Slashdot Mirror
3G Cel Service Starts in Japan
Graymalkn writes "According to this story on the BBC, DoCoMo has finally launched the world's first 3G cellular service in Japan. Phones start at $560 and can go as high as $800 for one which can double as a video camera." Eventually they'll be able to watch movies on the new phones, but for now service for the phones is limited to a 20 mile radius around the center of Tokyo. I haven't found an exact number of bandwidth, but I believe it's like 384k downlink. To your phone. Once again, my jealousy runs rampant.
and the thing overheats in 15 min. Sounds pretty experimental to me...
sulli
RTFJ.
NTT DoCoMo is also cautious, expecting only one in every 10 subscribers to have a 3G phone in three years' time.
Wow, that statement really illustrates how Japanese think in the long term.
I hope, for their sake, that they can run legacy networks over the new backbone.
In Europe, providers say they will have to quintuple (x5) the density of antennas to support 3G... local community planners are very unhappy!
By the way, the phone's price will be less - networks subsidise the handset manufacturer's prices, based on the idea that you will spend craploads of cash when you actually use the phone.
No need to be jealous...
Take a piece of large paper. Cut a hole in it 1.5" by 2.25". Cover your monitor with this piece of paper. Now start using your computer like this and you will experience things just as if you had this service on a cell phone in your neck 'o the woods.
A while back I read somewhere (Slashdot I think) that the military was not releasing the frequencies that were originally allocated for 3G phones... Does this mean the Japanese will have 3G all to themselves while we suffer from 2.5G for the next 10 years??? Anyone out there know??? Is GPRS still gonna happen??
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
From http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wir e/1530436l.htm
The standard model costs about 48,000 yen ($400) while the fancier video model costs about 68,000 yen ($570). The data model can be had for about 28,000 yen ($235).
+++ath0
Why on god's earth do I want to watch a movie on my cellphone? Convergence, as with all things, is best in moderation. The irony of this is that we'll have people watching movies on cellphones and talking on cellphones in movies. Then after the movie is over they'll get in their car and watch TV and talk on their phone WHILE they are driving.
Theory: it was recently demonstrated that multi-tasking causes the human brain to be less efficicent. An increasing tendancy to do more than one thing at a time will lead to an overall reduction in the productivity of humanity. Because the time we spend will be less productive we will have to spend more time partially working in order for us to achieve the same output. This will lead to more multi-tasking. Wash, Rinse, Repeat...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Meanwhile much of the rest of the world struggles to get clean water and electricity. Just a reminder that you need to keep your geek-goodies envy in perspective.
--hongpong.com
Well now, good for the Japanese, another wicked cool new wireless implementation for a country that is already lightyears ahead of the rest of the world. I wonder how long before the Europeans get 3G, though - I heard it's been a bit of a boondoggle over there.
But what I really want to know why the US is so far behind when it comes to the wireless world. While I don't labor under any sort of naive notion that the US has to be first in *everything* worldwide, this has perplexed me for some time. I don't think it's the technology, is it? Here are some ideas of mine, but I don't know how well grounded they are:
1.) Settlement in the US is much less dense than Japan or Europe, so there are greater infrastructual expenses involved with new wireless standards
2.) The NIMBY crowd in the US is more vocal than elsewhere and holds up new infrastructure installations
3.) Standards are more tightly controlled in Europe/Japan, meaning instead of three cellphone antennas for three different carriers on top of apartment buildings, perhaps there is one shared by all?
4.) For cultural reasons Americans are not as interested in games, instant messages, internet, and video as Europeans & the Japanese
-Adam in Philly
(who still uses a single band PCS phone made in, like, 1997 or something)
(and if we've got 'em, American's must have had them for ages!)
Actually, america currently lags behind europe in mobile technology - partly because the americans had a bout of NIH syndrome the first time round (remember the GSM-works-everywhere-but-the-US fiasco), and partly because they have a rather lower population density.
European firms could have jumped straight to 3G, but all firms concerned got together and decided that it would be more profitable to force consumers through an extra upgrade cycle, so switched their attention to 2.5G, which is the Windows ME of the phone world.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Here's my prediction ("All the authority and accuracy of Gartner (i.e. None) without the cost" (TM)):
/. as of late. The infrastructure cost for some 801.xx network is *much* less than 3G service. Its a fairly open protocol, so you won't get locked into Sprint / AT&T / WorldCom / et al's service.
3G is going to be dead in the water, at least for the next few years (5-10) here in the states. Why?
Because what it delivers can be done for MUCH less money. High speed wireless *is* a very cool thing, and very desirable. The problem is the cellular phone isn't the application for it. In reality, who wants to watch a movie on a small screen if you have to pay for it? Who wants to pipe music down the phone if you have to pay for it? These services are not going to be cheap (someone's got to pay for all of those licenses). What reason does a cellular *need* 300+kbps?
The only reason you would want that speed to your phone is if you have it hooked up to a PDA or a laptop. That's the only "killer app" I see for high speed internet. And if that's the case, there are better and cheaper ways of doing it. Think the "Freenets" that have been talked about on
I see cellular service sticking with 2.5 G here in the states. That allows you to do all the things that are a cellphone actually does well (voice, some limited data: e-mail, texting, *simple* WAP). For high speed data that you'd need for your laptop/PDA, look for the commercialization of 801.xx (or something similar).
So says the Bastard
If you add GPS (as in the E911 service in the other article today), you not only location-based advertising, but location-based information.
"you're currently at bus stop #445... there will be a bus there in 2.3 minutes, time enough for you to get a coffee at Starbucks, 27m around the corner. There is a lineup of 2 people currently, and average serving time is 43 seconds."
It's not THAT far fetched... and although advertising pays for many of these services, it's not necessarily a bad thing in all cases (if handled right, and opt-in).
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
In Finland the maximum bandwidth of GPRS networks will be something like 20 - 30 kilobits per second during the next few years. This is due to the lack of advanced coding schemas (the starndards are here for up to 155kbps but no-one has implementations) and not allocating all 8 timeslots of the communication channel for GPRS (this will, however, not be the case in other countries shere GSM is not used as much as here).
However, if they really have the WCDMA working it's something very cool. And bloody expensive.
Source: GPRS for Application developers course at Ericsson last summer.
-Panu