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EvDO High-Speed Wireless vs. 802.11
willll writes "The Washington Post is running a story about EvDO (Evolution Data Only), a high-speed wireless technology. It can work anywhere that a mobile phone can work, one of its main advantages over WiFi. Companies such as Verizon and Lucent are looking into the technology." From the article, I'm not sure that EvDO can be directly compared to WiFi connections (and the article does not mention current long-range 802.11 ISPs), but it's still interesting.
From the article:
Because mobile phone companies barely have enough room to handle their voice traffic
This is particularly true in Verizon's case. However, they have implemented an innovative load-balancing system: when they think you have been on long enough, your call will be dropped to give someone else a chance.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
This is a lot like CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data), which was supposed to work over existing AMPS networks. It had the same basic problems - you had to update the cell site to make it work, and the cell carriers had to set aside some bandwidth for it.
However, unlike when CDPD was first rolled out, there is now a demand for such services....
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Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
One of the nice thing about CDMA in general is that you can be moving at high way speeds and maintain a constant connection through what's called a "soft handoff", where you receive data from both towers as you transition from one to the other. There are sprint users who's actually surfs the web while in moving at highway speeds (as the pasenger, of course :)
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
In Europe, "3G" (third generation) technologies were supposed to transform the economy, turning cell phones into mini-entertainment centers, but reality failed to live up to the hype.
Its difficult to say that '3G' or UMTS to be exact has failed in Europe, as most have not yet launched due to the financial strife in the telecoms sector limiting investment into the new infrastructure. In fact Hutchinson's Three (UK's first UMTS network) will be going live soon
Granted this pressure has resulted in GPRS '2.5G' becoming more widely adopted, and this can provide many of the benefits of UMTS as far as the user is concerned such as reasonable speed mobile data access, whilst being a step upgrade to the GSM netwrok so cheaper to role out and not needing thousands of new masts (UMTS needs masts in different physical locations as it uses a different radio system - see later)
In this respect Europe is in a more fortunate than the US as GSM digital cellular networks have become the standard, so the upgrade to GPRS is a logical one.
The growing interest in EvDO adds to the momentum of Qualcomm's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standard that is now used by some of the largest wireless companies, including Verizon and Sprint Corp
This is a strange tack to take, given the dismisal of '3G' as a failure a few lines before.
In Europe the new standard chosen to replace GSM was UMTS, which is based on a CDMA radio sub system. This is a spread spectrum method which brings many benefits, but means you need new masts as the radio coverage is different.
In the US you have Qualcomm's CDMA 2000 system which will evolve into the W-CDMA standard
In practical aspect these are equivalent systems, at least as far as the radio engineering goes - the differences mainly being in how the networks are run and how data is transfered, the underlying carrier technology is very similar, and infact most of the equipment is the same, differing only in the management systems.
So in Europe the delayed roll out of UMTS can be seen really as a factor of the depressed state of the telecoms market, and the fact that the cheaper to roll out GSM based GPRS system gives you high speed data access.
In the US there is no easy upgrade from an existing network as GSM didn't make much of an inroad and the better range in fringe areas of analogue systems like TACS is more suitable to the larger country.
Realistically the only way for the major equipment providers to realise the return on investment of thier CDMA technology is to go after the one thing the alternatives don't do well, the domain of large scale wireless data access.
It seems to me that they've learned the wrong lessons, then. The correct response to "We got burned investing in things which could never generate sufficient revenue to earn a return" is not "Invest only in things that will yield immediate returns".
In fact, I'm almost certain that our current economic woes are due primarily to a management mentality that focuses on this quarter's numbers withou scarcely a thought toward two, five, ten years down the line.
How about trying to invest in things that will secure enough revenue to cover the cost and earn additional income over whatever the life of the technology may be?
I mean, this is, I think, basic economics. Isn't it?
--blob
All sweeping generalizations suck.
The 1xEV-DO forward link rate ranges from 38.4kb/s to about 2.4 Mb/s. The reverse link ranges from 9.6kb/s to 153.6 kb/s. Both rates change dynamically according to what the link can support. The overall capacity is greater than IS-95 because stronger error correction coding is used.
The Qualcomm website has quite a bit of detailed technical info. See http://www.qualcomm.com/cdma/1xEV/.
The Data Only (DO) version the article talks about needs its own carrier freq, so the providers must set aside valuable spectrum for data only services (read: expensive). Since none of them can seem to spare the money or the bandwidth at this point, I don't think anyone is eager to implement it, even though the equipment already exists to deploy it.
:)
What will be interesting will be the DV (Data-Voice) standard, which can carry both data (up to 5Mbps) and voice at the same time in the same spectrum used by current 1xRTT and Ev-DO channel. I believe SprintPCS has already decided to skip over DO and go straight to DV, sometime around 2005 when the base station equipment and handsets will become available. It might even happen sooner, if Qualcomm feels pressure from GSM/EDGE/WCDMA camp.
Let the wireless web wars begin
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Verizon is already offering something similiar called "Express Network" that is available on the new expensive 3G phones. For something like a hundred bucks a month they will give you unlimited access as speeds that can max out at close to ISDN.
Sprint is rolling out a similiar service too.
Funny thing is that those technologies aren't catching very much. 3G isn't as big as everyone thought. And as much as I'd like to have 144 on my laptop, I'd need a laptop first, or maybe more than 44k at home. So, my question is, what makes this new in different in a way that will make it catch on?
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Well, 1xEV-DO isn't faster than WiFi. It just works over a much larger area than WiFi does. They're more complementary than competitive.
I don't need 1xEV-DO at work, because work is crawling with Ethernet cables. I don't need 1xEV-DO at home, because it's cheaper to buy WiFi equipment directly instead of paying for wireless by the packet. The only reasons I need wireless data in my car are for driving directions when I'm lost, which - being male - I wouldn't use anyway, and for streaming audio, for which I have a hi-tech device called a "radio" (or, more likely, a "six-disc CD changer").
By the time 1xEV-DV gets to market, McDonald's will have WiFi and you'll get free bandwidth with your Happy Meal. (They'll sell your data to advertisers and interrupt with McDonald's ads, but, hey, free bandwidth.) WiFi destroys the business case for cellular data, just as the unregulated Internet destroys the business case for pop music, and in the long-term WiFi even threatens the core cellular business of providing wireless voice.
Perhaps the real question is whether the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) will someday find itself where the RIAA is today - fighting its customers in a desperate effort to squeeze the last dollar from a dying business model. Time for the Free Spectrum Foundation?