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3G Phone Trial Started in Japan
Reefa writes: "The first 3G phone trial has started in Japan. Of the 147000 that applied, 3300 lucky users have been given 3G phones (they have to pay for data access) to test out so that bugs can be fixed before a general release. Example of bugs could be screens freezing up, to which a re-boot (switch off/on) of the phone is the only solution. Kinda reminds me of Windows. Anyway, I am sure that it would be fun to actually test drive one of these FOMA phones. What I would really like to see is real figures of data rates on these phone during peak usage hours." There's also a Reuters story.
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If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
This is the most clueless comment I've ever seen about the Japanese mobile phone system, and trust me, after 4 years in the business I've seen plenty. Where to start?
The whole reason DoCoMo is pushing 3G so hard is that they're running out of capacity on their current PDC network -- projections say PDC will hit a brick wall by 2005, possibly earlier. The fact that 3G has bigger bandwidth and can support video transmission yadda yadda is all nice and dandy, but what DoCoMo really wants is to be able to push penetration to the point where landlines are obsolete (they're almost there) and, even more importantly, increase the use of wireless phones for machine-to-machine data transmissions, which are almost all handled by landline at the moment. There is not enough capacity for this yet, but 3G should make this possible.
Second, the i-mode wireless Internet system does not require dedicated circuits, it's a packet network. The current heavy congestion on Japanese PDC networks is caused by plain old voice calls, which are still circuit-switched.
Third, as for the price and availability of bandwidth, Japanese companies didn't have to fork out a single yen for their licenses. Bandwidth would be expensive in the US if there was any to spare, but all the desirable frequencies (eg. those used by GSM in the rest of the world) are in use by the US military!
And oh -- with 125 million people and penetration rates above 50%, you're looking at over 60 million mobiles in use right now, and quite possibly well over 100 million if Tachikawa's visions come true.
Ijoo desu.
Cheers,
-j. (straight from rainy Tokyo)
If I read the article correctly it sounded like these would be video phones. That would be pretty cool. However, if someone didn't know it was a video phone and they put it up to their ear, it could give the person on the other end a very unpleasant picture. Sorry, but looking at the inside of someones ear up close just doesn't sound very exciting to me.
But other than that, it sounds like pretty cool technology. So when do we get it in the US?
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
This isn't just vapourware!
My Nokia 9110i (wap + world's shoddiest net browser) is already capable of 'freezing up' with pulling the battery out and putting it back in being the only way of reviving it.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Here's the Ricochet web site.
Currently getting 260kbps - fast enough for streaming video. Outside, in a county park. And I don't have to rely on someone's 802.11 base station or pay per-minute charges to MegaCellCo.
I'm using a flat-rate mobile TCP/IP based wireless system at speeds of up to 350kbps, and at nominal speeds of 128kbps.
It's called Ricochet, and if you're one of the 50 million people that the Ricochet networks covers, you could nhave speeds that surpass what 3G promises today. The cool part is that it's mobile, so I can use it on the train or put my Novatel Merlin PCMCIA card in my iPaq and take it to the baseball game.
3G=Big deal. Untold billions spent already for spectrum and NO infrastructure yet.
I'd rather pay $75.00 a month for high-speed mobile access in 15 U.S. cities, with no per-character or per-minute charges. I get my high-speed access of 128kbps with speed bumps coming and 3G proponents get to twiddle their thumbs!
1. This is where your "power as user" kicks in. Turn the phone off if you don't want imcoming calls. You miss out on half the point of owning a wireless phone, but that's your choice. As for annoying people with rings, many modern phones these days support vibration alerts. Also, a nice option is to have a "ring once". Most people don't mind the initial ring, it's the subsequent rings (as some lady digs in her purse to locate the ringing phone) that really drive us insane. And please, no "song" rings people :P
2. Well, it's your bandwidth. The same would apply to any line. There could be too many cheap tricks you could do if incoming calls were free.
3. This is harder than it sounds, as most phones these days are encrypted and frequency hopping. How would you be able to tell who is who? Identification should be after key-exchange. If it isn't, well.. it should be!
4. Yes, but integration is good too. Witness the the Nokia 9xxx series. See http://www.nokia.com/phones/9210/ *drool*. This is much easier than aiming an IR port to your PDA or carrying extra cables. All-in-one has its drawbacks, but remember you are limited on pocketspace too.
5. Ick, so you are going to borrow from someone else? I'll agree that payphones can be convenient, but the independence of "rolling your own" can be better. Usage anywhere, for one. I've connected to the 'net with my Laptop+Cellphone at friends' houses before, simply because I didn't want to tie up their line. Think about it this way: would you rather use a library computer, or your own if you had it with you?
6. People are dumb. They also get in car crashes, and let their phone ring at movie theatres. The many idiotic users are what give this awesome technology a bad name.
7. Funny
I think you're missing out, my friend. "Wireless technology is somewhat magical. With the naked eye, it appears that data is traveling from one point to another invisibly. This teleportation trick would have you burned at the stake in the 1400's, but in the present it is a huge part of modern life. Cell phones, cordless peripherals, radios, TV, GPS, etc."* Warping data from point A to point B is fun! Don't live in a cave.
-Justin
* taken from my web page: http://www.affinix.com/~justin/stuff/#wireless
an exciting and inovative new way to talk to people's voice mail and answering services. Yeehaw.
Example of bugs could be screens freezing up, to which a re-boot (switch off/on) of the phone is the only solution. Kinda reminds me of Windows.
I know that was meant tongue in cheek, but the statement is nearer to reality than one might think. We've become used to embedded devices just working, but as they become more complex, they become more like a general purpose computer. So yes, your phone crashing with similar regularity to your desktop PC is something that will become much less remarkable.
Embedded software developers have sometimes been a bit cocky towards their non-embedded bretheren ("well, we just code better see?"), but the truth is that embedded development hasn't typically been anywhere near as complex as s/w development for desktops (due to very limited processing power, memory requirements, etc. (If you don't believe me, think about how simple it would be to write the UI for any of the current generation of cell phones). All that's changing though, so learn to love those mono LCD screens o' death.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.