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.

Re:Backwards?

[iamblades]

I really don't see what is so special about other countries having more cell phones per capita than the US. I (along with many other), consider them annoying most of the time. Besides, in many of the countries you are talking about, a cell phone is cheaper than a land line, which isn't the case in the US yet. Some of the stuff you mentions is cool, but not everyone needs a cell phone. I barely use phones at all anymore, as a matter of fact.

I don't have any clue what causes people to think that these new technoliges are necessities. As of now they are nothing more than neat technologies right now. I don't see 3G being viable for sometime, so I really see no reason for us to be the first. Japan is almost always first with wireless technologies, because it is so popular there. I doubt very seriously many people in the US aside from some geeks would trade in their PCS phone for a more expensive 3G phone anytime soon, nor do I think they should. I don't think 3G will be popular here until we get real wireless webpads and PDAs. By then, im sure the FCC will figure out what they want to do about it...

Re:Backwards?

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

When there's some major disaster that knocks out regular communications channels, those "old sweaty fat bearded men", as you put it, are often the only link left.

It's also worth noting that in ploitical crises, such as coups and other instability, ham operators are often the only way you're going to get information out of and into the troubled area. In almost all cases, when someone is attempting to seize power in a country, the first thing they do is take control of the telephone system and broadcast outlets. Without alternative means of communications, entire populations could be cut off from the outside world, and vice versa.

It's true that the number of operators is declining, but if you're using that fact to assert that the service is useless, I think you're mistaken. And no, the Internet is not a suitable replacement, nor are wireless phones. An Internet connection can be knocked out for any number of reasons, both accidental and deliberate, and a wireless network can go down if the cell sites are knocked out, but unless you can find a ham operator and seize his equipment, he can most likely get on the air.

Re:Backwards?

[tswinzig]

3G means more control of wireless by the telecom Oligopolies. Not a good thing.

Not a good thing, unless you're interested in being able to work from anywhere in the world with a laptop and a highspeed, wireless connection to the internet.

Re:Backwards?

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

I missed the callsign in his sig.

But thank you so very much for being so polite when pointing out my error. I mean, not all of us are as perfect as you are, but we somehow manage to muddle through.

Re:Backwards?

[Registered Coward v2]

We don't - in the US I can go into Canada and call from my cell phone quite nicely - as well as from anywhere in the US (except for the odd location without any signal), all for one low rate. My coverage is about the same in terms of area as Europe - and I don't have to worry about roaming fees.

Personally, I doubt there is that big of a market for universal, global cell phone service. You can, after all, mimic that today with 2 phones - and if you want one number, ATT offers their Worldphone plan. If universla servcie was that important, Nokia/Samsung/Ericson et. al. would offer a multi-mode phone, similar to the tri-bands in the US today.

Cell phone use in the US took off as companies offered more airtime for the same price, and removed roaming fees. As was pointed out, in Europe, POTS is sometimes as expensive (especially with per minute charges)and/or hard to get as new service. Unless a carrier offers universal service as a no cost add-on (i.e. I only pay for minutes when I use them, not a fee to be able to call from anywhere wether I do or not), I'd guess most peopel would opt not to have the option - which means tehre si little incentive to build a network in the US design to allow universal access.

Re:Backwards?

[dachshund]

Besides, in many of the countries you are talking about, a cell phone is cheaper than a land line, which isn't the case in the US yet

This is absolutely true. Having travelled in northern Africa, where a huge number of people have mobile phones simply because there's no decent alternative, it's hard to blame our lower adoption rates on our technology.

I also feel that 3G is an expensive boondoggle; an attempt to race into a solution with technology and applications that aren't ready for it. It's a little bit like the Japanese adoption of the (now obsolete) analog HDTV standard. Yes, they got there first, and yes it was a big waste of money.

I believe that most 3G applications will be better served by smaller 802.11 type digital networks. There's a lot of work to be done before these networks will be practical for wide-scale deployment (particularly in the areas of routing and real-time communications). But having seen the estimated costs for deploying ("traditional") 3G networks in the US (in urban areas only, forget about the country), I can't help thinking that this is another area where a bit of American creativity could (will?) give us an end-run around the rest of the world's early start (woo-hoo, Stars and Stripes forever.) That's not necessarily a great thing-- we need a little bit more organization in this country. But we usually muddle through anyhow.

Re:Backwards?

[Ben Hutchings]

Canada has the same cell-phone frequency assignments as the US, if I'm not mistaken, but for GSM these are unlike the rest of the world.

There are a few GSM phones that work on the PCS band as well as the two normal GSM bands, the most popular ones coming from Motorola's Timeport range (L7089, P7389, T250, T260, T270). There are a larger number that work on the PCS band and the 900 MHz GSM band, including the VisorPhone.

Cingular certainly doesn't make an extra subscription charge for its GSM customers to roam overseas. However, call charges during international roaming can be very steep. Perhaps non-GSM operators make a charge because they have to make special provisions to enable such roaming whereas it's designed into GSM and can be set up on-demand.

Monthly subscriptions in the US are still comparatively expensive - you can get huge numbers of minutes for about $50 a month, but if you only want say 200 minutes then you're still stuck paying around $30 a month. (These are rough figures from memory.) Pre-paid service is fairly expensive too.

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).

standards - law vs competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that the biggest problem in the US is a lack of standards, and the fact that government doesn't mandate standards, leaving companies free to do whatever they want. Many /.ers probably dont realise that one of the reasons Europe has a kick ass cellular network is that GSM is a EU mandatated standard, which has made companies work together to ensure that cell phones work everywhere. The US seems to prefer the effects of 'monopolising standards', where nothing is compatable until one standard wins out and then becomes a monopoly because of its proprietory nature.

DMCA is a backward U.S. spectrum allocation law

[yerricde]

Searching Google for 2006 hdtv analog shows that the United States Federal Communications Commission will pull all licenses for analog television broadcast spectrum on January 1, 2006. The new system includes copy protection methods that may let networks specify that "you may not record any part of this program, not even brief fair use excerpts," "you may not watch this program on brand X of television," "your television will not be allowed to change channels for X seconds after the beginning of the commercial break", "you may not watch this program on televisions larger than X cm diagonal, as large TVs are assumed to be used in public performance settings," etc. It's up to you to decide whether this policy represents backward or forward thinking. If you don't like it, ask your congresscritters to repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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

Re:US falling behind

[Reality Master 101]

Is it just me, or is the US now falling behind in all fields, from bio-tech through freedom of expression to telecoms.

It's you. Read the paper for the last, oh, 50 years. Every few years (if not every few months), we have sky-is-falling stories that US is falling behind in this, messing up that, blah blah. And somehow, a few years later, we end up leading the industry.

It's called free market capitalism. Of course, whenever the US falls behind in a particular market, fools start crowing that "this proves that capitalism doesn't work! The government needs to step in and take control!". Of course, capitalist markets are self-correcting markets, and things fix themselves automatically. It's a beautiful thing.

Take biotech -- all Bush's decision means is that biotech companies can't go to the public trough. This is a good thing. It means that we will get much more private investment, which means the advances will come MUCH more rapidly. If the government is handing out money, then research has no incentive to make fast progress, only make enough progress to keep the government checks coming.

There is a reason that almost all medical and drug advances come from private medical and drug companies.

Wow...

[kypper]

DoCoMo has announced that they will launch the world's first 3G network on October 1st

Only 3 G's? That's incredible! Most of us have to pay many many g's to buy a network

My thoughts

[FallLine]

First off, what does it matter if Japan or Europe beat us to the punch? Does this mean that their industry is necessarily ahead of ours? No. The gap here is not a technological one, it's one of implimentation and cost. Europe and Japan also have many economic factors in their favor, owing to their population density and population centers, often poor land lines, etc. How does this speak better of foreign nations?

Second, 3G shows many signs of being a failure overseas, already. By this I mean the European and Japanese 3G companies may well spend multiples more rolling out the technology (they've spent billions on the licenses alone) than they ever collect in revenues. What this says, in plain english, is that their own consumers did not feel the technology/implimentation is good enough to justify the cost. Why should we be jealous of this? If the costs exceed the benefits, it is hardly an accusation of US capitalism. No government is going to change this fact--all they might do is spread the costs out, by putting an increased tax burden on those that do NOT need it.

Third, even if 3G is a worthwhile technology, it's not necessarily worthwhile today. In other words, both US consumers and companies may be better served by waiting until better handsets come out. It would be premature and costly to introduce the technology 5 years before it is really worthwhile to consumers.

Fourth, from a more personal point of view, do YOU really need/want 3G today if it costs you 3x as much as normal cell phone service? Sure, high bandwidth on the road sounds great, but what can you REALLY do with it today? Between having crappy screens, lousy keyboards, no mouse, poor sound.... Just name an application that really makes it worthwhile for YOU? I mean streaming video sounds great, but other than the coolness/novelty factor, are you really going to want to bother with it? I don't think so.

Fifth, remember money NOT spent on 3G, is money spent somewhere else. It doesn't just go into a blackhole. This money may well be better spent on improving existing services, rolling out other technology, or what have you.

Lastly, capitalism is adaptive is nothing else. If Japan and Europe really experience a huge boon with 3G services, you can be sure that US industry will be beating down the doors to make it happen. At which point, new and improved 3G may well be attainable to US consumers, while not available in foreign nations.

Ahh, yes...

[tommut]

"...a spin on the story from The Register can be read at the Register."

Yes, but only if you go to The Register, which you'll find at The Register.

3G available now! (according to marketing)

[Invisible Agent]

Sprint PCS will be the first wireless carrier to offer the first phase of 3G services and applications to its customers later this year. Sprint PCS will begin nationwide deployment of its first phase, known as 3G1x in late 2001, with full-scale availability by mid-2002.

Sprint rolling out 3G by the end of the year? Boy, did you bite on that one. Note above (from the "3G FAQ" you posted) how they're rolling out "3G1x". This is really CDMA 1XRTT, which is usually referred to as 2.5G. But the real reason that Sprint (like other carriers) is doing a 1XRTT rollout isn't to turn on any particular data services, but to squeeze in more voice calls for their bandwidth by packetizing them. Net gain for the consumer: nothing.

The strange thing about the 3G hype is, in my opinion, the fact that everyone talks about the coming high-bandwidth future, but nobody's talking about the great new services it will enable. Videoconferencing on my cell phone - who cares? Internet access - I have WAP already, and a faster connection will just make it suck faster.

The reason that DOCOMO wins where WAP/WML fails isn't any futuristic technology, it's that DOCOMO content appeals to its customer base and is simple to create.

Re:US falling behind

[stu72]

> --
> Proud omnivore. Why are so many people ashamed
> and/or guilty of their place in the food chain?
> Ignorance?

Perhaps, but for many people the disconnect between the natural food chain and modern industrial farming is too vast to be reconciled.
I am (mostly) a vegetarian, yet I will freely acknowledge to being an omnivore. But being an omnivore does not mean my place in a the food chain is too eat, 3 times a day, pork rinds and chili dogs made from animals who have never known their natural place in the world or the food chain.

If you believe in the food chain, then you know that cows eating ground up cows, and countless other ontold atrocities, have no place on it, and you'd know better than to eat the results.

Re:Backwards? (US cell service)

[Ben Hutchings]

1. Each country wants to protect its incumbent carriers, which it does through tax and regulatory schemes designed to keep competitors out

This is absolutely not true. This would be illegal under EU law. Besides which, there are many multinational carriers like Vodafone (who I think own Verizon now), Deutsch Telekom, and KPN/Orange. The EU's competitition office (I forget quite what it's called) recently raided several carriers in the UK and Germany to gather evidence about anti-competitive behaviour in the setting of roaming call charges.

2. Europeans are used to POTS per minute (or click) charges and companies see that as more profitable or are simply too short sighted to try something bold

In the UK at least, few calling plans have different rates for local and national calls, and generally they include some number of minutes of these. I have yet to hear of flat-rate pricing of international calls anywhere.

3. Europeans are not as mobile as Americans, i.e. a five hour car trip is no big deal here, but to many of my European friends that is a major road trip. I realize I'm generalizing (and not trying to start a flame war, as I have lived and traveled regularly in Europe, although in my defense my swiss friends thought me nuts when I would drive from Zurich to Genf just to have a cup of coffee and walk around the lake, and I confirmed that suspicion when I drove to Berlin for a 4 day weekend.), but my conclusion is that they are willing to put up with the occasional long distance charge since they don't regularly roam outside of their home area.

I guess I'm not a proper European citizen; I require a boat, plane, or tunnel to get to the mainland. However, I know plenty of British people who think nothing of driving over to France for a day or so (usually to buy cheaper liquor), and they'll certainly take their phones with them then and when they go on a longer European holiday. Roaming is definitely common. Some people avoid the call charges by using text messages instead while roaming (which are also over-priced, but no so much).

The marginal cost of providing 500 minutes vs 200 is negligible, so rather than compete on price, companies compete on the number of minutes they provide for a fixed fee.

But how come I can get 200 (off-peak) minutes a month for around £12 ($17) here when I'd be lucky to get anything for that price in the US?

As for pre-paid services, that is a very different model, because of the ease with which consumers can switch carriers (I can get a phone for around $10 - $20 after rebates, with a bargain rate of .75 cents/minute for calls, which means the phone cost is not the major cost to use the service)

That's a bad model. Here the carriers have realised that it's lunacy to subsidise pre-paid phones. Even in the US, Cingular certainly wasn't doing this when I used their service. While working in the US I got a pre-paid SIM (not a new phone) from them which cost me $50 including only $10 of calls! Then they charged me up to 50 cents a minute to make and receive calls.

In short, they gouge you because they know you're not likely to be a long term customer.

It doesn't happen this way in the UK. I think the US cellular companies have a bad attitude towards their customers.