3G Delayed in Japan

solusthewizard writes " The BBC is reporting that DoCoMo of Japan are delaying the launch of 3G for "further testing". This puts it back to October. Meanwhile, the Isle of Man are up there racing with DoCoMo for the first network. With the Telecomms industry slashing staff and being in so much debt, will Europe or the US ever see this technology? " I think the answer is yes, that this technology will roll out worldwide - but with the amount of debt and other business factors many of the telecoms have, we're going to see a lot of shake-out, IMHO.

Comments

Like open source, non-techies benefit from it

[Paul Crowley]

It's like open source software: a non-technical user won't have a scooby[1] how to configure their phone to do weird things the same way they could hardly hack source, but that's OK, because in both cases it's likely a techie user will already have done it for them, and put it somewhere they can download. So you don't have to understand how to configure your phone to make use of the flexibility.

Although frankly, if ordinary users are prepared to learn how to text each other, they can't be as put off by the slightly inconvenient and tricky as we've always thought...

[1] It means "a clue" in Scotland at least.
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Re:IMHO?

[Brian Stretch]

You're forgetting about the government's monopoly on the USE OF FORCE, which in this context is used to extract $BILLIONS in spectrum fees and hike the hell out of airtime costs. Those extortions... er, "fees" also help suppress competition, since not many companies can pull off raising that much capital and still fund a network buildout.

We'd be in cheap, high-bandwidth nirvana in short order if Big Brother wasn't so damn greedy.

Re:Best US Chance for 3G: Sprint

[RayChuang]

In fact, Sprint and Qualcomm recently demonstrated an amazing 2.4 Mbps data transfer speed on a CDMA2000-compliant digital cellular link. This is faster than a T-1 land line.

Because Sprint's network is all-digital to start with, I won't be surprised at all that the first really useful 3G cellular system will be the Sprint system.

Re:Best US Chance for 3G: Sprint

[RayChuang]

Actually, what Sprint and Qualcomm are aiming for in its first release of 3G phones is a much more conservative 384 kilobits per second download speed on mobile operation. That is essentially triple that of ISDN and the same as the most common ADSL connections.

3G deployment

[wowbagger]

There are several problems with 3G deployment.

First, the base station manufacturers don't have the hardware ready to deploy. Among other reasons, they have no good way to test the equipment. 3G uses some very advanced modulation techniques, and you cannot just slap a power meter on the finals and tune for maximum.

Second, the handset manufacturers are not yet ready with the final version of the handsets. The software protocols are complex, and hard to test.

Lastly, once the first and second problems are licked, the celluar providers have to roll the systems out. A cell site costs several million [$£]s, and you need lots.

Of course, it doesn't help that the frequency band allocated to 3G in Europe is different than the frequency band allocated in the US than the frequency band allocated in Japan ....

Re:Best US Chance for 3G: Sprint

[Smitty825]

You mean you still have analog networks in the US

Yes, the US still has analog networks in the 800MHz band. Most semi-populated areas have full digital coverage (how they can call it "digital" but still use radio waves is beyond me :-) ). The PCS Band (~1900 MHz) is digital only, and all future pieces of spectrum that is released by the government will be digital only

As for the post above yours that talks about the 2.4Mb/sec data transfer speed, don't count on it. That is known as a 16x rateset, and it takes up so many resources, that the operators couldn't ever let anyone use that rate set. Also, even if you *could* get that transfer speed, it would only be that fast if you were standing still, when you start moving, your data speed drops considerably.

What's wrong with GPRS?

[TeknoHog]

Somehow it's hard to believe that everyone will be able to enjoy the 2Mbps or so promised by UMTS (ie 3G). Sounds realistic for a theoretical maximum, but the total bandwidth per cell is bound to be quite limited.

Personally, I'd be happy with a permanent 100Kbps connection of GPRS if it worked flawlessly. If there's something good about WAP it is that people learned to appreciate text based interfaces which were the only ones possible through GSM's measly 9600bps. After all the website bloat (which most people still surf at 56k) they realized it's actually possible to exchance textual information without all that graphics.

I just cannot see why all this hype about 3G. How about getting a decent mobile IP (ie GPRS) working first. Of course that system isn't directly expandable to megabit speeds, but it would give people a taste of mobile IP to see if they want more. Sure it's a cool idea to have wireless video phonecalls, but is it worth paying for? Videophone technology for land networks has been around for ages but hasn't quite caught people's interest.

Finally, these 'third generation' buzzword mobile networks do not quite fit in my idea of a true wireless Internet, in the sense of freedom an anarchy. For that we'll need WLANs.

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IMHO?

[grammar nazi]

Even though Hemos said 'IMHO', I wouldn't agree that it was honest. He happens to have a large amount of capital invested in British Telecom.

Anywhere that you can have mass government deregulation, it's a good idea to invest in the telecom company because you know that they will start raping^H^H^H reaping the profits by being a mass monopoly.

BaKaMung!!!

[AFCArchvile]

I can't believe they're even going through with this. The Internet is at risk of bogging down significantly just because thousands of Japanese cell phone owners want to browse sites, check e-mail, and play insipid, Tamagotchi-esque games online. Whatever happened to things like productivity and efficiency? They were thrown right out the window in favor of eye candy and fun diversions. NexTel was good in their implementation of the two-way feature, but all of this "wireless Internet" crap just takes the cake.

(Oh, and if you're wondering about the subject of this post, it's how you say "Idiot!" in Japanese. I think.)

The will get burned

[Vintermann]

Those who have invested billions in UMTS licences will get badly burned, mark my words. It's simply a question of the value of the bandwith they provide.

I have no idea what the prices will look like, but I know (as know all of you I presume) that you will pay for bytes transferred. Now consider: streamed video: who needs it? Stationary picture phones never caught on, why should mobile ones do? especially considering that for the money to send a 30 minute movie you could probably send text for the rest of your life.

When it comes to phones though, I'll make a prediction. You observe Nokia is the market leader today, attributed to marketing of the brand name. That is so misleading! Nokia is the market leader because they are a wee bit more configurable than their competitors. You can install a little stuff on them.
My prediction is that the phone that gives the most control to the user will win. It isn't just nerds that want versatility, Nokia proved that. Tomorrows successful phones should basically have the versatility of a PDA: install whatever you like on it. The more the actors try to push their own services, standards or stuff, the less likely they are to succeed.