Key GSM advantages are roaming and SMS. WAP was not such success, but GPRS with multimedia functionality is growing.

Not only can you take your phone to any European and many other countries and place local SIM chip in it - you can continue using it with your original SIM and hence number (if your provider has roaming agreement with some local provider - and virtually everyone has them with everybody else). I remeber whan few years ago an American busieness partner called me and found me in Rome - the guy thought I must be on satphone.

SMS (short messages - up to 160 characters, but most phones can transparently combine several together) is extremely hot service among European kids. Although one message costs two or three cents, they are major source of income for providers, who then invent new ways to incite customers to use them (e.g. games, dating, sports news, or small paments - for example, in Zagreb I pay parking fee by sending an SMS). Now when SMS niche is pretty much saturated, operators are trying to incite users to send smapshots etc to each other.

Of course, I don't think there are serious technical obstacles for similar services using CDMA. As is very often the case, the point is not the particular technology, but interoperability. However, 'multisitem' hendsets what could be used in both Europe and US are unlikely.

BTW, one of out cellular providers still operates old analog NMT network.