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Qualcomm Demonstrates 153 kbit/s cellular
Matt_Bennett writes "EEtimes reports that Qualcomm has demonstrated its new faster CDMA chip set for third generation cellular (3G). They have demonstrated bit rates of up to 153 kbit/s. Sample shipments have already begun. From the article: "Commercial 3G 1x service is expected to be deployed in Korea by the end of this year, and similar service is expected in the United States and Japan sometime in 2001.""
There is ALREADY a wireless,flat rate, mobile solution that operates at a minumum of 128kbs. It's available NOW in the Atlanta and San Diego metro areas and will be available in the NYC, Seattle, Bay Area, Chicago, DC, Houston, LA, Philidelphia, Dallas, and Phoenix metro areas in about a month.
Check out http://www.metricom.com for more details.
I use the 28.8kps version being usurped for 128kps and it simply rocks. I have it on constantly without fear of minutes used (think 3G is going to flat rate? Think again!), it tenaciously holds connections (yeah, like I'm going to use 3G for data when voice calls drop all the time), and I can surf the web without clipped pages or limited WAP pages.
As soon as at least 128k/sec wireless bandwidth is combined with flat rates for 2-3 hours/day, there will no longer be so much need for conventional radio, eh? Get ready for the next big paradigm shift.
--
> The *entire* world is slowly switching to CDMA
Sure, but it won't be overnight. I believe UMTS uses CDMA, basically picking the goodies from all the current technologies. But UMTS is still far off in the future, they're still auctioning frequencies. I doubt it will replace GSM before 2005 or even much later.
Let's clarify the difference between a technology and an implementation. Many different systems could be based on the principle of code division multiplexing, but that doesn't mean they'll interoperate. CDMA as in use in the US is no standard at all, if I'm not mistaken there are several CDMA implementations even in the US. I seriously doubt you can take a Qualcomm phone, go to Asia or wherever else CDMA is popular, and start using it.
Anyway, people keep missing the bigger picture when advocating newer and better technology: it's all about standardization and interoperability. It doesn't matter that you have the best technology if not everyone is using it. That simply leads to islands of technology like in the US. It's better to have somewhat inferior technology--but that is still GOOD ENOUGH--which everyone commits to.
This is hard to explain to Americans that have never experienced GSM in action. It's not that the quality is superior, or the power requirements less, or the data rate higher. But a Brit can take his cell phone with him on holiday to Greece, buy a prepaid $25 card locally, stick it in the phone, and for the next two weeks he can make local calls just like he bought the phone locally. Try doing that in the US.
> The only real downside to CDMA is the US Government. They consider it as a "weapon"
> (just like encryption), so exporting it is really inconvient.
I'm confused here now. Are you arguing that US companies are the only ones capable of implementing CDMA technology, and that they have to be able to export it in order to "spread the word"? GSM was developed at a time when CDMA wasn't a glint in anyone's eye--or maybe it was, but the processing power wasn't available to do it cheaply. GSM and CDMA aren't contemporaries, CDMA is much more recent. As mentioned by others, given time, GSM will eventually subsume the better CDMA technology. That's partly what UMTS is all about.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
GSM uses 900 and 1800 MHz in Europe. But since GSM uses 1900 MHz in the US, that has led to the availability of tri-band phones in Europe that can do 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz. Still, they only talk GSM, so we're still waiting for multi-mode phones that can do GSM, CDMA, PCS etc. I think that will be a long time, since most US carriers are very adamant about locking you into their phones. I guess that gives them an extra revenue stream, I can't explain it any other way.
> This is one huge advantage the GSM has. It could be implemented in the US, but the cell
> phone companies have been reluctant to implement something like that more infavor of
> Nationwide roaming.
Of course it could be implemented, but it probably offers no added revenue possibilities. On the other hand, roaming is "long distance on steroids", huge profitability there. I think that's self-explanatory.
> Some of the fundamental ideas of CDMA (including digital spread spectrum) were
> originally created by the military to prevent radio jamming. Also, the US government is really
> sensitive about protecting the technology created in this country
True, but the spread spectrum technology is quite old now, and even if international pantents ever existed (which I'm not sure they did), they must have long elapsed. Besides, it's one of those things where, once the concept becomes clear, implementations can be arrived at independently quite easily. Same thing with CDMA, while a certain company (Qualcomm?) may hold certain concrete patents regarding a code division technology, it's relatively easy for other companies to say, hmm, code division multiplexing, neat idea, let's see what we can do. And if the implementations were sufficiently different from the original patent holder's, they would probably have a lot of difficulties to enforce their patents, especially internationally. In other words, unless it's a case where a company copied a technology lock, stock and barrel, including serial numbers and all,it's hard to do anything about copycats.
> On an off-topic note, I want to say I really apprecate you keeping this discussion civil. Too
> often on Slashdot discussions often turn into shouting matches
Well, to paraphrase some famous person, name calling is the last resort of the feeble-minded. At worst I would try to put you down in what I would consider an understated way, and then probably leave the thread.
But GSM/CDMA et al is hardly anything to get too excited about. I really don't care what the technology is, as long as it's universally accepted. Currently I think GSM is the favorite, but who knows, that may change. Personally I think the ideal would be a global packet switched network along the lines of 802.11 or so, a seamless "ether" of connectivity. Run everything on TCP/IP, and forget about emulating old circuit switched technology. But that will be a while.
Incidentally, on a related note, in Germany several states have tried to initiate digital radio broadcasting for many years now. Several technologies are market ready but have stopped short of being implemented. The major objection to all of them is that they rely on an old paradigm, the broadcast. Many opponents argue that today, in the age of the Internet and on-demand data, that paradigm is simply too antiquated. What we really need is a packet switched "radio system" that essentially streams the audio into your car, and can deliver much more than just radio shows. Rather than pre-defining what the digital channels can carry (80% voice + 20% miscellaneous such as text, data, etc), make it so general purpose that it's up to the user what he uses the bandwidth for.
That's pretty much also my vision of what the ideal cell phone is all about, rather than extending the old dial-up paradign into the wireless realm. Of course, all this has done in Germany is to muddle things up and take the steam out of the existing initiatives. So now it will be even longer before we see digital radio. Oh well...
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
> the war between CDMA & GSM is almost as ferocious as Gnome vs. KDE
What war? GSM is the norm, the rest are also-rans. To preempt any inevitable claims to the superiority of CDMA, it's true, it's all true. However, it doesn't matter, as exemplified by the scores of countries with almost complete GSM coverage. It's more important to have a mediocre widely adopted standard than the best--but poorly adopted--technology. But that's old news, so I'll stop.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
I congratulate the 5% of the US population who will have access to this technology. For their sake I hope they're only occasional travelers, so they won't miss their blessing when on the road.
Me, I'm waiting for GSM to finally take hold in the US. Which of course will be a very long time, because naturally CDMA is the better technology, so we must push hard to adopt that instead. The sooner the US wireless companies realize that GSM is inevitable, the better off everyone will be. It's inevitable because everyone else uses it, save for a few traditionally isolationist countries such as the USA and Japan. No other technology has the same chance for universal adoption in the US because each technology has some corporate parent with a vested interest in seeing it succeed. This fact alone will prevent the competing companies from adopting each other's technologies. Sure, we'll end up with dual- and tri-band phones eventually, with the ability to mostly roam through the country--but what will have changed then from the analog days?
The consumer cares less about what technology the phone uses than whether it will work when turned on. Most consumers have no idea what wireless system their local provider uses, neither do most of the employees of those companies--just call them up and ask. But most people sure as heck know the service boundaries of their cells.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Heh, in a way. Except that with infrastructure standards are even more important than with OSs. A phone without infrastructure is about as useful as giving Bach a fancy radio, while a limited OS can still be servicable.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
GPS, Bluetooth, MP3, MIDI, and the kitchen sink, all wrapped up in a cell phone with internet access over twice as fast as 56K modems. None of these are a great innovation in and of themselves, but together that's pretty spiffy. Wonder what that's going to do to battery life?
It's also interesting to note that, while this thing's using an ARM-based CPU, the signaling is PowerPC compatible. I knew that Motorola was a big player in the cell phone biz, but didn't think they'd be forcing PPC tech here. Anyone with more info on this?
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
I'm italian, here's my take on our local situation.
A few months ago, the number of active GSM phones surpassed the number of active "ordinary" phone lines. There are 4 major GSM connectivity providers, the biggest being TIM (controlled by Telecom Italia, former telehone monopolist) with slightly over 20 million subscribers (out of a population of roughly 65 million). Then there' Omnitel (over 13 million subscribers) owned by Vodaphone, Wind (over 3 million I think) which is owned by the former power distribution monopolist and France Telecom, and the newest arrival Blu (less than 0.5 million subscribers, it's only a few months old).
Most of the country (I'd take more than 90%) is under GSM coverage. Phone tariffs can vary a bit, from 4 LIT/sec (slightly less than 0.2 US cents) (VAT included, no call setup fee, any destination in Italy, be it mobile or land) for some "summer-special-offers" to as high as 1.2 US$/min (plus 0.1 US$ call setup fee, VAT included) for some tariffs. The call receiver only pays if s/he's doing international roaming (they receive their call while being outside Italy).
Land lines: we're still in the process of coming out of a monopoly (by Telecom Italia). The last mile is still under monopoly, and the connection fee still goes to Telecom Italia (about 20 US$ / month, no calls included). Besides that, there are three players (Telecom Italia, Infostrada (owned by Vodaphone, I believe), and Wind) offering both local and long-distance calls. Besides them, therere are a few more offering only long-distance, plus a host of local phone companies that are now starting up.
The network is fully digital (has been for a few years), ISDN is a no-problem (besides being more expensive than analog). Set-up times can vary from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, depending on the location. ADSL takes a month or so to set up.
Tariffs are normally by-the-second. A few flat offerings are appearing, but they're quite expensive (I believe about 30 US$/month for local calls, or 50$/month for local and long-distance, plus another 30 US$/month for Internet connectivity)
But yet, one in three people here... 6 million of 19 million, has a GSM or CDMA phone.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Why several different standards? I don't know. It's always happened though. GIF/PNG... AIM/ICQ... POP3/IMAP... Serial/Parallel/USB... WAP/Internet.
A recent article in EDN Access says that a new technology will allow 90bps/Hz of bandwidth. First generation CDMA uses 1.5 Mhz of bandwidth which should provide 135Mbs!
Second generation CDMA uses 5 Mhz of bandwidth, which could theoretically provide 450Mbs of bandwidth using the new technology.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
PacketVideo has announced that with their PVPlatform 1.0 product you can view streaming MPEG-4 compliant video on you PocketPC (and soon other OS) handheld.
They refer to the product as a codec, so it may require some form of Windows Media player to run.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
It is probably floating around in a lot of zappa quote databases like this one.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Does this mean that they can drop my calls faster than ever before?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
http://www.goingware.com/decss
We now return you to your program.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Hey Jage,
I think that you missed the point with this one. Qualcomm was able to get 153kbit/s with one person in a moving car. That's quite an accomplishment. This is part of their High Data Rate (HDR) portion of CDMA2000. That specification is aiming at providing 1MB/sec to a stationary person & 384 kbit/s to a walking person.
Although I don't care to start a holy war with the GSM folks (for those who don't know, the war between CDMA & GSM is almost as ferocious as Gnome vs. KDE, Macintosh vs. Windows, Ford vs. Chevy, etc), I will say that GSM will not get 144 kbit/s in the USA, because of the extremely limited bandwith provided by the FCC. Because of the way the FCC split the 800MHz band, Qualcomm was limited to design CDMA into a 1.25 MHz framework. (IMHO, the FCC did do a much better job allocating the 1900MHz (aka PCS) bandwidth, but we are still stuck with the 800MHz regulations) To get 153 kbit/s in 1.25MHz bandwith is pretty amazing, IMHO.
Maybe when the FCC auctions off the next frequency, they will take back the 800MHz frequencies and limit them to FDMA (frequency division multiple access, aka AMPS). That way, we would be able to take advantage of a wider spectrum for our data transfer.
If you want to learn more about CDMA, I recommend looking through the CDG (CDMA Development Group) website. (should I link to that, or is Judge Kaplan going to get mad =-) )
Dan
Doh!
Here I go out and buy me one of these "megacars (www.megacar.com)," (you know, the ones with the 16 GSM modules?) and they come out with this. What a waste of $300,000.....sheeoot
Sheesh. Next thing you know you'll be telling us your women are tall, blonde, and curvaceous, so other countries with decent land-lines should have them too.
If only Norwegian women were as easy as Norwegian cell phones.
Don't be so quick to jump on the GSM bandwagon. One of the great things about not being "standardized" over here is the competition that non-standardization brings. Look at all the players: AT&T, Sprint, Nextel at the national level and the baby bells and a dozen others at the regional level. What this boils down to is better service and better prices for Joe Consumer, who can get a free phone with his contract for just $29.95/month.
3G networks might take a while to roll out in the States, but when they do they'll be faster (for data) than the GSM networks, which even with GPRS are moving along a slower (read: cheaper) migration path towards 3G. (And some carriers are skipping 3G entirely in favor of 4G, which may be out around 2005/6.)
Here are some pertinent articles:
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Lets see, Finland for example. Mobile phone adoption is at 70.1% last time I checked. Land lines were digitalized 10-20 years ago (meaning phoneline modem CONNECTs at 46000-54000bps). ISDN is available everywhere. Italy is another example, their mobile phone penetration is 50-60% nowadays. I don't believe their land line phones are crappy, either.
On the other hand, in USA, many local phone companies don't care much about landline infrastructure quality because local phone calls are free and only revenue comes from subscription fee and long distance. They've even been cheating by "splitting the line", halving bandwidth leading to dramatically lower quality.
Just 153kbit/s, what's the big deal? GPRS (GSM) *already* delivers 144kbit/s (can be more or less depending on bandwidth allocation, over 170kbit/s is possible in GPRS, right?) and UMTS will give 2Mbit/s next year.
Actually, Qualcomm wons CDMA, and Europe is run on GSM, not TDMA.
I was at a presentation by a Qualcomm rep about a year ago. He showed us a phone that was about 1/2 inch thick and told us that QCOM was going to be getting multi-megabit speeds on that sort of device within 3 years or so. If they're on schedule (and I have reason to infer that they are), we're soon going to have cable modem speeds available to wireless devices. Man, I can't wait.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Very nice page. I've thought of doing one of these myself, with my Nikon CoolPix 800 (even this goofy thing takes time to boot up, sheesh!)
I'm sure I could get the level of detail showing the hand, compact box and whip antenna of people doing the one-hand drive while discussing Meal-Solutions with the spouse.
Tech around here is a good thing, just used badly by some very stupid and rude people.
Bluetooth, OTOH, may be a solution to this if I get a little transmitter to mount in my car and zap people with it! >8-)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
while reading i just remembered the umts-auction here in germany which has finished last week with an outstanding total bidding of about $45.000.000.000 (~ DM 98.000.000.000) for 16 licenses for the umts-frequences of germany!!!
actually you need at least two licenses to provide a stable connection. so the companies paid as follows for every 2-licenses-package:
E-Plus Hutchison DM 16.418.200.000
Group 3G DM 16.446.000.000
Mannesmann Mobilfunk DM 16.473.800.000
MobilCom Multimedia DM 16.370.000.000
T-Mobil DM 16.582.200.000
VIAG Interkom DM 16.517.000.000
nervous? - i think so
the utms-standard provides up to 2MBit/s stable connection also while moving with a speed of up to 10 km/h.
but is this worth that price? i dont see it. at last the customers have to pay the price for that nevous chairmans who wanted to be one of the billion-dollar-bit.
when i see Qualcomms news now, which actually is (almost) ready for the market i can not see the "big deal" in umts for that price.
qualcomms invention is an raise from 9.6 to 153 - which more than simply satisfaction for any of that guys running the street outside (most available private connectivity is about 56 to 112).
--RelWorp
First of all, 1X (150Kbit/s in each direction) is going to be rapidly deployed since the technology simultaneously doubles the number of phone calls (and also increases battery life) and is a cheap upgrade. Korea, Japan, and US will deploy as soon as the technology is ready. The chips will be in prodoction this year, and the infrastructure vendors will probably be ready to ship upgrades in second half of 2001. Second, both Ford (in joint venture w/Qualcomm) and GM are going to be using CDMA for telematics for model year 2002 (fall 2001) cars. This is going to cause their service providers to upgrade old analog service and perhaps increase the quality of coverage. Third, the successor Qualcomm technology HDR which will support 2.4 Mbits/sec peak (600Kb sustained) will have chips available in 2001. Finally, there is talk of a successor to HDR which will be announced in the next year which is several times HDRs performance. BTW, Handspring is a Qualcomm licensee.
Don't be so quick to jump on the GSM bandwagon. One of the great things about not being "standardized" over here is the competition that non-standardization brings.
That's silly. Standardization does'nt mean less competition; on the contrary. Here, in Europe, as everything is standardized on GSM, once you have own a phone you can change carriers in a pinch (though usually you have to subscribe for a whole year to a same provider who financed your phone).
Also prices are really going down FAST. Lots of competition.
Cellular adoption rates are large because getting cellulars is easy. I can walk into a random gas-station, pay less than $50, and walk out again with a working phone (depending on the gas-station - if they are connected to the 'bad' cellular network, I might have to wait until the next business day for the phone to be activated.)
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
The US is behind in wireless for one basic reason: Our land lines are much better than elsewhere. Look at countries with huge wireless adoption rates. Now correlate that with the time (or possibly cost) required to obtain a regular wire phone line. You'll see that there's a strong correlation.
Wireless is exploding in many countries due to necessity.
At the present, this seems like a curse for those of us in the USA. On the other hand, it suggests that in the long run we may end up with a system built in the '00s while the rest of the world is living with systems from the '90s. That's probably just sour grapes, though.
"Expected in the United States and Japan sometime in 2001" ... and in Canada by 2047. Seriously. :)
From the article
"It includes position location, Bluetooth capability, MP3, MIDI"
GPS, very cool, how many times have you been out with your friends, in a new area, and you are trying to find out where everyone is? Having a "Tell someone where you are" (exactly) type technology would be very cool. Bluetooth, very cool but: MIDI ??? God help us all if I'm in a eatery somewhere and someone's mobile device starts playing some crappy MIDI song..... oh wait a sec.... nevermind.
[rant] It seems like the US is falling behind in the wireless business. Europe and Asia both are ahead of us in deployment of towers for communication as well as having more advanced handsets. Where I live, ~6mi outside one of the largest cities on the east coast, we have nonexistant analog coverage and spotty digital connections. Building communication towers here is difficult because some yuppie mom has to complain about not wanting the thing in her backyard so they have to put it in the middle of a forest away from civilization and just expect it to work. Anyways, why can't we standardize over here too, I can count about half a dozen 'standards' for wireless com, whereas europe has decided almost universally to use GSM. [/rant] Well, when I can get my 153kbit CDMA connection for my laptop out in the suburbs, I'll be happy with our infrastructure, of course it won't happen until 2005+ for real and end up costing $100/mo but whatever....
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
From what I remember a few years ago, 3G was supposed to bridge the three standards (TDMA, CDMA, GSM) together. Instead, 3G phones are coming out in exactly those three systems. What gives? Can you imagine how much money could be saved and how much better the deigital coverage on each system could be if everyone used the same standard?
Yeah, but it's hell driving anywhere with that DSL cable spool in the back of the car, especially when a train cuts it, back where you drover over a track.
While driving? Uh. Dunno, the CHP took away my Beetle when they caught me driving around with 6 foot dish on top.
Not unlike Cable TV rates, CD prices, gas prices, the herd logic drives the stock market and whatever excuses people come up with for needing to talk, surf, play MIDI, etc. in their cars at 153Kb/S. This'll all look so impressive sitting on a roadside picnic table as cities and states pass laws ban use of these nice toys by drivers.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
SO! That's who's been making my Highway 17 commute suck so bad! Some twit surfing the web, video conferencing, yakking away and probably picking his nose all that the same time all for the sake of progress.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The fastest mobile wireless speed I've seen announced on more than a test basis was in Turkey at 26kbps (here).
Though if you don't mind not being able to surf when in motion, Richochet has 28kbps now, becoming 128kbps soon, in several US cities (here). Ricochet claims they can go 70mph, but some people on Epinions.com disagree.
So people are reluctant to use the cellular which lowers the revenue providers get and forces them to have obviously inpenetrable call plans and ultimately high prices. Another reason for the confusion and high prices is the bundling of phones and actual telephony services. Competition gets seriously impaired.
Here in Finland this is forbidden by the law, which is one reason for our penetration rates. Another is low pricing (5 US cents per minute with 3 US dollars monthly fee at the lowest) which partially follows from gov't policy of not charging for the licences to provide these services. Same goes with Sweden, so here you go..
The average customer has to feel secure about understanding pricing to really use these devices.
Oh, and I could get ADSL in two weeks max if I wanted..
The quality of the landlines down here is pretty good: most of them are connected to digital switches, and ISDN is widely available. The time to obtain a new line is in most countries no longer than a couple of days.
The big difference is that in the US local calls are flat-fee, which doesn't make it interesting for the telcos. They earn their money with long-distance and subscription. Over here, there is no such thing as a flat fee for local calls, which makes the pricing structure of GSM subscriptions very much like an ordinary phone connection.
In the States, people rather stick to their flat-fee landline than having to use a cellular, on which local calls aren't included in the subscription fee.
Over here in Europe, telephone is simply much more expensive than in the US of A, which is a bad thing (less beer), and a good thing (better beers ;-).
Please do not accept that wireless is exploding due to 'necessity' when you're talking about most of Europe, and countries as Japan. Here in Belgium we have the reputation of being the most densely cabled country of the world, and yet cellular phone adoption rate is over 50%.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]