traffic and service needs. By using this approach, system capacities of more than 40-times AMPS can be achieved in a cost-efficient way.
Because of its inherent compatibility with FDMA analog systems, TDMA allows service compatibility with the use of dual-mode handsets.
Dual band 800/1900 MHz offers the following competitive advantages:
- Identical applications and services are provided to subscribers operating in both bands.
- Carriers can use the same switch for 800– and 1900–MHz services.
- Seamless interworking between 800– and 1900–MHz networks through dual-band/dual-mode phones.
- Using dual-mode, dual-band phones, subscribers on a TDMA 1,900 channel can hand off both to/from a TDMA channel on 800 MHz as well as to/from an analog AMPS channel.
