Is Verizon a CDMA or a GSM network?

What makes Verizon's network so amazing? Do they have more towers? Are their towers more powerful? Is CDMA inherently better than GSM?

• Verizon can handle millions of smartphones constantly downloading and uploading data. AT&T can't. Why?

• Answer:

  This has to do more with backhaul than towers. When ATT launched their 3G network, they were also trying to accomodate the integration of Cingular and ATT Wireless together and to save costs, they tried to be 'skinny' on backhaul. To truly do data speeds at the radio access capability, you need to have a bigger pipe on the backhaul, growing as you get close to the IP cloud. Since EV-DO backaul is only dealing with a 3-4 Mbps capability, it was a bit easier to get those speeds to the base stations from the central office. This is literally two additional T-1's per sector. For UMTS HSDPA on ATT, that would have been trying to handle 7.2 Mbps at three sectors, so they need something around 20 Mbps, where Verizon needs around 9-10 Mbps.   ATT also decided to use TDM backhaul on their network which required them to aggregate T-1's which added latency. Add to that engineering mistake that originally they had only a handful of GGSN/SGSN's in their network, they just simply were not engineered to handle the demand of high data that iPhone users were bringing.   Verizon, who focused more on feature phones until the last few years, had the learnings from ATT and others who failed and now do massive amounts of backhaul to the sites, sometimes OC-3's which is around 155 Mbps. They typically over engineer, spending more now than the others, so there is a perseption of performance over others.   The fastest system at this time on 3/4G would actually be T-Mobile, who waiting on HSPA + speeds and also did backhaul accordingly.