[tintivilus]

Originally Posted by JSpira

The features could not be implemented on the CDMA platform as the BMW Assist platform won't support CDMA here.

Regarding the TCUs, they are still market specific. Last I heard, the U.S. market was not getting tri or quad band TCUs. I'm fairly certain that most TCUs in Europe do not support NA frequencies either.

Wow, that's insane. As a comparison, it's generally cheaper to make one quad-band GSM phone (with one supply chain, assembly line, software release, QA test cycle, etc, etc) than two dual-band phones if the wholesale price is more than $50-$75 unless you're selling an insanely huge number of units. I would have expected the testing/acceptance overhead for something like a TCU to way overshadow the marginal cost of upgrading the modem from dual- to quad-band.

Are any of the TCU's UMTS yet, or are they sticking with (e)gsm? 3G would add an additional wrinkle, but I'd still expect a single-modem solution: you can already get data cards and biggish smartphones that are quad-GSM and tri-UMTS.

...but maybe the BMW parts markup is just giving me a skewed idea of how much a TCU actually costs

[JSpira]

I'm getting updated info from BMW and the newest is that the TCUs are quad band but have a North America only SIM with limitations on outbound calling so it can't be hacked.

[tintivilus]

It makes perfect sense that the SIMs would be regional. How is the outbound assistance request made? SMS to the call center?

Oh, and there's one intrinsic advantage to eGSM over CDMA: you can do circuit-switched voice and packet data simultaneously, which I could see coming in awfully handy for BMW Assist. CDMA (or at least Verizon) can't do simultaneous voice+data to the best of my knowledge.

[JSpira]

[quote=tintivilus;2491286]It makes perfect sense that the SIMs would be regional. How is the outbound assistance request made? SMS to the call center?

I'm not sure yet. Previously, the call was set up and then information was transmitted in band..

Originally Posted by tintivilus

Oh, and there's one intrinsic advantage to eGSM over CDMA: you can do circuit-switched voice and packet data simultaneously, which I could see coming in awfully handy for BMW Assist. CDMA (or at least Verizon) can't do simultaneous voice+data to the best of my knowledge.

I concur.