First Large Scale 3G Network

Pete (big-pete) writes: "DoCoMo has announced that they will launch the world's first 3G network on October 1st -- you can read their story from NTT and a spin on the story from The Register can be read at the Register." And of course, The U.S.' backward laws concerning allocation of frequency mean that this will be a /long/ time in coming.

Comments

Backwards?

[drwho]

Backwards laws? such as? Do you mean that the US isn't forcing hams, small businesses, etc. off the bands fast enough for you? 3G wireless promises to be expensive and complex, in addition to needing a lot of bandwidth. Only a handful of companies will have the financial ability to implement it, meaning they will control it. Right now, there are many varied users of that spectrum. 3G means more control of wireless by the telecom Oligopolies. Not a good thing.

Hope it does better then Europe...

[Zergwyn]

I know that in Europe, ridiculous quantities of money(billions of dollars) were spent on just obtaining 3G licenses, never mind the costs of setting up the infrastructure. Now that demand hasn't been huge, companies are scrambling to make enough to break even on those payments. Odds are even worse in the US, because we have so much more area to cover, make network construction far more expensive. The US also has far cheaper phone and broadband access(prices are so high in Europe).

I do hope this goes well in Japan, because it will help serve as a proving ground for other places. Ironically, at least in the short term, the service most likely to be popular are so-called 2.5G networks, cheap upgrades to older systems that still supply far more bandwidth(though not as much as 3G).

3G trial in Japan

[Bodero]

There is more and more feedback from users of DoCoMo's 3G trial here in Japan. The problems appear to be numerous and major. Mostly, 3G handsets and handset software are reported bug ridden and failing or bad in design.

Visibility of screens, battery life, and user interface features are often coming up as major issues.

However, there is also feedback about the services. In particular video calls and data service. Some users, who have never before experienced more than 9.6K or 14.4K data speed on a mobile phone are generally pleased with the up to 64K transfer speed of 3G (at present that's the maximum), while users who have been using other 2.5G based services with 64K are less impressed and users who have been using data on PHS (up to 128K) are often disappointed by 3G.

On the video call side, there appears to be consensus that video telephony is initially nice to play with but once its novelty factor has worn off it becomes a useless service nobody would want to use, especially as video calls are almost twice the cost of voice-only calls, which makes sense because they use more resources.

One detailed account can be found at http://renfield.net/foma_impressions.html

Particularly interesting are ...

"The big draw of Organic EL is its low power consumption, but the N2001V still ran out of battery power within a day." [about NEC's Organic EL screen]

"Also NEC has a serious problem making the screens in mass quantities. Sources tell me they can make about 4 a day."

"Same issue with voice connections. About half of the call attempts (to other cell phones, other FOMA phones, and to land lines) don't connect for whatever reason. Once connected, voice quality varies from great to terrible."

"Calling between two FOMA handsets the voice quality is much better than between two 50x handsets -- the underwatery echo is greatly reduced and sounds generally crisper, though it's still not as good as a standard GSM call between to cell phones in Europe."

"It's bulky and heavy like phones were 5 years ago" [about Panasonic's multimedia 3G phone]

"But watching a Planet of The Apes trailer on my cell phone was pretty damn cool. Battery died after watching about 5 minutes of video, though."

"Managing to successfully make video calls about 5 out of 100 attempts."

"The real problem with mobile video phoning is: once you wave at the other person and show then the room you're in, there's not much advantage over holding the up to your head and talking. The Cool Wow factor wears off pretty quickly, and at 1.8 times the price of a regular cell phone call, who's going to pay for this service?"

"...human voice ring tones like "wake up!" in Osaka dialect. Very cool."

Again, it looks to me that the whole 3G thing is not only overhyped, it's hyper-overhyped. Of course this is a trial and a trial has the purpose to iron out the problems, but remember, they originally intended to launch in May 2001.

Then, again, DoCoMo's network is a very simple undertaking compared to what 3G networks in Europe intend to roll-out. As there is no GSM in Japan, DoCoMo's network is and will be a single-mode network. In Europe it is intended to have multi-mode networks for transition and to serve early 3G users on 2G networks when out of 3G coverage.

At the same time WLAN is being deployed all over the place and it's cheap. When I use my iBook (with Airport Wireless LAN interface) in Tokyo outdoors, many times I see one or two networks showing up. Sure, they are not public, but it shows how rapidly WLAN is being rolled out.

By the time 3G will be available to the ordinary man on the street with reasonable coverage and stability, there may well be an alternative already up and running: the much cheaper and much faster WLAN.

And here in Japan, there is no reason to go 3G any time soon anyway, because PHS is cheaper, faster, stable, available, with good coverage. Spectrum efficiency of Japan's PHS network is about 10 times that of European GSM networks (due to pico-cell infrastructure and dynamic channel allocation accross operators, so capacity should not be a problem.

Will 3G become the Betamax of cellular phone technology ?
Will 3G become the Iridium of the land based cellular industry ?
Will 3G become the Mega Ponzi scheme of the 21st century ?

Looks more and more like it.

rgds
benjk