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America's First WCDMA Call

Posted by timothy on from the watson-i-need-broadband dept.

k-hell writes "Ericsson and AT&T Wireless recently completed the first WCDMA/UMTS call in a live network environment in the Americas, capable of data transfer speeds of up to 384 Kbps. AT&T Wireless and Ericsson currently pursuing the path to 3G capabilities in the U.S. market by deploying EDGE-ready GSM/GPRS systems. This path ensures an evolution to EDGE, then UMTS, a wideband radio technology that provides mobile users with data rates up to 2 Mbps." This is not yet a strong enough reason to move to Dallas, though.

7 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Forget about 3G! Take a look at SOMA Networks. by kakkak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have a friend in Japan who was telling me about this product. Land line quality phones and a data connection over the same wireless connection!!

    7 megs/second!!!

    http://www.somanetworks.com, I've heard they are trialing a few places in the US and maybe Canada. IIt would be pretty nice to get away from Bell.

  2. Bluetooth to keep up? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just curious if 3G will jumpstart a faster Bluetooth spec. To the best of my knowledge, Bluetooth isn't capable of reaching 2 megabits.

    Right now I have a BT enabled cell phone. I use it as an organizer that syncs up with Outlook on my laptop. I've heard that you can use BT to get an internet connection to the laptop, but I haven't personally verified that. If I could, though, it'd mean that my laptop would be able to get on the net without needing to remove my cell phone from my pocket. One less thing sitting 3 inches from my laptop with a 6' cable attached.

  3. Re:Forget about 3G! Take a look at SOMA Networks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Oh, yeah! I've heard of SOMA. Their stuff kicks ass. 10 Mbits/s throughput with 4G.

  4. CDMA standards by evilned · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OK, can someone explain to me the difference between all of the 3g CDMA standards? Like CDMA 2000 vs. WCDMA? Is it a just a difference in how much data a second can be transferred, or is there something else to it. I know 1xRTT fits in there somewhere as well, but I think its just for voice.

    --

    "My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett

  5. Re:Forget about 3G! Take a look at SOMA Networks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You should check out the stuff they're doing right now.
    I mean it's live in japan.
    http://www.zdnet.co.jp/news/0206/06/njbt_1 1.html

  6. Re:Privacy by mdechene · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, alot of the 3G phone handset designs have AGPS (Assisted Global Positioning Satellite) receivers built in, so they don't need triangulation to spot ya any more. Part of the requirement that E911 systems have imposed on cell phones being able to identify their own location so they can send help out as needed.

    --

    Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
  7. Re:Give us some data, please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    3G is not full duplex, at least not for UMTS. The CDMA solution is probably similar.

    The UMTS implementation uses shared channels in the downlink direction. This is ideal for services like web browsing, downloading e-mail, get streaming content, etc. Your mobile may never even get a dedicated channel when you are using data services.

    One reason for this is that it is easier to manage your radio resources in the downlink direction. The network knows all of the codes in use in the downlink direction and it can allocate orthogonal codes (codes that do not interfere with each other) and manage them so adjacent base stations do not interfere with each other.