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Aussie Telcos Consider 3G For Last Mile
Mattygfunk writes "Whirlpool reports Aussie telco R&D labs are scrambling to transform 3G mobile networks into last mile solutions rivaling the best wired broadband networks, as telcos come to grips with lack of consumer interest in 3G mobile services and a likelihood of no payback on their multi-billion dollar investments in the spectrum."
At AU$0.20/Mb for anything over the base plan, data costs are what's keeping the internet expensive here. The current pricepoint is AU$80-90/month with a 3Gb cap. It doesn't matter what the delivery medium is used to deliver the data, that cost sets a lower limit for any pricing scheme.
Cable is severely restricted to the highest areas of population density in the south-east of the country, ADSL is available in a high percentage of exchanges(both metropolitan and regional), and satellite is used for those areas where copper doesn't reach and can afford it($$$$$).
A 3G infrastructure depends on a good underlying data network - which basically describes ADSL(plus ISDN, ATM, etc).
As far as I can see, the areas which have that infrastructure, but where 3G is the only solution are extremely limited. Add that to the very limited market of high-speed-mobile-data users, and you have a solution which has an extremely small number of users for a high development and setup/intrastructure cost.
I doubt it will be a competitive or affrodable "last mile" solution for the forseeable future, outside of a few PR "success stories".
not a teleco person, but let me answer still.
Afaik WCDMA cell can scale from 512 users at 8k/s to 2 users at 2mb/s. Sounds like too little? Well, the cell size for WCDMA is significantly smaller than on gsm, and as the voice calls will be mostly routed through the gsm network, the improvement should be pretty visible. But definetly no warezing channel.
What I'd like to know however, is the roundtrip time over different 3G technoligities. Even GPRS has adequate bandwith for browsing/mail/messaging, but the 1 second roundtrip time with The TCP 3-way handshake really kills the experience.
WCDMA is the non-qualcomm version of 3G, as qualcomm got too greedy with it's CDMA tecnology patents. Yet another case in to the "patent system needs to fixed" bucket. Someone else should write about how much users their CDMA2000 can handle. (The UMTS version, not the 1x version).
3G is just one step that provides extra wireless bandwidth. Next step would be roaming from high-speed WLAN networks to larger coverage 3G networks, and finally to The everywhere covering satellite network. The obstacles are mostly commercial, as everyone want's start billing everyone else for the roaming.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
bandwidth per cell is 388,800kbps
resulting in connection speeds of
2000 kbps for 194 subs
384 kbps for 1013 subs
144 kbps for 2700 subs
64 kbps per 6075 subs
Note cell size is > 1Km but I don't have a figure for max cell size.
Source was from a industry report from an investment house.
384Kbps would probably be the most cost efficient and marketable solution giving a similar user experience as ADSL. However cost per Kbs will be hard to get as low as the monthly connection charges and unlimited connection time we see in most ADSL contracts these days.
Still, any to get money back into telco's cant be bad for the industry as a whole.
If you get modded down for a first post... What do you get for a last post?
A little company by the name of ArrayComm is currently testing a technology they call I-Burst here in Sydney. Basically, it (should) offer pervasive, roaming wireless internet access across every major city in the country, at 1Mbps per user.
What does this mean? Well, it means that if you've got I-Burst capable NIC's, you'll have a 1Mbps Internet connection at any point across all our major cities (as long as you're not moving too fast) on your laptop, PDA or even your phone (assuming there is phones to take advantage of the tech - doubtful perhaps).
This is beyond what any of the 3G's (W-CDMA, CDMA2000 etc) can offer. The only reason Australian telco's are pimping 3G is because they all spent small fortunes purchasing spectrum to run it on. Considering that these 3G solutions are a long way off, and that we should have a working commercial I-Burst service here in Oz sometime next year, 3G may just die a very quick death.
We conducted an in-depth breakdown of the technology behind I-Burst, including the special directional antennas that make it possible. You can check it out here if you're interested.
Janie took my gun...