Is Verizon Up to Speed?

Dejected @Work writes "IBM developerWorks just ran this article on Verizon's partial 3G network set up in some areas of the US, most of the North East. The article goes into some good technical background about these fatter pipes called Express Network. Has anyone tried this out?"

Comments

Sexy but expensive

[interiot]

144kbps theoretical max. Wonderful stuff, you can even watch streaming movies. At 10 megabytes for $35, that's $3.69 a minute for that streaming movie. Still interested?

Re:Sexy but expensive

[smaug195]

It's called the early adopter tax, those that adopt early, have to have the technology at any cost, so they'd rather milk that market for a year or two then move their pricing to near reasonable.

Why 3G?

[revscat]

Would somebody please tell me what tangible benefits there are to a 3G network? I understand there is a higher transfer rate, but this is meaningless to me until there are services available that warrant it. Checking stock quotes through my cell phone only has limited appeal to me, same thing for email or instant messaging, and these functions are available on existing networks, anyway.

I guess my real question is: In areas where 3G has been rolled out, what services are available/are popular? 3G is touted as being the Next Big Thing in wireless, but I have yet to see anything that makes me get all that excited.

Re:Why 3G?

[terradyn]

3G is great for the all-in-one mobile device but that is only a big thing in Asian countries where the culture supports the idea of being able to do everything on one device (streaming video, mp3, pictures, cell, sms, im). For the US there just isn't the market or demand for it. Studies have been done by the major communications companies and all came up with the result that it isn't cost effective to spend the money required to upgrade the infrastructure to support 3G (G3). That is the reason why G2.5 is being deployed. They are also considering the idea of G3 in major cities using a cheaper micronetwork architecture and then downgrading to G2.5 features when you leave the city.

Re:Why 3G?

[furiousgeorge]

>>In Japan, video phones are available.

sure - but does anybody really give a rats ass?

Seriously - we could all have home videophones now if we wanted, and we don't. Videoconferencing is available, and use useful in some situations, but i think by now it's been shown that the general public could care less about videophones. I know I do... When I'm on the phone the LAST thing i want is the other person to be able to see what i'm doing. Don't know about u, but when i'm on the phone about 10% of my attention is directed to the call and the rest is elsewhere. Not to mention i'm probably in my underwear :)

Popular Science has been promising us videophones for 50 years. And still nobody cares. 3G needs to find a different killer app.

What about mlife?

[pimpinmonk]

How does this compare to AT&T's sometime-arriving mlife service, which is DoCoMo or so I hear? I am desparately wanting to buy a new phone but don't wanna get burned on getting rapidly-obsolete technology! Is Verizon's 3G equivalent to mlife?

Re:Might cause more problems than it's worth

[interiot]

Actually... one of the underhyped aspects of 3G (and probably its most important benefit) is that it uses the radio spectrum more effeciently due to the way signals are encoded at the physical layer. It may be two steps back and one step forward, but it won't be quite as bad as you suggest. If users stick to plain normal voice calling, it will be much better.

This is one of the reasons that 3G is good in Tokya. People there are so densely packed that they were having severe availability problems. 3G is helping with that.

Actually imaging *is* the killer App

[hqm]

In Japan, the best selling mobile handsets
are the ones with cameras in them.
I used a FOMA video phone in Japan, and the reaction I had was that I must get one. It is not
for showing your face when you talk, but for
pointing at things, like "I'm trying to unjam
this printer" or "I'm trying to remove my sink
in the bathroom, how do I disconnect the water pipes?". And when you have real 30 fps frame rate
on video, it is qualitatively different experience than
crappy ISDN video conferencing.

People will make imaging a mandatory feature
on phones, when they actually see it. It is only
the US mobile phone industry that is screwing
up so badly that we are 2-3 years behind the
Japanese in terms of technology. WAP was probably
the cause of at least half the lossage. In Japan,
they just deployed plain old HTML (i-Mode) on phones and it worked ten times better than
the WAP garbage that was being pushed in the US
and Europe.