Slashdot Mirror
Verizon High Speed Wireless
TheSync writes: "Wired News has an article about Verizon's surprise announcement of "Express Network," a wireless data service with a speed of 144 kbps. Handsets to support the service could be sold as early as next week, and Emblaze Systems is already testing wireless video on Verizon's Philadelphia network." I'm sure it will work just as well as Verizon's cell service does now.
maybe, they should stop calling themselves Wired.
"I'm sure it will work just as well as Verizon's cell service does now."
Why is it that companies insist on rolling out new "services" when they never got their old services working correctly. Cox.net is doing this now by telling us all that we are going to go really fast real soon, ignorring the fact that most people can barely get online and hold times for customer service are almost 2 hours.
The reason is pure greed. To make their existing products work they would have to spend money on infrastructure and upgrades. A new service is mostly marketting and great launch parties. New serices make a CEO look good to the stock holder while hiding the fact that their network is held together by Duct tape and sneaker nets. I say boycott this crap, I have told a cox rep at my work to his face that I did not feel good about installing a T3 from them because my home service was so bogged down, telling me their network sucks.
It's time we let corporations know that we want the old stuff to work correctly before we will buy their new crap. Send a message that poor service and flawed products are not the way to win us over.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
"I'm sure it will work just as well as Verizon's cell service does now."
I don't know where you live, but here in NYC Verizon is the best cell carrier out of the bunch. Only time I've ever had a busy signal was on Sept 11th, and I get a signal almost everywhere I go. Unlike ATT, Sprint and Nextel around here.
Verizon's introduction definitely will prop up the economy, I feel and with 3G Wireless in the roads for a long time, itis time we introduce some products and become guinea pigs of the new gadgets and use them and improve them. Its highly unrealistic to have high expectations of a very new technology when things will take tens of years to mature. Take the case of the old telephone. We have telephones for past 125 years and we still introduce new features to them. So the case of the point is there will be bugs and yes there will be flames, but we have to adopt and try out new stuffs fast. I think it will be well received ...
-Go FreeBSD!
This is definitely coming off of existing cell phone towers. Those are very far apart (less maintenance costs, etc.)
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
1X is the term that Verizon Wireless has been calling this service for the last few months (hmmm no g's????) February 1st is when it will be rolled out to the Washington Metro Area, with first sales being PCMCIA cards. This service is being promoted locally as having a 70kbps average connection. It should definitely help all the truely mobile users getting CDMA speeds of 14.4 to 19.2 kbps!!!
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. RUSH
Verizon cannot change a persons mailing address. They kept sending it to my old address which the post-office was forwarded all my mail to my present address. So I would usually get my bill a week before it was due, I would call them up pay be credit card, then have them change my address. Finally the post office stopped doing address forwarding, my service was 3 days within being cut off because I hadn't paid my bill. So I called up yet again, paid by credit card and had them change my address. I am waiting with not so much expectation for my next billing statement.
What VeriZontal Wireless is introducing is the so-called "1XRTT" form of CDMA2000, which is one of the flavors of "third generation" (3G) cellular telephony. While there has been a lot of noise about 3G around the world, and European carriers have shelled out tens of billions of licenses (dotcom-style investment) for new 3G spectrum (putting them deeply into debt), VeriZontal Wireless and Sprint PCS are instead taking the "just do it" approach.
There are two distinct technical flavors (air interfaces) to 3G, both based on CDMA. The GSM (most of world) and IS-136-TDMA (Cingular, ATT-W) carriers, with existing TDMA networks, are migrating to WCDMA. The CDMA carriers (Sprint, VZW, Korea) are migrating to CDMA2000. (Qualcomm favors CDMA2000, but makes patent royalties off of both. They really did invent it.) The CDMA2000 spec in turn has multiple variants. The "1XRTT" flavor is simply a software change to the way existing CDMAone carriers are allocated among calls. The peak speed is only 144 kbps (ten times what CDMA one gives you) but there's no forklift upgrade, and no new spectrum needed. Of course it needs new handsets to make use of the new features, but the base stations are backwards compatible. Very graceful, 3G on the cheap.
So VZW and Sprint are both rolling out 1XRTT this year. VZW announced faster, but they're both gated, in practice, by the availability of handsets and similar remote devices from the (mostly Korean) makers. The CDMA and GSM carriers are instead phasing in a "2 1/2G" technology, EDGE, as a sort of bridge to WCDMA. They'll need separate networks, or a forklift upgrade, to do 3G. Since WCDMA doesn't share spectrum with TDMA, they can't do the easy phase-in that CDMA gives you.
But don't think of 3G as a substitute for fast wireline. A 144 kbps call basically eats ten voice calls' worth of network bandwidth. So it will be expensive! Packetized data, by the byte, will be cheaper, but really aimed more at low-bandwidth things like email than high-bandwidth things like music or ordinary web browsing. (Look up EDGE pricing on the GSM networks to get an idea; it's in dollars/MB). This is a premium service for users who need it.
I live in Chicago and I used to live at the far end of the Verizon Digital network just south of Chicago. Verizon is by far one of the best carriers around. Last year in the city the coverage was kinda week but I had an old phoone. I now managed to loose the old phone and get a new that seems to work perfectly. I get the best reception of anyojne I know.
I think this program would be great. Currently this is no real way of providing "regular" interent access such as web browsing. This service would seem to provide decent dl rates for those who don't find 14.4 kbs acceptable.
I would also think that this would work rather well with the Kyocera/Palm phones Verizon offers here. I am not aware if these phones have interent access presently, I would assume not being they are b&w. I would think Phone/palm combinations in color would be a huge hit with there ability to be a palm phone and web browser. I would also think that anything over 100kb/s would also suit most people needs. That seems to be a decent web browsing speed as long as you don't feel the need to try and run a direct connect hub from your palm.
Whose idea was it to put Windows servers on the net in the first place, anyway?
I have to (ulp) defend Verizon just a bit. I'm in Boston, MA USA and I have to say that Verizon's network is far and away the best of the players in the area for cell coverage, esp. digital. While it's true their phones are usually 1-2 generations back, and they'e not as cheap as other providers, I kept their service for my work phone after comparing it to (as in using for a month) Voicestream (GSM), Sprint PCS, AT&T (miserable), Cingular and Nextel. I've never had a problem with their cell customer support, either. And no, I don't work for them.
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
I'm guessing michael's line was a dig at Verizon Wireless's service quality. Verizon Wireless is the best provider in the NY Metro area. Nobody else even comes close. Maybe it sucks where michael lives, but in New York and Long Island, it is excellent.
Well, 802.11x and "High-speed wireless" are different technologies with different goals. 802.11x targets users that aren't necessarily moving around that much, and is not that secure (image is of laptop at home, it's nice outside, so you wander out on the porch or backyard)
With "High-speed wireless" the idea is to use the existing cellular network and provide data access.
Oh, and the 144kbps? Don't count on it! They should say 144kbps aggregate bandwidth for the cell shared among all users on that cell. It's a typical marketing scam. Saw this at a trade show, and when I asked more detailed questions, the whole sales pitch fell apart.
I'm sure it will work just as well as Verizon's cell service does now.
Yeah, and when you combine that with the high reliability of their DSL offerings, how can the customer lose?
--saint
I've used their DSL, and it did suck, but it sucked intentionally.
First of all, they use PPP over ethernet. Conscious decision, but PPPoE sucks as far as client implementations.
Secondly, they would disconnect me whenever I received incomming HTTP (and certain other) connections. It took me a long time to figure out that that was what was causing the disconnections. Once I stopped accepting incomming connections, I had nearly flawless service.
I'd happily pay $20/month for this service, if it worked reliably and had no usage restrictions. Maybe even $30-40, if it worked really reliably (enough that I could throw out my cell phone and just use voice over IP to my home telephone).
Somehow I'm guessing there will be usage charges or $80+/month fees. I can already get unlimited 14.4 for $60/month through nextel's unlimited incoming call plan.
What I don't get is why this article keeps harping on phones. Who needs 144kbps to your phone? Streaming video? Who is going to watch video on their phone? You can't browser. E-mail is possible, but not all that interesting.
Show me a PCMCIA adapter for my laptop, and then I get interested. Even a pocket PC might semi-interesting (although browsing would still suck, I'd imagine).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Is the oxymoron "Verizon + Highspeed" or "Highspeed + Wireless" ?
I have Verizon (formerly AirTouch) wireless and its generally really good coverage, and digital messaging generally works wherever I am so long as there is digital coverage.
Does Verizon have a rep for bad coverage? I know they're running these really obnoxious TV spots with the geek in the wilderness.
I'm was an Airtouch customer, and Airtouch was spun off from US West and was the original 800 Mhz wireline carrier where I live, which may account for the quality of signal (loads of towers, existing infrastructure).
Are they bad in areas where they have expanded into and didn't have a good existing tower base or relied on roaming agreements?
Yeah, knock Verizon for everything but Wireless.
I couldn't believe it either. I've had Sprint and AT&T and I just kind of lived with the fact that cells suck. Three different people told me to go with Verizon Wireless because they were sick of my bitching.
I've never had problems since. I get service -everywhere- in NYC. Never seen it drop below 3 bars except in the obvious places (sub-basements, etc). It still doesn't sit right with me since Verizon sucks at absolutely everything else. This is something they do right.
How about two?
Merlin C201
AirCard 550/555
I work for Lucent and have been deploying this technology for companies such as Verizon and Sprint for the last few months. The technology Verizon is announcing is known as 3G-1XRTT. There is another 3G technology, 3G-1XEV-DO, which will be available soon. 3G-1XRTT supports speeds up to 144kbps. 3G-1XEV increases this to 2.4gig. The way that 1XRTT actually works is that each user gets one 9.6kbps channel when they connect. Then, when the user is transfering data, the cell site or the handset can request to "burst." The speed at which you burst depends on how much data you're transferring and how many resources are available on the cell. This burst speed can be any multiple of 9.6 up to 144kbps. Bursts only last for a few seconds (typically 5 or less). After that the cell/handset have to negotiate another burst. This is because as you might imagine, this can use a lot of resources on the cell/switch. For this reason, if you are not transfering any data for a few seconds, your call will go into a dormancy state. This means that all of the resources on the cell are released and your airlink is dropped. However, the call is still registered on the switch. So, when you go to transfer more data, the call comes back up and you don't have to be authenticated again or reregistered on the switch. It's a very cool system that can use a lot of resources but only when it really needs them.
I'm sure you're all wondering what kind of throughput you can really expect to see from this. In my tests I typically see rates of about 11-12KBps. You may not see speeds quite that good in an area where a lot of people are using wireless services but I'd expect most people to see speeds about that fast. It's not as fast as cable or DSL but it's at least twice the speed of a 56K dailup - pretty darn fast for a wireless phone.
I speak for myself and not for Lucent.
From what I have heard their wireless unit is the only non-unionized part of the company.