28C3: New attacks on GSM mobiles and security measures shown (The H)

> CDMA networks are more resilient by design (since they use spread-spectrum encoding).

Actually CDMA network are extremely sensitive to power control, much more than GSM for example. A device transmitting too loud can badly degrade the capacity of a cell.

As you say, it's all physics in the end, and very hard engineering. All communication systems, whether 2G, 3G of 4G (either LTE or WiMAX), in order to maximize the system capacity and make it workable need to have properly behaving devices. Devices that do proper time, frequency and power control for sure, these are the key point to make sure a device will not degrade other devices experience.

To support your point: ensuring this is tricky, and that's why many countries (at least in Europe) requires a device to have passed a suitable certification program to be used on mobile communication bands. Look for "GCF" as the key example for 3GPP standards. Using a non-certified device is simply illegal.