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2.4 Megabit Cellular Modem
lew writes: "Ars has a review of a cellular modem that provides 2.4 megabits / second downsteam and 153 kilobits / second upsteam... and it works! Check it out" How much for unmetered service on such a system? :)
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Ummetered? The best your ever gonna find is cellphone minute charges. But they might give you special web minutes at a slightly cheaper rate if you use it often enough. Or get free nights and weekends, to play your cellphone evercrack.
Why do all the new broadband technologies limit the upload to a very slow speed? 2.4Mbps is nice and all, but for it to be useful beyond surfing the web 153Kbps doesn't leave for much of anything else.
I can use my Voicestream unlimited weekend minutes to trade Jamie Curtis movies and pictures, now...
Get off my launchpad!
now I can watch por^H^H^H WMV's on my cell phone?
"How much for unmetered service on such a system? :) "
...oh and my leg too...
I will bid an arm
Cruise TT
What that article doesn't mention, and what people usually don't know when discussing 3G mobile is that the data rates quoted are PER CELL not PER USER (unless only one user per cell is active at a given moment).
This is the big lie of 3G mobile. In cities, it will never support the data rates they keep talking about because of the duty cycle: the number of users per cell at any one moment.
Now I can stream uber-quality DivX-encoded movies to my phone and view them on a sexy mushroom-colored screen the size of my big toe ;-)
I Got Paid To Place This Text Ad, And You Can Too!
Sure, it works great when it's just a prototype and you're more or less the only one on. What happens to performance once you get everyone using it in a densely populated area? In big cities during peak times, the existing digital cell phone network drops enough calls as it is for me.
So now I can download Morpheus movies on my Nokia?
Does that mean my sms will arrive faster?
You do not exist. Go away.
Other than to stream pr0n on your phone?
tiny upstream bandwidth, no thanx. give me moochable 802.11 any day.
sulli
RTFJ.
pr0n on the bus!
How long before there are enough Quake and Home Porn/Warez servers filling the airwaves with frags and grainy shots of Britney Spears to make it as slow as a 56k connection on a bad phone line.
Eww, just think, I could have a pirated copy of Windows XP wisping its way through my body in the form of radio waves. That alone might add credence to the celluar gives cancer argument.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
...You just watch.
I know how these phone companies are. They'll either use CDPD billing or some other way to charge you.
They'll either charge you by the minute or by the byte. Either way you'll get reamed.
The pathetic upstream bandwidth implies to me that the only use this is going to see is faster downloads to your phone of targeted ads.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
Picture this: you're sitting on the beach sipping something cold and sweet while browsing your favorite website, listening to some streaming audio, and communicating with a friend or co-worker. You have untethered bandwidth at your fingertips. Pipe dream? No, it's 3G.
I suppose this is an unpopular opinion, but isn't the purpose of 'getting away' actually to avoiding talking to a co-worker? I mean I would love the bandwidth they talk about at home but it's just not here yet.
The last thing I want on the beach is some dweeb cellphone going off 'cos his download of the latest Britney video is done. Just enjoy your vacations and leave the office crap at home.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
...so much for downloading distros to your uber-leet cellphone.
It'll be 4 or 5 years before this gets established enough to bring the price levels down to anywhere near earthbound mortal levels. Only big businesses and rich tycoons will be able to play here for the first couple of years (just like cell phones). I can see some security issues with this though. A few mods to a scanner that you can hook up to a PC and you got yourself a wireless packet sniffer!
Which bit of "that 2.4 Mbps is shared among all users on a cell sector, just like cable bandwidth is shared by everyone in a neighborhood" don't you understand?
Monet Mobile Networks provides wireless broadband in rural areas using cdma2000 1xRTT (144kbps), and is upgrading to 1xEV-DO which provides 2.4mbps downstream and 144kbps up. The already have 1xEV-DO trial network Manhattan, Kansas. Their service fee is a flat 49.95 a month, unlimited usages. They also have 1xRTT service up in Fargo, N.D., and Sioux Falls, S.D.
Here is more info on the 1xEV-DO network.
i still live 500 feet out of range for dsl
can't these tech companies fix shit that's broken before coming out with new stuff?
Let's admit it: the only purpose for broadband is pron, porn, Porn, pr0n and FREE ADULT PICXXXX.
Up to now, this content was transmitted by high resolution images. For the transfer of these images broadband access was pressingly needed.
However modern XML technology makes the high-res images obsolete (like linux).
The main principle is brilliant, but yet very simple: pornographic images consists usually of genitals during copulation. All what is needed is therefore a markup language which is able to describe the relative locations and some basic attributes of the genitals. This is now possible by the PornML standard. PornML conforms the XML standard and the documents can be displayed with any XML enabled device (with pron plugin). Due to the very small size of the PornML documents only very little bandwith is needed, enabling users everywhere to jerk off to high quality internet porn.
I miss Ricochet. I ended up moving into an area where they offered service -- 6 months too late. (Dammit.) They were the only ones offering flat-rate service, although only at 128-256 Kbit. Yes, I know they're trying to re-light the network, but that's not happening up here -- at the last I'd heard.
1. THIS WAS A SERVICE TEST. They set up a few cell towers just for this engineering test.
2. Fat chance any cell provider will give you an all-you-can-eat plan! That's for businesses, you don't need that! You're just a consumer so take our advertising and consume!
Feh.
I've become so cynical regarding cellphone companies and their greed that I can easily see them crippling this service to the point where it's no fun for any of us. I expect:
- Throttled service levels (want more speed? PAY!)
- Outrageous fees per kilobyte (want a discount to buy blocks of bytes? forget it...)
- and "service" plans that sell you a dozen features you don't want, just to get the features you do.
We've become so used to "paying for minutes" that the cellphone companies aren't going to let that go without (1) a lot of money, or (2) a fight. I know people that pay "only" $40/month for cell service, yet barely use a quarter of their 'allotment' -- the rest of their money is wasted! It amazes me that people continue to accept this... I guess it shouldn't."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
This is why I refuse to use a cell or give my cow-irkers my personal email (they're all lusers so they won't get it without mt) -- Come 5PM (or maybe 7PM if the day's been hectic) I AM DONE. I am OFF THE JOB. And may God show the mercy I lack if you actually have the balls to try to make me deal with work on a VACATION!
That's the optimal, best-case, never-gonna-see-it-in-real-life (unless you're testing the system before it's released to the public) speed. In real life use you'll be sharing with everyone else on the cell, just like a neighborhood of cable modems.
From the article: Which brings us to the next point: that 2.4 Mbps is shared among all users on a cell sector, just like cable bandwidth is shared by everyone in a neighborhood. What's a sector, then? Cell sites are generally divided into three sectors that each cover different parts of the surrounding area, so each site can have up to 7.2 Mbps of bandwidth to play with.
And FWIW, latency: Round trip times were in the 110-120 ms range on average, with the minimum I recorded coming in a bit under 80 ms.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Charging a flat fee would probably not work because of the 2% that would use 98% of the available bandwidth. However simply charging per minute would not penalize the userbase for using this for the intended use. This would also address the points of the article about being able to get the multimedia that your buying this for. In short, the lesson for 3G providers, don't kill the market that your trying to create.
Now perhaps I've been reading too much Neal Stephenson lately, but...
... no wait, those are just real girls getting a suntan.)
Do I foresee roving bands of samurai-warrior-programmers with laptops and wearable interfaces to the 'metaverse'?
Yes I do!
Well, maybe not Samurai Warriors, but pale geeks, surely! (And soon, perhaps not so pale?)
Could the stereotypical geek image change from pasty-faced teens languishing in a darkened computer room to well-traveled, olive-skinned men on beaches with laptops? (Oooh, look, live porn!
How much will civilization change when high-tech commuters can work from anywhere -- literally?
"And like that
The line was supposed to read:
- Outrageous fees per kilobyte (want a discount to buy blocks of megabytes? forget it...)
Oh, and about that modem offering up 8 IPs? You can forget about that feature ever seeing the light of day -- unless you pay them a few (hundred | thousand) extra dollars a month."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Press release
The article was very poor. The article was obviously written based on marketing information only. I did notice at the end of the article that they had looked at some techinial documents but I don' think they were completly digested. WHAT THEY DIDN'T TELL YOU. 1. The 2.4 Mega Bits per second they mentioned is raw channel throughput. That means raw data, not necesarily your data. Some of this throughput is consumed by the Radio Data Link Access Protocol, retires on the network, other control protocols. You get what's left over, then on top that you might have TCP retries. 2. The 2.4 Mega bits that are mentioned are the maximum per channell. In real life no one user will be given an entire channel. So if there are ten concurent users on the chanell which is very probable divide whatever your max throughput is and dividr it by ten. 3. On top of this most likly the carriers will carry both voice and data on their networks. Even though there is almost no distinction between voice and data anymore voice will be carried by either voIP or another propriatery method and will always be given priority over data. My point, it's fast but don't think your going to be getting 2.4 megs bits per-second. In the end your real throughput will be much much less that 2.4 Mega Bits per second.
i thought april fools day was yesterday
You're entirely right. Cell phone pricing is silly, and I'm sure the vaunted 3G wireless will be underpowered and overpriced.
But changing that starts at the bottom of the communications industry, not the top. Why do cell phones have minute-based plans? Because land-line long distance does. They cost more because the consumer perceives greater value in the cell phone service (which is accurate), and therefore not only is willing, but demands to pay more. It's no secret that most people equate "more expensive" with "better."
Why does long distance charge per minute? Because local calls are flat-fee. Again, greater perceived value requires higher cost.
The same will be true of 3G connectivity. The only way to change that is to start at the bottom--why aren't local calls included gratis with the cost to have a phone line to a building?Why aren't long-distance calls flat-rate?
If that changed, everything above it would shift downwards. Either that, or someone has to hammer home to the public at large that cost and value don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.
Of course, if Windows hasn't done that already, I don't know that there's much hope...
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
How much for unmetered service on such a system?
Bend over and they'll show you.
In addition to the normal internet peak usage times, you can also through another one into the mix: rush hour traffic. I live in a major metropolitan city (of ~4 mil), and I can't hardly use my cell phone from about 4:30 to 5:30.
I wonder how that's going to work with data connections, that are constantly dropping and reestablishing? It'll be a mess, for sure.
this is the meat of the article. the pictures aren't really worth too much looking at. get a dvd case out and two black pens. there you go. here's the article:
The System
The particular 3G technology under examination in this review is called 1xEV-DO, which is a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology developed by Qualcomm. Picking apart the acronym is instructive. If you ask an engineer, the "1x" stands for "single carrier," which means it operates in a single 1.25 MHz frequency band just like existing CDMA cellular systems. If you ask a marketing rep, "1x" means the "first phase" of the third-generation wireless systems, implying more good things to come. The "EV" is for "Evolution," meaning the technology is an outgrowth of the base 1x standard, functioning as an interim solution for high-speed data while waiting for the "3x" multi-carrier systems being standardized by the ITU. "DO" stands for Data Only (the marketing guy would say "Data Optimized"), meaning that the entire 1.25 MHz channel is dedicated to data traffic and not shared with voice calls. So the present system implements the data-only variety of the evolution of the first phase of the third generation of wireless cellular technology. Got it?
If acronym soup isn't your bag, simply "fast" will do. 1xEV transmits in the same frequency bands as existing cellular systems and uses similar radio-frequency transmission equipment (the cell sites you see popping up everywhere), but employs packet-switched connections and a new radio link protocol optimized for high data throughput. The maximum speed of 1xEV -- no drooling now -- is 2.4 Megabits per second on the download link and 153.6 kilobits per second on the upload link. As you're probably thinking, that kind of bandwidth is on par with broadband wired connections like cable or DSL -- and the system delivers.
I was given the opportunity to test out an engineering prototype of a 1xEV-DO wireless cellular modem called the HDR Hornet, developed by Qualcomm as a reference design for their 3G chipsets. HDR is short for High Data Rate, Qualcomm's internal name for 1xEV. Qualcomm just makes the chips and does not sell retail devices, so you will not see this modem on the market. What you will see is a plethora of devices incorporating Qualcomm chips, from cell phones to PDAs to PC Cards to notebooks and devices that have yet to be conceived. Of course, any cellular technology without an appropriate infrastructure is about as useful as a frozen brick; Qualcomm also develops chips and software for cellular base stations, and the HDR modem under review was provided as part of a small over-the-air field trial conducted by Qualcomm in conjunction with the University of California, San Diego. There were three 1xEV cell sites set up on top of Qualcomm and UCSD buildings in the La Jolla, California area for the purpose of stress-testing the system in real-world conditions. Free bandwidth, in range of the beach? One stress test coming up!
The Setup
The unit I was supplied with came in a plain white box and a static-proof bag, along with an AC adapter, a dongle to connect the modem to an Ethernet jack, a two-page quick-start guide, and four Velcro stickies to attach it to a laptop. The Hornet itself is something between the size of a DVD movie box and a VHS cassette, measuring 7 1/8" x 4 1/8" x 3/4" HWD (18 cm x 10.5 cm x 1.9 cm) and weighing about 3/4 lbs. (0.35 kg). As you can see, the unit has two 5 3/4" (14.6 cm) antennae that independently swivel up about 200 from alongside the unit, enabling diversity reception for a stronger signal. Keep in mind that this is an engineering prototype; you will probably not see retail devices with this form factor. PC Cards and PDA modules with the same chips inside will likely be the most popular paths to 3G in the near future.
The first thing that struck me about the Hornet is that it looks pretty darn smooth for an engineering reference design, no frills, but all the essentials: AC adapter plug, on/off switch, USB port on the bottom, Ethernet dongle on the right, and four status LEDs on top that wrap around to the back so as to be visible while the unit is stuck to your laptop lid.
Installation and set-up can't be any easier. Taking a cue from the quick-start guide, the process goes something like this:
1. Plug it in.
2. Turn it on.
3. You're good to go.
The unit I was supplied with interfaced via TCP/IP over standard 10 Mbit Ethernet. The Hornet has a built-in DHCP server that automatically serves up the correct TCP/IP settings to your laptop and acts as your default gateway to the network. The connection is "always on" and there is no special dial-up or logon procedure. Having connected this thing to a dozen different computers, I can say that setup was simply a non-issue and took at most two minutes.
USB connectivity was not implemented on the test unit I received, but I can't imagine it being any easier to use than the Ethernet connection. USB will probably be the interface found in most external devices for laptops; unfortunately, this means you are at the mercy of the manufacturer for driver support and you will probably have to install a CD full of video-mail-grandma-with-one-click software to make it work. On the other hand, TCP/IP over Ethernet is standard, well-understood, supported out of the box by every operating system, and already used for Internet connectivity by most laptops. An Ethernet-enabled wireless modem would be a drop-in replacement for a huge installed base of users, but USB + Plug-and-Pray is perceived as being easier for consumers. Go figure. I tested the Hornet through its Ethernet interface with desktops and laptops using a variety of Ethernet cards under Windows 95, 98, and Me, Windows NT4, 2000, and XP, MacOS 8, 9, and X, and Mandrake Linux 7.1 (kernel 2.2.17). All worked flawlessly. A big nod goes to Qualcomm for sticking with open systems and standards. We can only hope retail products will do the same.
Once the unit is connected up and turned on, it takes about five seconds to initialize and then begins searching for a connection. If you're in a covered area, the service light goes green and the receive and transmit lights flash as the fire-breathing modem awakes and stretches its muscles. After living with this unit for a while, the sight of those lights when service comes up is like the geek's version of a well-tuned big-bore Harley's guttural rumble.
moox. for a new generation.
Hang on...not everything should be flat-rate.
When my girlfriend and I lived in separate states, our long-distance bill was huge...but we expected that. We were able to minimize it by using calling cards and talking in the evening.
Now my girlfriend and I live together...and our long-distance bill is small. If there was a flat rate for long-distance, it would certainly be higher than I'm paying now. All that would do is anger the 80% of people who use a less than average amount of long distance. (Yes, my math is right - the top 20% of long-distance callers talk five times as long.)
I would actually be willing to pay for cable/DSL by the megabyte. Why? Because that would encourage adoption...my grandma would be able to get DSL for $3 a month because she just checks email. I'd pay $60 a month, but I'd be getting my money's worth. And when I go out of town for two weeks, my bill would reflect it.
Having the option of a flat-rate plan is fine, but I think that it's not best for most people.
Check out http://www.monetmobile.com/consumer/serviceplan.as p
As much as rolling this out will cost, it's still going to be less than rolling out high speed land lines. In places where local conditions (terrain, politics, the whims of Time Warner) make DSL or cable unavailable, this may be the way brodband finally comes to the consumer market in big numbers.
The most compelling reason to suspect this may happen is that you can do an incremental buildout. Put up a few cell towers in an area and sell service. As enough people sign up to demand more bandwidth, you can add towers. You can't do that with land lines.
Nope, no sig
Hopefuly they will do some decent pricing on this system, my biggest complaint with the web features of Sprint (my current cell provider) and many other cell carriers is they charge you for the time you access the web, by this I mean if I surf on my cell phone and stop to read a page for ten minutes I get charged for 10 minutes, not the 30 seconds it took to download the page. Most phones I know offer no way to download a page and then store it so you can read it latter without charge. Hopefully this sytem will charge me for actual download time or bandwidth, and not for the time I spend reading it.
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
3G providers in Europe are going to charge their cutomers per byte not per minute. They will look at raw data so their will be no differance between surfing and a voice call. NISY (no interesting sig yet)
How much for unmetered service on Slashdot?
// No comment
That seems completely backwards to me. People who are out and about generate data (audio, video) that they want to transmit home. The thing should be faster coming from the phone, not going to the phone.
I thought april 1 was over? I'm always so clueless...is there something I'm missing? Why the lies?
this sig is deprecated
Awwwweeesome.
Now I can surf the 'net for ascii porn 1 character at a time at insane speed.
Can you feel the sarcasm? Pffft, what a useless feature.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
" ... on/off switch, USB port on the bottom... " (emphasis mine)
I'm quite sure the maximum datarate of USB is well under 2.4Mbit/second. Isn't it nearer 1Mbit/sec?
Sounds a bit iffy to me...
What?
Sorry, I didn't clarify properly: I didn't mean flat-rate per month, I meant flat-rate per call. You're right: flat-rate per month would hurt the majority of consumers, much the same way flat-rate per month cell phone bills (plus the overuse surcharge, of course) hurt the majority of consumers (myself included).
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I remember reading the instructions for my cellular modem, it said that if I crossed a cell boundry, I could lose data in transit. Have they solved that?
If not, how is this better than a 2mbps wlan?
3G is marketed for videoconferencing.... How exactly "the miracle of statistical multiplexing" would help there?!
Many people have brought up ther valid point that if this (seemingly large) 2.4Mbit bandwidth is spread amongstwhoever is using the cell, then some people will hog everything, and others will get almost none, thereby creating a really terrible situation for the great majority of users.
:)
The point has also been brought up that paying by the kilobyte sucks for those who want high bandwidth...
My point is that the two effects would tend to cancel each other out, or, more specifically, that The people hogging the bandwidth would have to pay more, thereby eliminating the use of a cell phone for downloading warez or such.
Okay, so its not so nice... but it works. People will end up using the system for IMing and light web page browsing, which is what it is designed for. No-one intended cellphones to be used as hotline servers.
Now, it would be really nice if 3G meant more bandwidth than you could shake a nokia at, but its just not feasible. And who really wants to host a quake 3 server on a laptop. Most laptops can't even PLAY quake 3 with decent FPS (note I said most). And the payment scheme, though I am sure it will exact several orders of magnitude more dollars than are needed, making you pay the jerks through the nose for some crappy junk, works. Don't be surprised. We live in a real world
At $50 a month for unmetered 128kbps (many subscribers got faster than that, too) Ricochet is easily the best way to get wireless data.
I see their transmitters hanging off lightposts all over my neighborhood, too. Every time I drive past one I'm reminded of what could have been...
I'm waiting for free low-earth orbit satellite.
My girlfriend currently lives far away... AT&T just came out with a flat rate long distance plan so long as you talk to other AT&T customers... otherwise it's metered. It's worked out great. $20 a month and we call eachother all we want.
Here here. I second this!
--Shoeboy, posting anonymously to preserve precious faggotry
...before I can jam my head into the mouthpeice and have it pop out of the other persons earpeice? Now THAT would be useful.
...one of the reasons i go outside is to get away from the broadband. Wonderful. Now my clients will be emailing me while I'm at lunch.
"I asked you to make those changes to the site 10 minutes ago, why aren't they up yet?"
Oh yeah, I can't wait.
mk-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I have Metered Service with my girlfriend , too. I'd kill for unlimited bandwidth but she won't hear of it.
my grandma would be able to get DSL for $3 a month because she just checks email.
And she'd be happy until the first month she gets a screenfull of animated adds, a mailbox full of spam, and a $750 bill for the privilege.
Current internet technology evolved in an unmetered, bandwidth-limit-only enviornment. The content of the web and email - or the intelligence of the browsers and delivery agents - will require major revision before metered broadband internet service becomes practical.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Video conferencing doesn't take 2.4Mbps. And you can always add more cells if an area is particularly busy...
"And like that
Why does long distance charge per minute? Because local calls are flat-fee. Again, greater perceived value requires higher cost.
Not necessarily. Blue Kiwi or Speak Zero offer flat rate LD to the continental US for $30-35 or so a month. All you can eat.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
GTRacer
- Max karma does weird things to a person
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
You mean, I could come outside of my house. To be able to wander about and still retain the same technical savvy. I'm.. Uh.. I don't know if I can handle it.
Are you kidding me? I have Sprint Broadband (fixed wireless). I am getting 5MB downstream and about 156k up.
Although the mobile thing certainly has its advantages....
You are forgetting, that a cell is divided to sectors. so you actually get 3x 2.4 megabits. Also, 3g cells are smaller than the current GSM
cells, and telcos have done a better job splitting
cells unlike cable-modem people...
It's still a lot better than the networks today.
gprs gives theretical maximum of 384kbs (shared)
and a latency of 500-1000ms.
Unfortunatly, due to the high priced 3g licenses, it wont be cheap for a long time.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Of course, in a stiuation such as this, we'd all have a very real reason to make spam illegal.
Right now it is annoying, but if it cost me money over and above what my own bandwidth needs are, I'd sue in a heartbeat.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
To really be deployable in an un-metered fashion with a reasonable business model, you need something much more spectrally efficient, like ArrayComm's i-BURST for high-speed data service. A recent demo in South Korea shows it working at 1 Mbit/s. Two of South Korea's big telcos, Hanaro and KT, are planning to roll it out next year some time. Remember that Korea is where CDMA got its start.
ArrayComm licensed some spectrum in Australia, where they plan to roll out a wireless broadband service in the major cities in just 5 MHz of TDD spectrum. It looks like recent FCC rule changes have made some national TDD spectrum licenses available in the U.S. as well
It uses IntelliCell spatial processing and spatial channels to get multiple users on the same spectrum, at the same time. I've been lucky enough to see the i-BURST system in action, and it looks pretty cool, is real, and actually works. There are other smart antenna companies as well that are working on broadband data products, but I don't think any of them are as far along as ArrayComm.
Yesterday it worked; today it is not working; Windows is like that...
In Europe we have GPRS (aka 2.5G, or Generation 2 and-a-half) system. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is an extension to widely-deployed GSM system, which allows you to be online for as long as your cell phone is turned on.
The only thing that hurts, is that you pay for data transmitted, not for duration. That's good unless you really want to do something more with your cell phone, that just check local cinema's "now playing" web page via crappy WAP.
I guess we're gonna wait for 3G for some time more. Here in Europe, every country tried to maximize revenue paid by cell operators for spectrum band that can be used to offer UMTS. But prices were so horrible and technology is so weak, that we'll have to wait until they get enough money from current installations.
And they don't hurry, because why offer more and make costs, if one can offer less with no investments in new infrastructure?
Plain old sigh.
The reason DSL and cable internet are so cheap is exactly because your grandma got it and only uses it to check e-mail and browse a few websites. The vast majority of Internet users do not need broadband but the marketing gurus at the local cable company and telco make them think they do. I know at least a dozen people with cable internet and maybe a half dozen with DSL that don't need the bandwidth. They're happy because the websites that they do visit load quicker and their e-mail downloads quickly but overall they're paying a hefty premium for that conveinence. I use it my cable line to download huge files on an almost daily basis and I pay the same price as the other cable users. It's because the cost is spread out over everyone that broadband is affordable. If it was metered 1) it wouldn't be worth the money for the phone company to give grandma the DSL line (not for $3-5 lousy bucks a month) and 2) real Internet users would never be able to afford it. $60? Try upwards of $100 for the average heavy user. That's why cellphones are a commodity now too. Lots of users pay the same average price but some people barely use the service others use it all the time.
I'd say my GPRS does 64k max with latency up to several seconds. That's Cingular Blackberry service in Boston. It's nothing like production quality yet. Maybe in a few years...
That assumes that the flat-rate amount multiplied by the number of customers would have to equal what the long distance companies currently earn.
The parent post was correct. Things are expensive because LD is still (comparatively) expensive.
LD used to be expensive because the COSTS were high to provide it. Laying the lines, relatively low number of users, etc. Now, telephones are virtually everywhere. Local calls are unmetered, but long distance is still relatively expensive mostly because people got used to paying for it. They value the service monetarily because they are used to paying for it.
LD no longer is as expensive as it used to be to provide. In fact, technically, it can be provided almost free. Most of the actual telecomm costs are in "the last mile" (read: the local telephone service that you already pay a monthly bill for).
Believe me, in 10, maybe 15 or 20 years max, there will be no "long distance charge" per-minute nor per-call and the companies providing them will either be much smaller and paid some monthly amount by local providers paying for international connectivity (like ISP access to the backbone).
Why? Because the price we pay for long distance is a perceived cost based on habit, not based on the actual real value or cost of the service. The price is, thus, unnaturally high. It may take time, but the free market will ensure that an unnaturally high price comes down. And it will.
While VoIP seems to have lost it's dazzle (with the dot com boom), I think VoIP is really what's going to eventually lead to free long distance. VoIP is in its infancy. When there is more infrastructure VoIP will be able to charge less than long distance companies. To compete, the long distance companies themselves will have to resort to VoIP. And, at some point, the local telephone company will end up simply being the local POP for the VoIP network... and the long distance companies will no longer exist.
That's my guess, anyway.
Has anyone heard of Monet? Their are based out of Washington, and currently offer 1X-RTT speed (144 K max) in Fargo, ND and Sioux Falls, SD. They are planning on expanding in the very near future, and are planning on using Qualcomm's 1X-EDVO technology in approximately 6 months time for $50 a month for unlimited access. What a deal!!!
They were also the first company in the U.S. to offer 3G services, even before Verizon.
http://www.monetmobile.com
It is not just collissions; there are fundamental capacity-based reasons why the upstream is limited.
There is plenty of literature on the theoretical upstream capacity of an arbitrary cellular system. I doubt if the sum of all the upstream rates in an embedded sector can ever be more than a few 100 kilobits/second, irrespective of the modulation used, for a 1.25Mhz channel.
Magnus.
Many old sites use 120 degree panels for tri-sectored coverage, and more are running 90 degree panels in each sectored area.
Check out some panel antenna mfg. and review the beam patterns of Celwave, DB, Kathrein and Andrew.
Newer styles use electronic steering and downtilting to null fill "bad" geo-areas.
even Crunchcraft makes "commercial" antennas for 802.11b, as well as Maxrad, Comtelco, and Antenex(no panels, just omni and yagi for base apps).
Each sector is not added to "your" total throughput, as you can only be in one sector's coverage for "X" amount of time before you are handed off to a new cell/sector, unless you drive in 360s and grab only that one cellsite.
Mod an old Mot. bag phone, use it to scan active data channels, RSSI and you'll see reuse occur within that carrier's POP. Sectoring reduces interference from adjacent sites, that's why you never see the same channels being used within a 5 cell "pattern", and also, you'll not see the same LCR channel active within that grouping either.
We used a dead carrier aimed away from our service area in order to keep a competing carrier out of our coverage pattern, we null that sector, place the carrier there at 1/2 power and let it run, it's also used to keep our service out of the competition's pattern as well, since we both had "A" band licenses for that specific POP.
Sectoring coverage is a great method to strengthen your carrier power where it's needed, while minimizing the return loss due to in-band interference and IMD products(no cheap TTAs here!).(TTA-TowerTop Amplifiers).
Sectoring also keeps the TX power OUT of your RX system as well, sort of like a "separation filter" but not really, due to bandspread of the uplink/downlink frequencies used by cellsites.
We have very limited PCS coverage where I am located, and NO GSM, 3G or the like is going to arrive and take over because the dimwits here love football more, and "modern" technologies are too elusive for them to comprehend in the slightest.
I installed a pair of panel antennas in the Oshkosh, WI. area for a local carrier, simply because they needed the network built and fully operational the next day!
The equipment was already on site, we arived at 6:00 AM with all the necessary equipment and proceeded to spend the next 18 hours getting that microcell up and fully operational, what a pain in the ass that was! This "installation" was FULL, cabling, routing, cutting access holes UP in the signs, programming the site and initial testing one it was complete, not to mention drive-outs to test pattern/coverage.
If you ever get to Oshkosh, WI. stop in at the PLANEVIEW restaurant on Hwy. 41 and look towards the top of the sign, just below the highest sign, the outermost colum has a pair of Celwave 20dB panels mounted to it, facing down the coridor of the highway, that's my installation(it was supposed to be temporary, but no more, the coverage is too hot for them to have me take it down now)!
Honor and integrity makes the person, NOT the money!
And I thought I was lucky to be nearly recieving GPRS here in Australia. A whole whopping 48kb/s connection. How ungrateful are you guys, I wont be able to get 3G for the next 5 years and that's if I'm lucky.
:).
At least GPRS will be charged by the megabyte here, and you will be able to make and recieve calls while online
Although it would have been good to purchase a pocket pc and wireless network card when they had the 3G network running in Adelaide (my home town) during the International IT Conference. Not to bad for USD$500.
I'll be happy when I can send emails with my phone, and perhaps upload some text web pages from my laptop, Sigh.
Tim.
Quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen...
Umm, you do realize that in places like the UK, unmetered access like we enjoy in the US doesn't exist--you don't even get unlimited local calls, for crying out loud :[
E.G. we *already* have a very real reason to make spam illegal. Granted, this may not affect many US users, save to waste their time, but just because it doesn't affect the US doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people with a very real reason to make spam (UCE) illegal.
Something like this in the UK too....
TDD or something..
www.ipwireless.com
Yes we do. BT Together for example.
And as for unmetered access - my Cable Modem is £20/month totally unmetered.
I do agree with your point about considering the non-US world, though.
First off, the data rates mentioned are only attainable under ideal conditions. What the article fails to mention is that CDMA is a power limited technology. No, I don't mean they fail to generate enough power. What I mean is that the total emitted power in the cell (or sector depending on configuration) is what limits you. So, if there are ANY other data users in the cell and they happen to want data at the same time you do you can kiss your impressive rates goodbye. If too much power is emitted you either get too much interference generated (causing others to raise their power levels and thus cause MORE interference) or you could possibly blow a power amplifier (and yes I've seen this happen too).
While building a 3x system (5Mhz channel as opposed to the 1x in the article) we were able to attain stationary data rates of about 360kbps which isn't bad considering we were trying to get 384kbps. The only problem was the fact that we had to remain stationary and were limited to being about 3-400ft from the tower or and we were maxing out the transmit power from the tower (thus allowing only 1 mobile to be using the data service).
I will say that when I spent time in Seoul, S. Korea (one of the first cities to roll out a 1x system) debugging the data stacks in a 1x phone the system seemed relatively stable. There were times when we were unable to get data channel assignments higher than 32kbps.
I still wouldn't personally hope for more than 156kbps as a universally available data rate from city to city. Providers will definately be unwilling to allocate the amount of power needed to support those 2Mbps users when they calculate their link budget and discover where it's all going. I don't think we'll see rates like the article talks about until providers start moving to a picocell architecture with cell sites being nothing more than a large suitcase looking thing sitting atop a telephone pole.
There are many, many factors that go into cell site planning.
Here's a short list off the top of my head.
1.) Leasing equipment space/antenna space.
2.) Getting approval from various government agencies (city zoning boards,etc).
3.) Doing a historical statistical analysis of the neighbor sites to see if the the new site is really necessary.
4.) Doing field measurements for emitted power levels of current cells. Then the follow-up analysis to determine the best location for a new cell. Factors considered in this analysis include propogation delay, multipath, interference from other cells or externals.
5.) Having a leased line strung out to the site from the central office containing the BSC (Base Station Controller).
6.) Provisioning the database for a new site which includes updating neighbor and canidate lists for each cell as well as power level parameters. 7.) System tuning. Bringing a new site online typically means that the whole system in that area of town needs to be retuned. RF engineers determine if antennas need to be tilted this way or that or power levels adjusted. All the upfront analysis gives you is a place to start. The real numbers come from the guys playing with it in the field.
None of the things listed above is trivial. It typically takes close to a year to bring a new cellsite online. Also, remember that none of this is cheap. The things above could cost you in the neighborhood of 4-500k just to get the site up and running. That doesn't take into account equipment costs. I know that when I used to work for one of my previous employers they used to get like 300k for a full equiped site. Of course that's more than what would be needed in an environment like NYC but would be more in line with what's need in suburban CHI.
Of course, we haven't even gotten to the monthly bills. Most of the leased lines are T1s. Why? Because of the guaranteed data rates needed. Of course, the providers don't own the lines, they just lease them so even if you figure they are getting a good deal on a single T1 of about $500/month they'll need multiple T1's to support the ammount of data traffic (and the associated control traffic) we're talking about here.
WRONG!
First off, voice is NEVER retransmitted. Voice is a time sensative beast. If a voice frame is missed either because of corruption, poor signal quality, what have you, the last frame may be repeated. Usually I believe this practice is only done on the network side for voice coming from the mobile. More often than not silence is sent on to the other user. Also, there is no such thing as a phone missing 5 seconds of voice and coming back again. If the phone misses 2 voice frames (20 ms each) it will turn off it's transmitter. It will then start it's fade timer and when the timer expires (variably set up to 5 seconds) the mobile completely releases the call. The network will be doing the same once it doesn't receive the mobile.
Anyway, data is very sensitive. If you miss a data frame that frame needs to be retransmitted (provided the RLP layer - Radio Link Protocol) is configured to support retransmissions. The delay for the retransmission and the request for use of the data channel can take anywhere from 100-400ms. You know what happens to your effective throughput when this happens? Because of the power requirements data channels usually have the tend to have a higher frame error rate and thus incur more retransmissions. In my 4+ years of working on actual 3G CDMA gear we got better data rates when we turned retransmissions off and just let TCP handle retransmissions.
Mark my words UDP applications will RULE the wireless world!
After investigating, here in Chicago, the only flat rate I can find is from Verizon, and it's 28.8kbps, more or less, for $55/month on a 1 year, and $40/month for 2 or 3 years. This is better than paying per byte, as the maximum file sizes usable across the internet tends towards infinity over time.
So, I'll stick with Cable modems, DSL, and the Frac-T at work, for now.
--Mike--
Hey things were much better back in the days before cell phones.
pictures