Great - lets not only destroy the infrastructure of the country but lets give them a substandard, out of date mobile phone system that will put them behind the rest of the world for years to come. And lets do it to help out of date, poorly managed American telcoms at the same time. Wow what a great idea for the Iraqi people.
Even more anti-France insanity
My last post about this attracted some interesting discussion. So, I'll fan the flames a little more.
Darrell Issa, U.S. Representative from the 49th District of California, is not happy [via Gizmodo] that government agencies are planning on building a GSM network in Iraq.
“It is outrageous that these agencies are planning to spend taxpayer dollars on a competitive foreign technology, when we have a superior U.S. technology (CDMA) available to us,” writes Issa. “This news is especially offensive given the French opposition to U.S. diplomatic and military initiatives related to Iraq.”
Thanks to Gabe for the link.
4 Comments 
Isn't there a version of CDMA that's supposed to be better than GSM? My dad keeps saying that the GSM networks are going to have to change to CDMA at some point.
lets put this intoperspective:
GSM - not as great, bandwidth wise, but definately Europe's protocol of choice.
CDMA - better, technologically, but not as wise an idea in terms of fitting in with the mass market, locally
Also, I dont think CDMA is a US technology (think it was developed in Japan, somebody prove me wrong.)
Sounds like hubris. And whats with the French? (No, I know “why”, but why?)
The rights to CDMA are owned by an American company (Qualcomm), but I'm not sure that they actually did the development. I'm not sure what you're asking in your last question.