Iraq tenders 'only for US allies'

[Richie]

I am all FOR this.

Yes there are pros and cons to both sides but is it really fair and just for countries such as France and Germany to reap some of the "rewards" from a conflict they so strongly opposed ??


Lets put this to a more personal level - If you worked hard to get a new project off the ground, would it be fair for someone that opposed you to take over the project and be given a better job ??

[spazman]

I agree allies should get the jobs, not opposers!

[Zathras]

Sorry, but talk of 'spoils' and 'rewards' for waging war? Get real, it's not the seventeenth century. Remember Bush/Blair etc harping on about how this war was to liberate the Iraqi people and set them free, nothing more? The 'Project' was the liberation of Iraq, not creating another US corporate franchise. Now we've got Americans asset-stripping the entire country. The decisions on who gets what contract should be made on an open and fair playing field not for the benefits of the Americans, nor for the benefits of the French and Germans, but for the benefit of the Iraqi people. After all it is their country and the majority of the state-owned industries belong to the Iraqi people themselves. Somehow I don't think they're going to see much return on the sale of their education, health, welfare and oil-producing industries. The contracts should go to the best companies or groups able to do each job, regardless of whatever the governments of the countries decided.

Let's take mobile phones for instance... Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Saudi all use the global standard for mobile communication, used in about 90% of countries worldwide. GSM is an international standard, not owned by one particular company, whereas CDMA, the US standard, is hardly used outside of North America and anyone producing any CDMA technology must pay a license fee to a US company and CDMA sucks big-time compared to GSM - think of GSM being like PNG compared to CDMA's GIF for you computer nerds. Now why should CDMA be inflicted on the Iraqi people when GSM would be a far better solution? Because GSM is big in Europe and CDMA would channel money back to the US. Good for the Iraqis? No. Good for US business? Yes. Now who's being put first here?

[spazman]

what if the modile network was left to the UK to do? or japan? or australia? or polad? or spain? or bulgaria (unlikely i know)? Not just UK and US were involved or helped.

[Richie]

Originally posted by Zathras
Sorry, but talk of 'spoils' and 'rewards' for waging war? Get real, it's not the seventeenth century.

Ok, so "rewards" was a bad choice of words but the reason I put it in quotation marks to begin with was to indicate that it wasn't the literal sense of the word I meant.


Noone is saying that the US should now just go in and unofficially run the country till its back on its feet. What I am personally saying is that the countries that spent resources in the conflict (be that money or lives or whatever) should be the ones that are able to get something from helping rebuild..... Bit bad from if it was a acse of "cheers for helping us get rid of the evil tyrant and his murderous regime but piss off cause we are turning to someone else."




Also, your story about the mobile network problem is simply not true. America DOES use GSM as their standard. They only happen to use GSM1900 as opposed to the rest of the World in GSM900 or GSM1800. Christ, even the UK cant make up its mind and uses both 900 (O2/Voda) and 1800 (Orange/T-Mob)



CDMA is a form of 3rd generation mobile phone technology like UMTS which is used for pure DATA transfer e.g. WAP or internet access and has nowt to do with basic voice services.

[Zathras]

Originally posted by Richie
Also, your story about the mobile network problem is simply not true.

That's funny. I have many thousand links suggesting it is true. I suggest you retract that comment. I make a living in mobile phones and part of my doctorate involves communication protocols involved in mobile communication.

America DOES use GSM as their standard. They only happen to use GSM1900 as opposed to the rest of the World in GSM900 or GSM1800. Christ, even the UK cant make up its mind and uses both 900 (O2/Voda) and 1800 (Orange/T-Mob)

GSM is not a de-facto standard out in the US. There are GSM networks out in the US but there are also CDMA-technology based networks.

CDMA is a form of 3rd generation mobile phone technology like UMTS which is used for pure DATA transfer e.g. WAP or internet access and has nowt to do with basic voice services.

Sorry, you're sprouting utter FUD there. CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access and is QUALCOMM's spread spectrum air interface method. GSM is based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). IS-95 is a very real standard utilising CDMA for voice calls, as is IS-2000. 3G CDMA-based services include the CDMA2000 standard and W-CDMA (aka UMTS).

Some references so people can verify what I'm saying, and also interesting stories about the pressing for adopting CDMA:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/29974.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30011.html
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/8581.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/business/3168429.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm
http://www.cellular-news.com/misc/glossary.shtml#C
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cac...hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cac...hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cac...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Apologies for the Google caching of wikipedia - it looks like the Wiki servers are down or getting a severe hammering.

Just a quick quote from the BBC News article for those who don't want to have to wade through the above links:

Although all Iraq's neighbours - and 70% of mobile users worldwide - use the GSM standard, the CPA would be happy to take a CDMA bid if it proved competitive.

The condition, Mr Davies said, was that each winning network would allow phones from the other networks to "roam" onto it, ensuring the maximum national coverage.

That meant all handsets would have to function on both CDMA and GSM.

"It's perfectly possible to have handsets that contain both GSM and CDMA technology, and that would enable users to roam to other countries," he said.

But experts contacted by BBC News Online said otherwise. There is no commercial dual-mode phone (NOTE: not dual-band, dual mode) - as such equipment is called - on the market, according to Jason Chapman, principal mobile analyst at technology consultancy Gartner.

Need any more evidence CDMA is a voice carrying technology and IS NOT GSM?

[Richie]

I will retract the comment the moment you retract your offensive method of posting which were not required seeing as I kept it civil myself.



p.s. I am not a complete fool with mobile phone technology having been in my current role for 3 years involving tech support for 1, 2 and 3G technologies.

[Zathras]

Okay, apologies for going off a bit on one. Long day yesterday and being told I'm wrong out of hand on an area pretty close to my line of research without corroboration can be a bit of a red rag to a bull to me. It's obvious from your other posts you know a lot about mobiles etc and given GSM is the absolute standard here and CDMA is only talked about in this country as a potential new delivery device for 3G services it's easy to get mixed up.

Anyway, enough of the bitching, would you agree a GSM carrier network would be better for Iraq than a CDMA-based network given the number of established GSM networks in the area and the cost of designing and producing dual-mode phones just for Iraq alone?

[Richie]

S'ok... Everyone has bad days

I do agree that GSM is the proper way to go, the main reason being every other country uses it and the last thing a rebuilding country needs is new technology that has not got the same level of support (CDMA) as GSM.

The only CDMA phones I have ever seen and used was a development phone from Nokia.... I cant remember the model number but it was a green thing (same color as old 7110) with a camera on the back that had a sliding cover and as I says, it was a development phone at the time I used it (bout 6-8 months ago)


To use CDMA would be foolish but I do, however, still believe that the tenders for everything should go to the countries that helped in the conflict first and only then be offered to the rest if its not filled. "Rewards" was the wrong word to use but wars cost money so its only right that the countries that helped bring a country back from the brink of disaster be the ones that benefit from its rebuiliding but ONLY if its for the good of the country.

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by Richie
"Rewards" was the wrong word to use but wars cost money so its only right that the countries that helped bring a country back from the brink of disaster be the ones that benefit from its rebuiliding but ONLY if its for the good of the country.

I'd say "rewards" was precisely the right word to use.

Whatever happened to the Iraqi people choosing how to run their country?

[Blub2k]

It appears that Haliburton have lost the oil contract for overcharging by...................wait for it.....................$61 million
This is how the US peoples tax dollars are being syphoned off by Greedy Texas Oil billionaires, oh yeah it is for the good of Iraq .....or something

[Blub2k]

The other point on the mobile phone networks is that they have put in a different network for each "ethnic" area in Iraq meaning that you will be charged roaming charges internally in Iraq for swapping networks, very interesting Guardian yesterday from the Baghdad Blogger complaining about this situation.