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Just In Case 3G Isn't Speedy Enough
Roland Piquepaille writes "Will we soon be able to download music or videos on our cell phones? Yes, with the arrival of the next 3.5G technology, as reports Jennifer L. Schenker in this International Herald Tribune article. "NTT DoCoMo Inc., the Japanese company that introduced the first third-generation digital mobile phone service in the world, is preparing to pioneer wireless services that are at least 40 times as fast." DoCoMo will use "a technology called HSDPA, for high-speed downlink packet access, also known as 3.5G, [which] is expected to deliver data at as much as 14.4 megabits a second." This new technology will not arrive in Europe before 2006 at least. Check this column for a summary."
Yea, so my 14.4 modem isn't useless after all! What's that you say .. megabits? What's that?
Aaaahhhh!!!11 Horrid flashbacks from a decade ago!
And I still can't make a cell call from home....
"Will we soon be able to download music or videos on our cell phones?"
;)
Us Brits (ok I am welsh really!) have been able to do this already. Three a mobile company here in the UK has been selling handsets and access for a while that provides music/maps/video downloads and calls.
"In Europe, we are now using GPRS, or general packet radio service, also known as 2.5G. And we are limited to 30 kilobits a second."
Note this bloke is from france which is in europe, but a backwater in most things!
Note that the testbed for the DoComo handsets is in Cambridge...UK.
All together now... God save our gracious queen....
This new technology will not arrive in Europe before 2006 at least.
Japan now and in europe in 2006 -- early extrapolations of this trend indicate that this technology will splash into the north american market as early as 2032.
Lets keep our fingers crossed.
"All European operators are eventually expected to move to 3G networks to ensure that there is enough capacity to handle voice and increased data traffic."
I don't think it will be introduced in Europe in the near future. Even WAP is a total disaster here. When will these people learn that we don't need 14.4 Mbits on our cellphone? We just want to make a call and send SMS. Japanese people may like the newest gadgets but in Europe, people do not get excited by this technology..
History matters..
It would be nice to have an mp3 player that you could travel with and continuosly download music to without having to dock it to a stationary PC.
other than that and multiplayer gaming, what cell phone applications possibly need this bandwidth?
They are having a hard time coming up with useful applications for current cell phones with gprs as it is.
Will code a sig generator for food
but we'd prefer broadband in our home for less than a kidney/month and have it *now* instead of 14Mb in our cellphones in 3 years.
How come greece sucks so much that we're the only goddamn country in europe that still hasn't got dialup.
i pay fucking E100/month for sucky dialup.
you really think this 3g shit is going to make us happy?
get lost.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I wish I had that kind of connection via land.
-]Phreak Out[-
Well I mean at this moment in time I got a mobile which does already have most of those nifty features. I do video conference, video mail, surf the web, record video (mind you with a 128MB flash rom I do 2 hours worth) and got many other new features. Only thing that is missing is a mp3 player in it, then I could get rid of the one I got now and just use the mobile :)
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
They do get rather excited though by the prOn.
Maybe you live in interesting times
We have had 3G introduced here in the UK and so far it is awful. The handsets are expensive, the service is expensive, the battery life is very poor, the phones don't play mp3/ogg, the reception is extremely bad and you cannot get "The Internet" on the system either (they don't like you talking about that).
.COM boom which will never make its money back.
Call it what you like and make it as fast as you like but no-one is biting. It is an expensive technology conceived and financed at the height of the
Our biggest telecoms company wrote off the £9-billion license cost last week to try and stimulate the market. Guess what...no change.
The first commercial vendor of 3G (a company called "3") has already resorted to pron to try to raise interest.
Save your money, buy more memory or a bigger screen, or send your money to Ethiopia, but don't waste your cash on this junk it will only disappoint.
I've even seen some documents out of DoCoMo themselves that suggest they're thinking of moving toward a system that allows smooth roaming between high-bandwidth (1 Gbps) hotspots and a wide-area cellular system for a future 4G network.
Can anyone familiar with this standard enlighten me as to how Wi-Fi and related technologies figure in it?
This new technology will not arrive in Europe before 2006 at least.
And the US are so backwater that they're not even mentionned, just like Africa.
i had a sig, once..
But, 14.4Mbps?!?!?! AWESOME! That is faster than my AirPort card! Unfortunately, if DoCoMo follows the same pricing methods as it did for FOMA (their 3G service), then this is something I will never be able to afford. They don't have a flat rate unlimited connection plan, but rather charge based on the amount of data you download (I pay DDI Pocket 10,000 yen per month for unlimited access and I probably abuse it...expensive but worth it for the mobility IMO).
PLEASE, DoCoMo, give us a decently priced flat rate unlimited connection plan. I would seriously consider paying around 15,000 yen per month for something like that at this speed.
BTW, I am currently a DoCoMo customer for my phone service. It isn't too expensive and my only complaints are the 500 character mail limit and the slow connection for iMode (my phone is 2 years old and only connects at 9600bps). But the coverage is AWESOME...and good thing for me since I will be spending a few months travelling around Japan by bicycle and I don't want to be caught without a signal in an emergency situation (speaking of which, any /.ers in Japan want to give a poor American traveler a place to crash for a night? email me).
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
...with downloading pr0n to my cell phone is the screen is so small that all I can view are the thumbnails!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I'm gonna have to keep my tin foil hat.
Only users lose Windows.
Ok, when is this going to be introduced in Europe? Let's make it a bet. I bet 100 slashdollars (the virtual currency used here at slashdot) that it will not be introduced before 2015.
The reason I'm saying this is that most introduction dates for new communication technologies are far too optimistic.
For instance, UMTS was supposed to be introduced by now. Haven't seen it yet. That miscalculation nearly bankrupted KPN Telecom (the Dutch telephone co.). Every home a (A)DSL connection? It's coming but not quite. Every youth an i-Mode? Nope.
Problem is: introducing a new communication protocol usually requires a new infrastructure and that requires a lot of money. And when it is all about investing people (and especially europeans) like too wait for the competitor to make that investment.
Hence my skeptisism.
When we can get less dropped calls and actually get decent cell phone coverage away from the interstates. Check out the cell maps of the major carriers, they all hug the lines created by interstates. You go to a rural area like I'm from and the coverage is crap. IMHO the feature set of cell phones is starting to creep into the "that's cool, but I don't think I'll ever need it" category. The camera phones have got to the be worst.
This space for rent.
According to the investor relations PDF here (in Japanese!), HSPDA was released in March 2002 as part of the FOMA initiative.
It also says the maximum data transfer rate is 14Mbps. Which is not the same as throughput.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Sure, these handsets are 14.4 odleplexes of bandwidths per second, on paper.
I have had a chance to play with a next gen DocoMo handset, and the video - while strictly geek appeal only and something I would deliberatly turn off for every day use so I don't have to shave - was watchable only until you started moving, then it just breaks up. The faster you go the worse the picture - by the time you get up to car+ speeds you are restricted to voice only calls.
They also seem to have a massive latency, far worse than my 14.4k/sec CSD dial up mobile connection, and that's only 1p/min. 3.5G might be good for the odd small file or even some streaming formats, but for SSH it blows.
It would be interesting to find out what compression they use for it - probably something that is as light on the CPU as possible, but that really shows in the transmission quality.
The telecomms industry could do with starting from the ground up (rather than building off the technologically suspect CDMA or GSM systems) with a new, open standard 100% packet based network with IP6 support - then and maybe then the internet (and related services) on a mobile level could become a killer app. Until then they would be best off sticking to voice calls and massivly overcharging for SMS.
Beep beep.
Uau, just think of this: my current operator charges 0,02 per 1024 bytes with GPRS connections. (Portugal, Optimus)
/sec.
That's right, you read it correctly, it's 0,02 per 1024 bytes!
At these prices 14.4Mbps is almost 2000
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
Nicely argumented view. I especially like your references to numerous studies on the subject. And thanks for making it clear to me that I don't want mobile wideband-applications.
Phew, I think I'd better go crawling back to the local landline monopoly and beg them to re-install a landline connection.
It won't get you mod points. ;-(
16.8K HST to be exact.
Ahh and the arms race to get to 19.8!!!
Suck it down NTT!
I can only talk from my point of view, but enough all ready with
-You can play your MP3s on it
-You can watch video on it
-You can teach it to knit
It's supposed to be a phone....
The only free time i have is when I cycle to work on a bicycle in the rain I don't even listen to that much music in the first place.
I'll put my hand in my pocket and buy a phone when it stops me getting wet when i cycle to work or when it makes my work easier.
I was blown away when in early 1996 i saw a hand held, web enabled, colour touch screen, digital camera Sharp Zauras in Japan for 40,000 JPY (400 USD/Euro), actually i think the black and white one was that much, but it blew me away at the time and everything else since has been a bit dull.
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
GSM/GPRS might be loosing the technology war but they are certainly winning the propaganda war.
Now NTT is entering the propaganda fray.
3G is here! S. Korea and the US are running it and it is winning the hearts and minds of all that use it. Substance usually (not always) wins over pure BS and CDMA will have a huge user base before the rest of the world (Europe and Japan) get their 3G up, running and cost effective. Now the euro 3G is said to be ready by 2006, what happened to 4Q02? The last stand of GSM will be for operators to screw with CDMA interoperability with existing networks (see the post about India's CDMA network.)
The GSM/GPRS/UMTS lie will eventually come to light.
FYI: Lucent built the NTT 3G demo Systems. I know, I was there!
You get this. Companies advancing technology to offer better services to stay ahaead of their competition.
:-(
It's a damn shame not a lot of this happens in the U.S. anymore.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Here, they talk about 70-80$ a month plus 2$/MB. Me thinks... That is quite different.....Suppose I could dig up some links...
Verizon Wireless is testing EVDO (Evolution Data Only) in the beltline area of Washington State.
z il la-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf- 8
:)
While it does not promise 14 megabit speeds (What you gonna run slashdot off it?) it will do 600Kbit while moving and 2.4 megabit stationary.
I think also there's an expansion out in San Diego also.
http://www.google.com/search?q=EVDO&sourceid=mo
Edumacate yourself
And all I want is a good cell phone plan
Do you cycle to work?
Assuming that by the time the networks get built we can use fuel-cell batteries, then the problem will be heat build-up. Can you imagine a phone with a fan? Heat pumps are little help, because they can only move heat from inside to the case, and you can't have the phone getting too hot to hold. "Are you happy to see me, or is that a 4G phone in your pocket?" I suppose ice fisherman could use them to keep their hands warm.
Before these things could become practical we would need asynchronous-logic chips or spin-coupled logic, both over a decade off.
The days of defrauding investors are far from over.
"all you 'rich' assholes want Internet. You are LUCKY to have a phone! Now get out!"
Nice? And then the chief technician (of a 200.000 people area in Athens) comes and tries to be a 'techie' , only to make you understand that his knowledge of modems is stuck to the ones seen in 'Wargames' (seriously).
But we have ISDN you might say... well.. when the 2 technicians came to my house to do the installation, i was told that the 'idiot' electrical engineer had made it impossible for the line to work. I told them to leave the Network Terminal device and get out, then i installed it myself. (And i am not a techie).
But they are not just ignorant idiots, they are also cheating bastards. When the phone company (OTE) started selling special low rate numbers for Internet connectivity (EPAK) they only sold to their subsidiary (OTENET) and not to other ISPs. All they paid was a 150000 Euro's fine (small money to what they gained. Customers of OTENET paid less money on they phone accounts than other ISP's).
The stories i can tell you about the phone company in Greece would make most slashdoters cry in agony with the prospect of ever coming to the banana country.. err.. Greece.
But! to be fair, the Mobile phone infrastructure is actually quite good!. 3G is coming, and GPRS (2,5G) has been here for years.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Give some sort of a bundle, like free subscription to club strip. Nothing will get those 3G phones rolling like the idea of having pr0n (sorta) on the go!
I have the Sprint Pocket PC CDMA phone from Toshbia, and I'm in their area where I can get their "Vision" services. I can stream mostly classical/digitally imported to my cell phone with no issue. It's stereo, I can play it back in stereo, or use it as my "Other XM" when I'm driving through the city. I can also stream videos from my server with no issues. I can ssh into boxes with no issues (aside from the lack of keyboard).
Although I hate sprint PCS with a passion, I will admit that the Service is ok...as I generally get the same speeds showing a full signal or a limited signal, and my phone makes it through a 10 hour workday plus a commute.
I disable sigs...do you?
Japan might have a market for it, but I have difficulty believing anywhere else does.
Simple question:
If I can't use my cell phone in the basement, on the elevator, wherever... how can I continue to put more and more important data on its network?
The phone companies will never have an incentive to serve my basement (at work)... so what I really need is some kind of inexpensive repeater... 802.11x or whatever.
Since the idea of active repeaters (as opposed to remote antennas in a high-rise to improve reception) is so contrary to the way the telephone industry works, how are we ever going to get "cooperating networks," where the data flows on the best possible path?
If you search at most of the mobile network manufacturers you can find actual real hard info about this system. For example this PDF white paper at Nokia.
Now if they made a way for that phone to talk to my car's stereo, so I could recieve streaming audio while I drive, now that would be cool.
Otherwise, I see very little point in these phones.
Yeah like this is ever going to fly. At least not in the US, assuming it even gets a chance to be done over here in the first place.
Cause I mean, why give people decent connection speeds when you can rape small businesses out the ass with 1980s telecom pricing plans? A T-1 has to be $1000/month FOREVER, so nobody can have that kinda upstream for less.
Oh and since AT&T will force a 19.2k upstream cap, and the greedy and desperate wireless companies will disallow normal TCP connections unless you pay for their "wireless adapter kit!" i.e. we unlock TCP on your phone from a laptop for $100-200 or whatever we think we can assrape you for, it'll be pretty much useless.
Sometimes I think we'll have random 802.11 boxes covering the entire country before any kind of unlimited wireless internet even gets concieved at any price.
To be honest the idea of Big Brother watching everything we say and do doesn't scare me as much as Big Uncle wanting a cut of everything we buy and use. I mean survellance can miss a 300,000lb jet going 500mph the wrong way down the hudson corridor for an hour, but if you're one second out of those free night and weekend minutes you're nailed!
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
This has the potential to fuck up all local wideband broadband startups. I can foresee the federal & corporate businesses cracking down on small and free wideband usage. These guys know that 3g sucked and couldn't compete with wideband so they incorporated it and now will try and force wideband users out of the market potentially. This is a big potential conflict when Corporate owned government and small and small and free enterprises collide . You can kiss free WIDEBAND access good bye!
more info here at the register on hdspa
In the meantime can we fix the problem with dead spots I have in my town right now?
This kind of bandwidth is used by mobile phones for video-calls and streaming. This is all "lifestyle" applications. It's 14.4mbps but how many people connect this to a laptop or PDA? The point is, too much bandwidth, too little application.
Most of the time video-calls will show someone's ear...
Telcos want to deliver content. Voice was the content, data is the content, but they want to control it, like MyO2 or Vodafone Live! services, "walled garden" services.
Of course other services with "bursts" of data benefit of this: courier drivers, warehouse transfer, etc. But people with need of data in specific locations like hotels, airports and other end up using wi-fi.
They're not competing technologies, but complement each other.
Well shit, who needs a 14.4 megabit connection on thier cellphone? Screw that, tell me how to hook it up to my computer.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
3.5G?? 40 x as fast??? bwahhahaha! The global auctions of 3G spectrum netted billions worldwide, crippling Telco's, and we still have yet to see this technology (except in Japan) because the costs to the consumer are massive. Yet forget all that, whens 3.5G coming out?
Do you need a website upgrade?
According to Stephen Hawkings Brief History of Time,
rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb...
Laptops are the future of computer hardware. Apple knows it. The rest of the industry is starting to catch up. People want internet on the go. Wireless internet access in the home/workplace is taking off, but people are going to want internet everywhere.
Is it not hard to see that there is a void there that cellular networks can fill?
Once you are using a laptop or uber-PDA on a cellular internet then you are going to use up as much bandwidth as you are given, so let's not be stupid enough to say that nobody is going to want broadband speeds on cellular networks.
If they can offer something fast, and more importantly, something affordable, it will be a huge market. It could be as huge as this first wave of cell phone adoption that we've just gone through.
If it's kept too expensive and limited, though, then it will NEVER take off.
Sprint PCS Vision. 500 anytime minutes, unlimited night and weekend minutes, unlimited minutes to other Sprint phones, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited 150 kilobit data service.
$45 per month on your phone. You can hook it up to your PC if you want..
T-Mobile Sidekick. 200 anytime minutes, 1000 night and weekend minutes, no roaming, no long distance. Unlimited GPRS data service. Java based, free SDK available. AIM native client. Native email client. And one really cool microbrowser. $40 per month.
Two ways to get unlimited data for under $50 per month. Looks like the US isn't so bad after all.