Is 2G same as CDMA or is that a totally different thing?
CDMA, or more correctly CDMA2000 is 3G.
GSM is 2G.
Not exactly.
The original CDMA standard (IS-95 aka
cdmaOne) was a 2G technology released in 1995.
The second CDMA standard (CDMA2000 1xRTT), first deployed in 2002, is officially 3G, but is arguably better called a 2.5-2.9G technology due to its unremarkable data rates, while the CDMA2000 EVDO extensions are definitely a 3G technology.
GSM was introduced in the early 90s and very quickly became the digital mobile phone standard in Europe.
North America was still wanking around with analog mobile phone systems and pagers from I don't know how many providers (the "market", yeah I know) and it took another 10 years in NA to get something working.
That’s a rather inaccurate, biased way to put it.
The original American networks didn’t really rely on analog (AMPS) for too much longer than European ones (NMT, TACS, etc.). With few exceptions, though, they didn’t move to GSM, but to Digital AMPS, which was an easy upgrade path that coexisted well with AMPS, which the big carriers in USA were required to support until 2002. But because of some extremely rural areas which were only served by AMPS, some AMPS hung around until 2008. But bear in mind that the carriers introduced D-AMPS in 1993 (just one year after GSM began to be rolled out), and that other than in the aforementioned very rural areas, everyone was on digital by the mid-90s. Because of the AMPS compatibility requirement for the big networks, only smaller networks jumped on board with GSM or CDMA initially, since they were totally distinct networks. But by around 2000, all the networks were migrating from D-AMPS to CDMA or GSM, and pushing existing customers to the new networks wherever possible. But for sure, it’s categorically false to claim that USA took a decade to move to “something working” (i.e. digital); it didn’t. Just because they didn’t move to a digital standard you approve of doesn’t mean they weren’t on digital!
Don’t get me wrong; the US mobile market had, and has, plenty wrong with it. But we don’t need to invent fake claims, either.