Sprint PCS Launches 3G Network

pdp1144 writes "Sprint PCS launched the first nationwide 3G wireless network today. Code named Vision it will allow wireless data speeds starting at an average of 50 to 70 kbps." The question is, how much? If the data plan is such that you can use up a month's allotment in five minutes of downloading... Simson Garfinkel had a good column on this recently.

Comments

Nothing really new year but,

[MarvinMouse]

The states is finally catching up with Europe's telecoms... After many years of "waffling" on 2.5G and 2G. Even now, they aren't anywhere near Europe, but they are getting closer. What they really need now is the FCC to give them some more bandwidth to work with (take it away from the media conglomerates).

I say this takes another 3-5 years before it is as enmeshed as Europe's as well, and even then, Europe will still be heads and shoulders ahead.

Re:Nothing really new year but,

[Zarhan]

Finally catching up? In a way perhaps, but surpassing as well. Thank god for American capitalism and competition, even if it fragmented the market for a little while. CDMA technology is much better than GSM(w/TDMA), so Sprint should do very well with their nation wide network while all the GSM carriers around the world have to completely retrofit their systems for WCDMA 3/4G.

Actually, no need to do a "complete retrofit". Or, any more retrofitting than Sprint has to do.

When doing the transition from GSM to GPRS, you need a new core network (SGSN, GGSN, et al), to process packet data. This is rather reasonable. There is no need to do any refitting on the radio interfaces, except a Packet Unit to each base station controller.

The next upgrade comes when 3G comes, that is, UMTS in Europe. Now there is no need to refit the core - SGSN and GGSN are the same as before (well, they need a software upgrade, but that is about it). The radio interface of course needs upgrading, but the same upgrades are necessary when transitioning from CDMA -> WCDMA.

At the moment, it is more of a marketing and business decision than anything else. The technology is there, there is just no market for it yet (GPRS seems to be enough for everybody for now). The upgrades would be relatively cheap.

The actual model that we'll see in Europe will be a mixture of UMTS and GPRS networks. UMTS will cover cities and population centres. Your phone will sign up to UMTS network and do a hard handover to GPRS network when you go to rural areas - only thing you notice is that data transfer speed goes down. There is no need to set up UMTS network everywhere. I would imagine this is also the thing with Sprint's network...

In the future, it may even be possible that WLAN techniques will be used as a possible access medium. UMTS standard is pretty free on what the access technology is - in revision 5 there are actually such possibilities as xDSL(!) listed. Wired access to a wireless network core - probably simplifies things for operators that act both as ISPs and mobile network providers.

Just my two (euro)cents...

Re:AT&T rolled this out 2.5 weeks ago

[gambit3]

Uh... not really. What AT&T rolled out was GPRS, which is 2.5 G, not 3G.

And before the flames arrive about what is 2G and what is 3G, that my granpa heard this columnist say it wasn't really 3G, and all that junk, there is an Industry Partnership that determines what consitutes 3G, and they determined a while back that 1XRTT (What Sprint is deploying) IS 3G.