Is 3G Irrelevant?

An anonymous reader writes "Network Magazine asks 'Are We Better Off Without 3G?' in which the author notes that many networkers are giving up on 3G as a data services alternative due to high deployment costs and slower speeds vs. Wi-Fi. Given these issues, are we likely to see carriers like Nextel bypassing 3G for 4G technologies such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) by Flarion Technologies?"

Comments

"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[GreenJeepMan]

I just tried to visualize that... I think I burst an artery.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[Drakonian]

I think it works on the same premise as a Flux Capacitor.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[jester]

Its the sort of phrase that would come up in board rooms where people like to play "w@nk word bingo"

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[nerdbert]

OFDM? Dude, it's out there already. Check out the specs for 802.11g. It's not rocket science and similar signal processing has been used for a long time in other environments.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[tdvaughan]

A spot of Googlage turned up this. Didn't make it any clearer to me, though.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[Alan Partridge]

We use it for TV transmission in the UK.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[Vaystrem]

Who needs OFDM tomorrow when you already have KMFDM today!

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[murphyslawyer]

Of course, we all know that the Flux Capacitor is simply a modified Interocitor.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[bad_fx]

...Yup, you just have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and hey presto.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[davebaum]

Conceptually, OFDM isn't too complicated... If you have 100Mb/s that you want to move wirelessly, one way to do it is to figure out how to modulate 100Mb/s into a single (albeit very wide) channel. OFDM takes a different approach. You split the big stream of data into many little streams. Let's say you break the 100Mb/s into 500 streams of 200Kb/s each. Each of these streams is then modulated into its own channel. By transmitting/receiving all of these channels simultaneously you can reconstruct the original 100Mb/s stream. On the surface it may not seem like you have gained much, because now you have to deal with 500 smaller channels (called sub-carriers) instead of just 1 big one, but there are techniques that can make the 500 small channels more effective than a single large one. You also don't have to give all 100Mb/s to the same client...maybe one client gets 200 of the sub-carriers, another uses 10, etc. The allocation can be completely dynamic. As an analogy, consider taking 20 dial-up lines and spreading IP traffic across all 20 of them to create a broadband connection.

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing"

[akpcep]

Only we don't, because they're now called MDFMK.

Irrelevant technology

[frankthechicken]

All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the public.

Re:Irrelevant technology

[Anonymous Coward]

All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the public.

... and in some parts of the world, public acceptance won't come easily.

I live in Sweden, and here there are several counties that will not grant building permits to any of the 3G service providers because of the uglification of the landscape and people's worries about electromagnetic radiation.

Then there's the question of what you would use it for.

Will the 'need' to watch a movie on the bus, as seen in a Nokia commercial from a while back, outweigh the perceived problems, and initially very high costs?

Selling porn is mentioned a possible 'safe' revenue stream for the service providers, but who wants to watch that on a 2" screen ... on a bus? :-)

Re:Irrelevant technology

[bobm17ch]

All new technology is irrelevant to the public until it is taken up by the public's imagination.

All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the armed forces.

All new technology is irrelevant. My old toaster still works, dammit.

Re:Irrelevant technology

[mickwd]

"All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the public."

And how many members of the public with atomic bombs do you know ?

OFDM != 4G

[Wesley Felter]

OFDM is an encoding, not a protocol. Both Wi-Fi and WiMax (802.16) use OFDM, and I wouldn't be surprised if 4G (802.20) systems end up using it as well.

Re:OFDM != 4G

[Artemis P. Fonswick]

OFDM is more resistant to multipath effects. In conventional spread spectrum, data is pumped rapidly through a single carrier, modulated by a spreading code. With OFDM, the data is modulated and sent across a large number of closely spaced RF carriers at the same time. Sort of like parallel, as opposed to serial transmission. Because the bits are sent in parallel, they can individually be sent at a much slower rate, while still yielding the same overall transmission throughput. Because each bit is "on the air" for a longer period of time, there are less problems with multipath effects.

Well...

[Mindwarp]

Given these issues, are we likely to see carriers like Nextel bypassing 3G for 4G technologies such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) by Flarion Technologies?"

I suspect that will be almost entirely dependant on the amount of political lobbying carried out by the 3G and 4G proponents. Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days.

Re:Well...

[Falrick]

Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days.

Unless, of course, you are using an Iden system, which is what Nextel uses. Iden is contrary to everything that most of the Slashdot crowd cries for: it's a closed proprietary standard owned and developed by Motorola. However, because it's a closed standard Motorola is more free to do crazy and wild things with it than they (or Ericson, Nokia, Qualcomm, etc...) are with, say, 3GPP or 3GPP2. It's free from the political squables of which handoff algorithm should be included in the standard.

Of course, these are all of the plus points and none of the detractors, but you get the idea. Because there is no politics (or relatively so) involved in Iden technological inovation is arguably simpler than when dealing with the standards body. Its hard enough getting everyone within a company to agree on how to do something, let alone trying to convince other companies of the merits of your pattened process from which you stand to gain financially every time your competitor makes a phone.

Re:Well...

[posa]

"Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days"

Yes, you right on that. But as a teacher ones said to me then I asked if 3G was out of date before it had been deployed "Never underestimate the power of a standard".
Of course there are better technology today than it was for ten(?) years then 3G became a standard. But it is like buying a new computer "Hey, Intel will realese a new processor that will be better. I wait just a title bit longer". So, if we are to use a better technology, than we have to wait another ten years. That's the time it take to develop a new standard and make the equipment.
It still is only a small part of the job to choose whatever to use super-duper modulation or hexaquad modulation.

The problem with 3G is money. It will be interesting to se how many tele companies that will go under.

Re:Well...

[andy1307]

Iden is contrary to everything that most of the Slashdot crowd cries for: it's a closed proprietary standard owned and developed by Motorola.

Since there is no US standard(GSM/CDMA etc), each carrier is free to choose the technology it needs. IDEN is important to Nextel for their walkie talkie feature. The walkie talkie feature, used by small business workers and public safety officials, is Nextel's USP. They need to go with IDEN for that reason. Without IDEN and the walkie talkie feature that works well on iden, nextel would be struggling like the other mobile carriers.

Re:Well...

[andy1307]

Carriers will first have to lobby for A US-wide standard and then lobby for their choice(3G/4G). What's the point of lobbying for a 4G standard if other carriers are not obligated to support it.

Re:Well...

[deaddrunk]

Although the non-proprietary GSM seems to have worked fairly well (outside the US at any rate)don't you think?
3G is a mess because the licenses were bought at the height of the internet/telecomms boom for far more than they were worth with pretend money that dried up when the market fell.

Re:Well...

[Saige]

The entire original purpose of the iDEN system was the walkie-talkie style dispatch call feature. The first set of phones available for the system looked a lot like classic walkie talkies instead of the other cell phones that were available at the time. (IE, a big brick! But you could drop it down a flight of stairs with little damage, and some even worked after being in a fire)

The dispatch call made Nextel and iDEN quite popular with construction companies first, as they'd normally use walkie talkies for communication around sites, and this allowed that without the cost of setting up a system, along with giving employees a cell phone in the process. I believe that as some of the bigger companies started using the system, smaller contractors pretty much had to follow along.

Nextel has gained a LOT of regular customers, however, and isn't just for the business users anymore, as people are realizing that the private call ability is quite nice for quick, short communication.

And for those who use the system, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming down the pipe, both in system features and new phones. But I can't say any more about what exactly, just wait. :)

Re:Well...

[nolife]

[beep-beep] ye ha ge da ah could you da [click] do a yeh za [click][beep-beep]

That's about how our Nextel 2 way works. Eventually you can piece together a response of "screw the two way dude, call my number directly". The phone part of it works pretty good.

what 3g?

[fragged one]

hell, we don't even have 3g in the us at this time. we're still on 2.5g, hopefully to have 3g by the end of 2004-2005. with ntt docomo testing true 4g in japan recently, it makes you wonder why even bother with 3g?

re:what 3g?

[ed.han]

this is what we get for taking so long re: GSM. and remember, japan's mighty small: upgrading the infrastructure in an area the size of connecticutt (or is it rhode island) is vastly easier than it is elsewhere.

ed

Re:what 3g?

[jaoswald]

Japan has a land area of about 378,000 km^2, or 146,000 mi^2. That is between Arizona and Montana in area; only about 15% smaller than California. Connecticut is about 5,500 mi^2. So Japan is over 25x the size of Connecticut.

re:what 3g?

[ed.han]

(this is what i get for not looking at that pretty atlas i bought a few months back...)

OK, my bad, but my larger point is still valid, i think: japan's pretty darned small vis a vis the US, so infrastructure changes there can and will proceed significantly faster than they could here in the US.

ed

Re:what 3g?

[evilned]

Last I checked most of japan was not on GSM. There is GSM service for travellers, but for the most part it is CDMA. Same with South Korea. That is part of the reason they have had 3g services far quicker than Europe. CDMA to CDMA2000 handoffs are relatively easy compared to GSM to WCDMA handoffs.

Re:what 3g?

[lpret]

ed.han has a good point, but let me extend it further: It's because the U.S. is so big that it is hard to roll out new tech. As another poster noted, GSM coverage looks like a road map with smudges in a few major cities. However, the tech-centric user is only going to need these areas, and this coverage is based on need.

I mean, honestly, think about you're cellphone user in bumfsck, Iowa. They don't need to be able to connect to the internet with their cellphone, they don't need access to their email 24/7, they just need voice. So, why set up an infrastructure that they don't need? GSM covers what is needed. I live in Waco, Texas, I use GSM, and I get great signal all the time. When I drive to Dallas, Austin, San Anton, it works amazingly well. This is all that a techie needs: cities, and the roads between them. Anything more would be a waste of resources.

Re:what 3g?

[bdc0]

Also having a huge number of subscribers ("subs") that spend lots of money on value-added services (e.g. pictures "shaMail", ringtones) helps pay the bills for upgrades. Disclaimer: I work for a wireless data company.

Re:what 3g?

[maxume]

More than the size, the much higher population density is what is responsible for the faster upgrades. You can get all kinds of funky services in places like New York city. Iowa? Not so much...

Re:what 3g?

[Matrix272]

3G, 2.5G, 4G, 18G... Je(pun intended)sus, how many G's can a human being take before his brain is squashed into the size of a pee in the back of his skull?

Re:what 3g?

[uradu]

> so infrastructure changes there can and will proceed significantly faster

Not at all. Places like Japan or most European countries have virtually 100% coverage of the entire country, meaning that there is a sh*tload of infrastructure--just in a much tighter space. In fact, it would be interesting to see a comparison of the total number of cell towers deployed in the entire US versus some of these European countries or Japan. I doubt you'd see an order of magnitude difference.

Re:what 3g?

[goofrider]

That's an unfair analogy. Japan might be small, but most of the major cities in Japan has much higher population density that even Manhattan.

And of course, the Japanese customers are generally more welcoming to new technologies altogether.

The combination of smaller size and higher population and lower barrier makes it a hotbed for new wireless technologies.

On another note, Three UK and Three HK will have limited 3G service in their repective markets by the end of 2003 / start of 2004.

Re:what 3g?

[mesocyclone]

As a storm chaser techie, what I need is high bandwidth internet connections in Nowhere, Nebraska and Outback, Oklahoma. You wouldn't believe the lengths storm chasers go to for good data! Imagine a van with DirectWay on the roof - yep... it's out there chasing tornados.

Of course, we are hardly an interesting market to mobile phone providers... but hey, please waste the resources, just for us.

Nextel

[madowl]

As a daily user of Nextel's services, I think they should be concentrating on improving the reliability of their service before they even think of what technology they are going to move to next.

Re:Nextel

[behemot]

Dont kill Nextel yet. In Chicago that's the only cell provider that consistently works in the city and near suburbs. (Compared to Sprint, ATT GSM, TMobile and Verizon)

Re:Nextel

[Y!]

Yeah CDMA PTT more like Push, Wait, then Talk.
Call setup will have a least a ten second pause from the time you hit the button till you can talk, EVERY time you talk. Unlike the 2 second MAX to start a call and the less than 1 second to continue the call that nextel has.

If you want to roam get an i2000 nextel/gsm phone.

And the other carriers would kill to have that kind of a lock on "business" customers.

The only real danger is that Verizons PTT will suck so bad that it will sour the entire market for the feature.

Re:Nextel

[bigpat]

"I think they should be concentrating on improving the reliability of their service before they even think of what technology they are going to move to next."

What if the new technology fixes the problems?

This is largely just rhetorical, since I have no idea what the problems are that concern you and how they would be affected by any of these new technologies. But fundamentally the argument that you should fix your problems before trying something new is flawed, since you can never fix a problem unless you try something new.

Don't expect 3G for quite some time..

[stanmann]

Most people have no desire to pay for another upgrade to their voice service. This is a lesson that must be learned, and re-learned. Customers don't want convergence unless it is cheaper than the sum of the parts. Joe Average is fully prepared to pay $40 each for 3 products and services that give him exactly what he wants, but is unwilling to pay more than $80 for one product and service that provides the total package.

Re:Don't expect 3G for quite some time..

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You do have a point.

I know that Sprint has their "vision" service which is Internet over cell phone, I've read it's equivalent to 2.5G, whatever that means. It is an extra $10 a month.

The problem is that I don't want to read email or web surf on a 100x100 pixel screen. The downloads they direct you to are for ~100x100 pixel backgrounds, and they charge $3 for that small image that expires in 60-90 days. Ditto for ring tones and animations. It's all worthless crap, which I can't even sample it to see if I'll like it before I buy. Would you pay for a picture if you have no clue what it looks like?

I suppose when 3-in-one products are more available and affordable, I might go for Internet on a PDA/phone/camera, because it might be more useful that way if I can send and receive pictures and surf the web on a much higher res screen.

Forget high deployment costs!

[Abalamahalamatandra]

How about high USE costs? AT&T Wireless seems to think that I personally am going to pay the entire cost of building their network - $5.99 for a megabyte of data a month?

And meanwhile they're happily signing up Blackberries with unlimited data for peanuts.

Is it any wonder the average joe is telling them what to do with it?

Re:Forget high deployment costs!

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

T-Mobile's rates were just as stupid. It would appear that they have a new method of disguising this fact. They don't charge per megabyte, they charge per minute. $40 a month and .20cents a minute. At 1k bytes per second (optimistic GPRS avg. transfer rate (really, try it)) it's $3.33 per meg.

On the second megabyte in a MONTH this is more expensive than my cable modem.

Even if you lived near a transmitter and got 3k bytes per second (30k bits avg.), clicking the "Little Coders predicament" Read More button will cost you a minute's wait, and 20 cents. Surfing adds up quickly that way.

When I can comfortably surf (3k/bytes/sec) for 30 minutes a day anywhere I normally drive for $40 a month, I'll buy it. At $220 I'll do without thank you.

There will always be early adopters

[bhsx]

Why give up on it? Surely the outlandish pricing will come down, as that is set for early adopters to offset the research costs. 3G has had this crowd drooling for 1.5yrs (at least), someone will cash in on that cow.

Fix the voice first.

[Zaphod B]

I'd like to see mobile providers concentrate more on getting their 2G (voice) networks rolled out and matured across America and Canada. You in Europe are lucky -- you have almost 100% coverage. Here in America that is patently not the case - even in large cities such as San Francisco, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

Have you SEEN the GSM map of the US? Looks like a road atlas with smudges.

Fix what you have, mobile providers, and then start dreaming of 3G.

Re:Fix the voice first.

[Yet Another Smith]

This is a bit misleading, but you have a point. Quality of service needs to be adressed in the US mobile industry. I get an inexcusable number of dropped calls, largely because Sprint (and their competition) has failed to increase the capacity of their networks to meet demand. However, this has nothing to do with GSM. In fact, to fix what they have, the operators who are starting to transition to GSM should abandon that immediately. Fix the CDMA network and then build a euro-compatible 3G network.

GSM is of course not the dominant technology in the US. Most mobile operators rolled out CDMA-based networks as their first digital networks (PCS-type networks, replacing the old AMPS analog cellular networks). CDMA standards have technological advantages and disadvantages relative to TDMA, which the GSM standard is based on, which can be debated to death with as much relevance as the Vi/Emacs wars. However, since Europe had a single standard, and population about 1.5x as big as the US, and much better population density for mobile purposes, coupled with the perception that Europe's wire-line telco-networks were of poorer quality, mobile was adopted quicker and was more profitable there. In the US, people were more satisfied with their wire-line service, and the lower population density drove up mobile costs, leading to slower adoption, and lower returns on mobile infrastructure investments.

Some of the US providers are transitioning their networks to GSM to take advantage of the uniformity/economies of scale of jumping onto the same standard as Japan and Europe. However, since most implementations of 3G in use in Europe and Japan are compatible with GSM, the US operators would be fools to spend money catching up with where Europe was rather than getting to where they're going especially given that going to modern 3G will solve their 2G problems as well. To lean on the old WWII metaphor as a crutch for a minute - that'd be a bit like trying to win the war in the pacific by building more battleships and ignoring aircraft carriers because, "We need to get our battleship fleet to the point where it can compete with the Japanese before we try and match their carriers!"

Oh, and with SMS, I'm sorry, but that's just not gonna be a killer app for me. I've had some form of that capability in my mobile since I got it, but I've never used it. You know why? I'd just as soon call somebody rather than try and type out a message using the various crappy methods for keying alphanumerics on a number pad. I'm not sure what the pressures are that makes that desireable in Europe, but I'm not interested. Don't get me wrong - I've read my sci-fi, and I want my datasphere. I'm much more interested in true 3G stuff which would probably require an integrated PDA/phone, or even a tablet. But anything less and I'm just not interested. Give me a pretty good web thing, where I can look up directions to bars, shops and restuarants, look up movie times, and maybe even some basic access to google so I can resolve questions on the run, and you've got something. I can even think of some good applications of location-based-services that I'd be interested in. But seriously, Europe, what's the big deal with email-lite from worst typing interface ever?

Re:Fix the voice first.

[yetiman]

I don't know about you, but the GSM coverage from Rogers AT&T in Canada is pretty damn good. They Claim 93% coverage, but it's probably for around 80% or so.

Re:Fix the voice first.

[Cato]

There aren't any US CDMA providers going to GSM - the only ones going GSM are AT&T Wireless and Cingular, who were both TDMA-based. VoiceStream aka T-Mobile was GSM from the start. There are lots of misconceptions about your argument on Europe's allegedly poorer land lines (why do I always get 20-25Kbps in US on dialup, vs 40+ Kbps in UK, if they are really inferior?) but I can't be bothered to rebut them all. See my other recent postings for details if you're interested.

UMTS in the US is hard pressed because of lack of spectrum, so GSM and EDGE are very sensible decisions for operators who want to be able to capture international roaming fees (from tourists in US and from US customers abroad), which are significant revenue streams.

SMS is something you have to use before you realise it's useful - not for everyone, but if someone is in a noisy environment or on a train or in a meeting, it's much more friendly to just send them a short text message. Also avoids mis-transcription of messages, and beeps someone as soon as they get a message (unlike email where almost everyone has to check for new messages, and of course find a PC to do so).

Email on phones is a killer app too - my SonyEricsson P800 makes it easy to check for email (IMAP or POP3), and it also runs Opera (with SSL, JavaScript, frames, etc, and good small screen rendering). Not to mention Doom :)

Re:Fix the voice first.

[mark2003]

Give me a pretty good web thing, where I can look up directions to bars, shops and restuarants, look up movie times, and maybe even some basic access to google so I can resolve questions on the run, and you've got something. I can even think of some good applications of location-based-services that I'd be interested in.

3 offer the location enabled services in the UK - ask for your closest pub/post office/ATM etc. and will give you directions and a little map.

But seriously, Europe, what's the big deal with email-lite from worst typing interface ever?

Never met an America who understood the value of SMS (apart from those who live over here) - the main thing is that is fun. It's a mobile version of IM and a great way to keep in touch. Also useful for directory enquiries to send you a phone number that you can use straight from the SMS.

Re:Fix the voice first.

[Yet Another Smith]

You're right about the TDMA thing. I was kinda simplifying a bit there, being sloppy and using 'CDMA' as a catch-all for non-GSM systems, which is of course bogus. As you can't be bothered to discuss landlines, I couldn't be bothered to explain all the intricasies(sp?) of the US mobile tech family tree.

I admit that I've never owned or paid for a land-line in europe, but am I right (from something you said in the bluetooth debates) that local/in-town calls were generally toll calls, and unlimited local calls are a relatively recent offering aimed mostly at dial-up internet? (ie, you pay per call or even per minute) If so (which has been my impression) Europeans would be more amenable to the charge-per-minute, even on incoming calls, and also on having local calls to cell-phones be charged. Americans think of their local phone calls as free, and their mobile ones as expensive. Americans have come around on the issue, to a great extent. I don't have a land-line any more, because I don't need one with a cable-modem and a cell-phone - at least, I don't need one enough to justify $20/month.

I think they also got a perception of elitism here, which didn't help matters. "I'm not gonna be one of those smug a**holes being obnoxious in restaurants!" I always thought that was one of the impediments to their adoption in the US.

As for the spectrum issue with UMTS, yeah, we've got to get the broadcast TV guys to stop squatting on their spectrum. That's actually a perverse artifact of cable-tv regulation, IIRC (cable companies are required to re-transmit broadcast signals, and are required to pay for the privilege, so home-shopping networks got cheap UHF licenses to get free cable channels out of it, and a deal in the HDTV legislation means they can squat there for quite some time). That's gonna take some finagleing that I don't think anybody's got the stomach for, so we're screwed there. However, my main thesis was that the poster's contention that the US should ignore 3G and replace our infrastructure with GSM - effectively matching Europe's current voice-mobile system - would leave us in a situation where we'd spend 5 years and billions of dollars to end up 5 years behind Europe. We can be 5 years behind Europe's mobile infrastructure right now, without spending a dime.

I understand why SMS is good in theory. Its IM anywhere. But a new user interface on the phones would make it so much better. an extra set of 4 buttons down one side, which is 'position 1, position 2, position3, or number' would make that work SO MUCH BETTER! To type 'cab' you would hit (p3+2)(p1+2)(p2+2) rather than (222*)(2*)(22). You chose which 'slot' with the left thumb, and then the number with the right thumb. We've got two thumbs, so why not use them? every letter becomes a two-button-press affair, wherease now its between one and five (in the extreme case where you want to follow the letter 's' immediately by the letter 'p', so have to hit (7777*)(777) to get 'sp'. I have no idea if this makes any sense outside my head, but I really do think it would greatly increase the utility of SMS.

And you prove my other point about SMS/3G utilities when you say that email-on-mobile is a killer ap on 'my SonyEricsson P800'. One of my points was that it requires real PDA/Phone convergence before this stuff will be anything more than a novelty gee gaw in the US. (the P800 is touted as one of the first real PDA/phone/camera convergence peices)

Re:Fix the voice first.

[Cato]

Yes, free local calls (which are really not free in US or UK, just pre-paid monthly for unlimited minutes) are quite recent - they do cover voice as well as dialup Internet, but are mostly for the latter. One recent deal is US$20 per month for free local and UK national calls, unlimited time - this is over a fairly large area (about 800 miles from south to north).

Elitism was also an issue here - back in the late Eighties and up to mid Nineties, only yuppies had mobile phones, or so it seemed, and there were obnoxious people using them in restaurants. The latter are still with us but to a lesser extent, but now 80% of population has a mobile even if some don't use theirs very much.

SMS and email are both useful, for different reasons - the more email becomes like SMS (i.e. always on and delivered to handset) the better it will be. There are various input systems for SMS, google for Tegic T9 for a very popular one, particular amongst non-teenagers who don't want to lrn txt spk. However, one reason SMS has succeeded is that it IS hard to get into, but is also viral since a non-user may get a text message from someone else and want to reply - the investment in time to learn how to use SMS input creates a sort of 'spent so much time learning I might as well use it' effect, a bit like the way Palm users like Graffiti despite it not being much like normal writing. A key plus point of SMS is that you can use it single handed when walking - you can also get qwerty keyboards, some of them built into the phone, but they aren't very popular at the moment.

I agree about PDA/phones aka smartphones - without a large touch screen like the P800, I think most data usage will be limited to SMS, with a tiny bit of MMS and the occasional web/WAP usage.

And I also agree that going GSM instead of 3G would be a mistake for the US - however, I think that GSM, GPRS and EDGE (like GPRS only faster) will be a very common solution. Most GSM base stations in the US have been installed in last couple of years and should already be EDGE-capable - since EDGE is just 3G (similar bandwidth to CDMA2000) that may be the route that they go. AT&T have to install UMTS in a number of cities due to an investment agreement with NTT DoCoMo but everyone else may end up on EDGE.

OFDM?

[autopr0n]

Ok, first of all, wi-fi is great and all but it's range is very limited, and the lack of regulation means that no one can 'own' any piece of spectrum. The range is so small that it would only have a chance of working in dense city places, while cell phone towers can handle miles of land. If anything Wi-fi will augment standard 3g connections when available.

And second of all, what the hell is OFDM? I've never heard of it. Why link to the company page and not a page that actually explains what it is? And anyway, FDMA/TDMA/CDMA are not 'g' technologies, but rather the underlying technology behind them. A new modulation technique (if it turns out to be useful) would take a long time to roll out. CDMA took four or five years before it became all that wide spread.

Re:OFDM?

[luisdom]

Maybe because he supposed that this is a technical enuogh forum in which people can google for this stuff?
Google first link:
ODFM Forum

Naw....

[_Sharp'r_]

It's not any more irrelevent than IPv6 or .

Seriously, there will always be standards and technologies that make it from being in the right place at the right point of the implementation/budget curve and those that end up being skipped or never really fully implemented because it doesn't make sense for most to do so.

The end result of course is, if you didn't spend years on the standard yourself and your company isn't betting the farm on it, then: "Who cares?"

Re:Naw....

[_Sharp'r_]

Apparently ye olde slashdot filter removed the joke just after the . in the above post because it was written in the forbidden greater-than and less-than signs.

Meant to say that:

It's not any more irrelevent than IPV6 or (insert ISDN-style or .net-style standard or technology here).

3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[WIAKywbfatw]

At least that's the view here in the UK, where the 3G services available here so far are being sold on the strength of picture messaging and video phone calls.

Unsurprisingly, sending a picture message or making a video call costs a lot more than sending a text message or making a regular call. New services generally command a price premium, so I guess that's to be expected, but what really gets my goat is how utterly useless (beyond the novelty factor) picture messaging and video calls are. Why use a picture message when a text message is so much clearer and 10-30 times cheaper? Why make a video call when a voice one will suffice at a fraction of the cost?

I'm sorry, but I want more from my next generation handset than just postage stamp sized pictures. And, if the current take up of 3G phones here and elsewhere is anything to go by, so does everyone else.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[rcs1000]

Not only that but (and I speak as a 3 subscriber myself)...

* You can get picture messaging on 2G phones. It works well, and there is (some) interoperability between networks.

* The Internet access speed is LOWER than 2G's GPRS. I mean, what?

* The picture call feature is useless. The picture lags the voice by several seconds, making it almost completely unusable. Aaaarggghh.

Just my thoughts...

Robert

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[91degrees]

Yep. Video calls are just a gimmick. Perhaps downloadable video clips will come in useful, but I get the feeling this will not be popular until at least a short cartoon can be downloaded and viewed. at a reasonable price.

The thing is, people don't need any of this. We just want to communicate. Voice only is good enough for that. We may want better text support, but currently screens are simply too small for a significant improvement.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[norite]

My mobile phone is 3 years old. It's only the second mobile I have ever had (I lost the first one). It's a very basic phone. It's compact, I can send the odd text with it, it has no games, no polyphonic ring tones, none of that utter rubbish. It's a basic mobile phone and it works just fine.

3G? Pffft!!! Who wants it anyway? Certainly not me! :)

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[3eyes]

another case of a great technology in the hands of people with no imagination. I can think of a million uses for being able to send data over the air at speeds higher than 1-4 kb/s For a start a p800 with an ssh client and i got me a reason :) Other more general purposes are mobile internet, which means email and so on wherever you are. I have had this for the past year and been very very happy this ability. Its like when i didnt have a mobile. 'why do i need a mobile?' then u get it and it changes the way u live and u ask urself things like how did i live before, fast data over mobile networks will be the same. we just need some imagination first.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[ctve]

It's the gimmicky crap that gets me. "Watch premiership goals". That would be the premiership goals that if you are happy to wait until you get to a TV you can often see on BBC/ITV in full screen.

Personally, unless the price comes way down (and in which case how long is it going to take the 3G license holders to recoup the billions spent on them, let alone cover the interest), I'm not interested.

Movies? Being watched on a titchy low-res screen? Get real.

The only use I can think of for myself is roaming high-speed. When I worked as a consultant, I travelled the country, and being able to get high data rate downloads would have been nice.

But then, the wi-fi hotspots that are rapidly appearing across the country at airports, hotels and cafes, will do that for me, and presumably run at a fraction of the 3g infrastructure costs.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[uradu]

> Why use a picture message when a text message is so much clearer

Because a picture says a thousand words?! Just kidding. I think the industry has shown a phenomenal lack of foresight with UMTS. The writing has been on the wall for over a decade that the trend is towards integrated services--everything over one pipe, hail TCP/IP and open standards. The slate was clean, they could have gone for the grand slam of moving to IP phones and leaving proprietary protocols behind. With time and extra spectrum it could have grown into one seamless wireless cloud of phone, video, data, radio and TV connectivity. No more proprietary technologies for all the various things going over the air. Instead, we got UMTS. Oh well.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[kiwi_james]

I was given a 3 phone to trial for 3 months or so, and I can only agree that it is a complete disappointment.

I agree with the comments about connection speed, but for me the biggest killer was the immaturity of the handsets. I had an NEC 606 (the most common 3G phone that they offer) and it suffered from the following problems:

- No battery life. None. If you charged it, and then left it switched off (that's right off, not on standby) if you came back after 3-4 days it would be flat! Even if you used it straight after charging, you'd be lucky to get more than 2 hours of use out of it before the battery went flat.

- You can't use the phone whilst it's charging (somewhat of a problem when the phone is constantly flat).

- Navigation through the menus of the phone was painfully slow, and made you feel like you were using a phone from 5 years ago.

Admittedly these are problems directly with the phone, but I think it's somewhat symptomatic of the entire 3G offering here in the UK - rushed to market with an immature technology set.

Also the fact that you couldn't surf the Internet (thank's for turning of that feature 3!) and install Java apps on it took some of the interest away.

Whilst Video calling was interesting for about 3 miunutes, it isn't really that useful day-to-day. One of the great things about telephones is not looking at someone's ugly face! Would be good for people in long distance relationships I suppose - and certainly 3's adverts in the UK are pushing the adult line of interest.

On that point - A friend of mine also had a trial phone, and after some weeks of downloading video clips of football goals and comedy acts, he found the phone's true killer feature (at least for some) - soft porn. He had five grainy 1-minute glips of naked women downloaded on his phone. Amusing when you're at the pub with the lads, but not really worth it at the end of the day.

So all-in-all, I'm extremely glad that I didn't pay for the phone (in fact it's sitting under my desk waiting for the courier to pick it up to take it away).

However, good luck to 3, I hope they are able to have some success and find their niche in the market. I might have another look when the next generation of handsets come out, but until then it's 2G for me.

Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment...

[Scorchio]

I totally agree.. they've got this wonderful technology and not the slightest idea of what to actually do with it. I guess they're still looking for that elusive killer-app that's going to make us all sit up and think "ahhh, so that's why I need a 3G phone!"

Three's current advertising campaign of "get comedy clips sent to your phone" is about as weak as it can get. However, I did have to laugh of the example comedy clip shown of the two guys comparing each other's high tech wrist watches, packed with impressive but useless features - it's a great way to promote these high tech phones, packed with impressive but use.. ah, you know.

Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the huge investment in 3G licensing throughout Europe which nearly bankrupted many of the phone companies (and incidently made goverments such as the UK lots of £££)
I don't see 3G going away too quickly, the phone companies have too much invested to throw it all away and start again, video services are just starting to be offered, the companies CANT afford to use alternate systems.
{[ www.insightdynamiks.com ][ psychedelic trance parties]}

Re:Unlikely

[bananahammock]

Exactly. Look in todayâ(TM)s news. Hutchison is suing their partner in Europe, KPN, for not ponying up the their share in a fund raising exercise this year. KPN in turn, not only wrote-off 900 million pounds for their investment stake during the last financial year, but is probably going to counter sue Hutch to buy out their 15% stake in âoe3â.

Problems you hear with 3G in Europe include drop calls, poor reception, prohibitively expensive, no killer app (as mentioned often) â" hell, you donâ(TM)t even receive streaming video. You can only download vid clips and then play them back.

So operators subsidize the bejesus out of the handsets hoping to make their return on investment through customer data take-up. While you witness people buying these new-fangled phones, how many actually take photos and then email them on from their handset. Sweet FA.

All the while simple voice reception has suffered. Here in Hong Kong, probably one of the most saturated mobile markets in the world, reception sucks major dicks, as operators appear to be focusing resources on the new new thing, while neglecting what the majority of their customers want â" just to talk on the bloody things

I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution

[psyconaut]

I carry around my own spool of fiber wherever I go which is plugged into a SONET backbone at my apartment...yes I get some stares as I unspool the orange cable while walking down the street, but at least I got 10Gbit/sec of bandwidth at Starbucks rather than having to use their paltry WiFi! ;-)

-psy

Re:I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution

[OgreChow]

Another plus to this solution is that you will never get lost.

Re:I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution

[psyconaut]

I did have an unfortunate accident when trying to board the bus the other day and didn't spool fast enough, so was yanked out of my seat as it pulled away ;-)

-psy

Re:I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution

[JediTrainer]

Is your spool auto-winding?

I think it'd be a fun April Fool's joke to 'upgrade' the spring in your spool. Either you're never able to leave your apartment, or you manage to get out only to get suddenly snapped back home.

It'd be comical, in a cartoon sort of way. I'm thinking Wile E. Coyote with the slingshot into a wall.

Re:I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution

[TummyX]

Since this is on Slashdot, I have no idea if you're joking. I hope so.

Since this is on Slashdot, I have no idea if you're joking. I hope so.

tech, who has it??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.
Are the USA the most technological advanced country on the planet or not?
If not, who is?
My view of the USA has changed indeed the last months.

Re:tech, who has it??

[rkz]

Singapore, Japan, Finland?

Re:tech, who has it??

[Anonymous Coward]

The US never was in large parts.

It was almost like a trip back in time when I moved from Europe to the US. Why?

A lot of the appliances etc. etc. are technology wise WAY behind the stuff you can buy in europe standard.

TV's same thing. 16:9 (Pal PLUS) is pretty much standard and you can get TVs for a decent price (HDTV? Yeah right).

Mobile phone? Things like "SMS" that are not touted as the "next big thing" in the US is something I had almost 10 years ago in Europe.

Reality is that a lot of high tech companies are in the US, maybe even do their research here, but ironically enough it's mostly foreign places who profit from it.

Sure, high-tech is available in the US (and sure, if it exists SOMEWHERE and can be bought you can most likely buy it in the US as well) but for the average Joe that isn't the case.

Re:tech, who has it??

[fulana_lover]

sorry, but I lived in the US for 15 years, now live in Europe (Amsterdam) and I think, with the exception of perhaps Germany, Europe is wayyyy behind in the US technologically. Examples: -- home appliances in the US are vastly superior. Larger kitchens, better ranges, robot-vacuum thingies, sprinkler systems, the list goes on: domestic life in the US is much nicer than Europe -- cars are better equipped in the US (more comfy, bigger, cheaper gas helps of course) -- mobile SMSing is not popular, but it is available. since phone plans are cheaper in the US (my US phone is free for all mobile calls for $80/month) its easier just calling then typing. The best thing about Europe tho is that all incoming calls are free, and you can roam without too many worries (although with prepaid, roaming basically is incoming-only -- sucks!) i could go on and on, but its a wayyy offbase statement to say US is behind vis-a-vis technology. Having said that, i think quality of LIFE is vastly superior in europe -- less emphasis on work, more active social life, deeper relationships (with friends and family), a better sense of community, no patriot-act type crap, more freedoms, etc. i definitely prefer to live in europe than america, but I do miss my old awesome kitchen and pool!

Re:tech, who has it??

[kisrael]

Just got back from a brief visit to German and England (nice photogallery at if you like that sort of thing), 2 1/2 weeks.

One thing very obvious to the tourist (at least one trying to get a feel for the culture and maybe staying with a resident, rather than hotel'ing it) is retail wise, Europe is more storeworker-friendly than consumer-oriented. Many shops close very early, the culture just isn't geared towards meeting a potential buyer's needs NOW like it is in the USA.

I can't disagree with a lot of what you said. Quality of life is a huge issue, and I myself am getting a bit burned out on the quest for salary maintenence. I think I'd have a lot more freedom if I didn't always have to sweat healthcare and retirement; on the other hand, there's always the risk I'd turn into a lazy (or rather, "even lazier") SOB, which is one of the arguments against.

On the one hand, I think Europe might have a better sense of priorities. On the other hand, a lot of positive and dynamic things come from the USA's work attitude. Gripping hand, I'm not well equipped to make a big life change to another part of this country, nevermind another nation, so here I'll probably stay, and just be glad I get 4 weeks offa work with my current job.

Re:tech, who has it??

[uradu]

> home appliances in the US are vastly superior

That's funny, I (and most people I know that have experienced both) think the opposite. American stoves and ovens are extremely crude, with controls and looks straight out of the 50s. Washing machines are even worse--practically everything you buy here in the states is driven by a mechanical program wheel, hardly any microprocessor driven washing machines at all. And they all use water like there's no tomorrow. Of course, water being much cheaper than in Europe, that doesn't matter as much. Fridges OTOH are nice and big in the US--not technologically more advanced, but bigger. Of course, since you HAVE to shop for a week at a time (given that the supermarket is half a fuel tank away), that makes sense. Even so, when living in Europe I could have always done with a larger fridge.

Overall, on average I'd say that living in Europe you tend to come into more contact with high-tech stuff than in the US: smart-card driven public phones, fancy ticket vending machines, automated public transportation, cell-phone-driven vending machines, etc. While you find some of this stuff in the US, it tends to be less prevalent. Of course, Japan has us way beaten on all of that stuff, but hey!

Re:tech, who has it??

[bluGill]

How is your fancy stove with a microprocessor better than the stove I grew up with where we had to light the oven everytime with a match? Both do the same thing. Sure it takes a little more effort with the old one, but it was 40 years old then and still worked perfectly. If you have a new stove in an old house I assume that you bought junk the first time, so you had to replace it. So maybe your rant about crude appliances should be turned around into a rant about the low quality appliances you have in Europe. (since if your appliances lasted as long as ours do, and microprocessors are still relativly new compared to that age you wouldn't have the new ones either. Or do you just belive in wasting your money replacing an appliance that works?)

Okay, I'll admit that the old oven didn't have the ability to turn the oven on before I get home at night. However most current ovens have that features, and I don't know anyone who has used it. Turns out to be something that sounds better in advertising than in real life. (at least by our life styles)

Re:tech, who has it??

[uradu]

> How is your fancy stove with a microprocessor better

This is Slashdot, not a bohemian lifestyle forum, so that's a bit of an irrelevant question. Besides, why replace an old oven/stove that works perfectly? Because ovens and stoves crud up beyond anyone's ability to clean them nicely after 10-20 years of use. Because most people don't take their stove with them when moving to a new house. Because there comes a time in every (wo)man's life when (s)he is placed in the situation of requiring a new stove. Because of entropy.

If I were that far off with my comment IKEA wouldn't be laughing all the way to the bank with their sales of imported kitchens. And imported appliances to go with them would be an unknown thing.

Re:tech, who has it??

[uradu]

> You can buy the gamut of goods here.

Of course--if you accept imports.

> There are microprocessor drivin washer/dryers. However they are
> at this time nearly 3-5 times the cost of a older style one.

Well, as an artifact of the US market. Doesn't mean in Europe they're also "3-5 times the cost". Check out this (store brand at a popular mail order company in Germany) for an example of a microprocessor-controlled combination washer/dryer (something you'd be hard-pressed to even find in the US). Around $800, or about the same you'd pay at Sears for less functionality and twice the size.

> In the states 'high tech' by some is defined by what you
> can find at Best Buy or Circuit City

That's not what is meant by "high-tech" society. Any old country can import consumer goods and sell them in some store. What's typically meant is high-tech infrastructure and public facilities.

The rest of your rant about the benefits of cheap US gas and wide open spaces--well, Europe can't really help having less real estate. Kudos to the US for the wide open spaces and the NEED for cheap gas to roam around in them, I guess.

Re:tech, who has it??

[hlge]

What drugs are you on, to many trips to the coffee house?? (Places where you legally can buy pott in Amsterdam) I've been living in Europe, US and no in South-east Asia. When I moved to US back in -98 I hadn't written a check in 10+ years, I've ben using Internet banking since -91 or so. Been able to transfer my phone # when I'm moving in the same area code. And so on. US is great in inventing technology but sucks big time when it comes to use it. And by the way the robot vacuum, it's Swedish :)

Re:tech, who has it??

[mark2003]

cars are better equipped in the US (more comfy, bigger, cheaper gas helps of course)

Don't even get me started on American cars. All of the ones I have driven (including a few "sports" coupes) corner like a space hopper. In the major car survey in the US last year the top ten had no cars made by US manufacturers. Even the top truck was Japanese. Depends what you want from a car though - I don't want to pootle along in an over stuffed armchair, I want to drive along twisties at high speed and feel confident that my car can stay on the road or stop quickly if I have to.

That said a lot of the domestic stuff in the US is great, but not usually due to being more high tech, just bigger. I loved having a fridge that a family could live in and having a pool.

Btw, if you go to very upscale homes in the US they will come with German of Italian ranges.

Re:tech, who has it??

[twaltari]

You definitely should've mentioned Scandinavia being way ahead of US technologically. Those robot vacuum cleaners are available in all major stores here. Nordea used to be world's largest e-bank for several years in a row (and has been pioneering in real life Internet payment systems). I really haven't used cash money at all during the past 2 years. Cell phone network coverage is 100% here. Public transportation system just works (and applies cool technology, such as smart cards, SMS tickets, natural gas buses, automatic route planning, ultra-high speed electrical trains, freely available bikes, GSM coverage in the subway). Someone already mentioned CPUs in washing machines, but tell you what; we have CPUs even in the kitchen sink. We've had an official citizen's electronic ID (smart card, certificate) for a few years. Theres's tunnel for cross-country skiing enthusiasts.
We're planning to build more nuclear power.

Yes, Americans have bigger houses, cheaper gas, longer distance to closest neighbour and stuff, but that these things can hardly be considered as technological advances.

I completety agree with you on the better quality of life in most parts of Western Europe.

3G

[Neophytus]

3G put huge debt every uk telecoms provider who signed up for it. Mobiles had stopped bringing in much *new* money, so new services seemed the next big step. As such, they acutely overpaid.

Re:3G

[ctve]

Did any of the original companies not go for it - in other words is there someone still on GSM who will be on GSM later, or is HM Government withdrawing GSM in the future?

The problem is the charging model

[Beautyon]

The discussions have been going on for years in the comms newsgroups, and the consensus from below is that its insanity to try and charge by the amount of data you use. Still, 3G has been rolled out with precisely this charging model.

Everyone is already acclimated to flat rate charging for internet; the idea of having to watch how much you are using makes 3G unnatractive; you have to keep "looking over your shoulder", and you dread the size of your bill at the end of the month.

Combine this with no killer app in site, and you have a pretty unnatractive package. Texting hoever continues to grow and grow...but you know this.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[Malc]

"Everyone is already acclimated to flat rate charging for internet

That's not stopping ISPs modifying their service so that they provide a bandwidth quota and excess charges for those that go over it. I suspect in ten years time, unlimited bandwidth will have been relegated to history.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[PaperJam]

I work in network design at the University of Kansas and our programming group here has been working on a usage-based charging model for some time now. This is the charging model of the future, not just for cellular, but for in home solutions as well. We were prompted to move to this model of charging after realizing that the percentage of traffic from P2P and other entertainment applications was much higher than that of academic applications. They are still going to get extremely inexpensive access to the network, but the people who use a majority of the traffic will be the ones funding the additional bandwidth necessary.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[kisrael]

That's not stopping ISPs modifying their service so that they provide a bandwidth quota and excess charges for those that go over it. I suspect in ten years time, unlimited bandwidth will have been relegated to history.
That could very well be, but I suspect those quotas will be large enough that people who aren't running servers or doing multimedia P2P won't notice.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[Malc]

Why do people always bash those who run servers? I run mail and web servers, yet I don't use much bandwidth.

Since my ISP started including my bandwidth consumption on my bill on January 2002, my Min = 737MB, Max = 4,712MB and Avg = 2,372MB. I work from home, I download CDROMs from MSDN and for Linux. I run a server. Using ifconfig on my Debian server typically indicates that eth0 transfers less data in a week than I used to do in a single evening playing Quake 2 over dial up. That includes all my LAN traffic such as DNS, not just what goes out over the internet.

Incidentally, I have a "good" ISP who gives me a 15GB quota, with virtually unlimited usage off-peak. Plus excess is only CAD$2/GB. Compared with the big bad telco who we've heard about on /., this exceptional. They recently raised their 5GB quota to 10GB, but they still charge something like $10/GB for excess.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[kisrael]

Why do people always bash those who run servers? I run mail and web servers, yet I don't use much bandwidth.

I didn't mean to bash, friend...I thought I said the only people who would notice, and I think even you might notice a sever slashdotting. But who knows, maybe not even then if your site wasn't multimedia intensive.

I mean, there probably is a sense of "maybe the companies are right when they point X small percent of users use Y large percent of bandwidth, they're spoiling it for everyone" but you're correct in pointing out just running a server isn't enough to put you in a "badguy" category.

I tend to rent my webspace at about $10/mo myself, unlimited throughput, though I wouldn't mind having more control and doing it from home.

Re:The problem is the charging model

[Malc]

I probably over reacted, but when people start talking about "abusers", they invariably go on say "like people who run servers", or words to that affect. I've been noticing it a more and more recently as I've run my own server for a couple of years and never been an "abuser". It really irritates me when people (not you) suggest a solution to abusers is to ban servers.

To be honest, if I got /.ed, my 800Kb/s upstream would soon choke. If it happened, I would just turn my modem off and call my ISP to filter port 80 temporarily. It's unlikely though as it's a personal web page meant for family and friends, many of whom are on other continents and like to see photos of things I've done. Sure, I could host it somewhere else, but I don't see the point - I can do it for free, and I get the enjoyment out of hacking away at my own server (obviously I'm not a network admin by profession ;)). The most use it all gets is by hosting my email as I get to filter it properly, or easily create expendible email addresses. Nothing ground breaking or particularly exciting. ;)

Re:The problem is the charging model

[mesocyclone]

KU is not a business, and it can do all sorts of things that consumers would reject.

I think the charging model of the future is tiered service, not per-usage billing.

Consumers don't like usage billing. If you don't believe me, notice how the cell phone companies in the US use "free one gazillion minutes on weekends and blue moon days" as their major enticement in their ads. Furthermore, local cell service is now often sold with unlimited time for local use (to compete directly with land lines).

Off the subject... back when I was at KU, we had a program that got into master mode on the main computer (actually, one of only two, but that was a LONG time ago - 1970) and reset the billing whenever we threatened to run out of our usage time. Hee hee.

And in those days, it was even legal.

4G

[spaic]

4G is the future. It's supposed to be a combination of all these techniques. When I'm in a city I'm connected trought high speed Wi-Fi, when I get out of range i move seemless over to 2 Mbit UMTS (3G) getting further away I'm on 115k GPRS.

All this is great. The problem is how to get operators to cooperate, so I can move seemlessly between different networks and know what price i pay.

Re:4G

[putzin]

You're first statement is correct, but from there on out, it sort of fizzles. There is a very specific definition of what 3G is, and what it takes to be able to call your network 3g. There's even a public website (which unfortunately I have at home, not at work, ironically) which explains this. 4G is really only the addition of more bandwidth and hasn't been classfied yet as 4G or any other such thing.

As for cooperation, why would they? When has it been good for business to allow a user to seemlessly switch? Might be good for the user, but the user really only matters one day a month. And there are other technical challenges with migrating seemlessly in that the way your digital cell phone figures out what to do with the network is based on knowing a specific frequency to listen for when it starts up. That's why phones are built for specific operators, it's cheap and easy to just set the frequency band your phone can listen to rather than have to dynamically deal with it and then worry about multiple tuners and whatnot.

Ok, while Wi-Fi is a mobile possibility, it's not likely to be on a phone you hold any time soon. There's a lot of weird challenges to solve there, and really, there are other more interesting challenges to solve, such as how to make high speed data access possible using radio over long distances with obstacles. Making antenna's and amplifiers better and find a way to make the software on the provider side better are some such problems. But mostly, the issue is that no one is paying the billions that the providers paid for airwaves to do this stuff. There is no killer app. Until the Windows type app bloat that everyone must have is vogue, then 3G/4G/whatever will just be another who care's in the annals of failed business plans.

Finally, UMTS and GPRS don't work that way really. In fact, they are two different types of cell networks and you wouldn't switch from one to the other. GPRS is the data service high bandwidth add on for GSM networks, and UMTS is the same thing for CDMA networks. When you get 10Mb + speeds in a building, you'll use the same system network as you move away from the tower or receiver and the network will slow you connection down as the distance or interference grows, just like it works today.

Ten minutes before the meeting with the VC people

[heldlikesound]

Ralph: That's the thing, we don't really HAVE a business plan, I was just going to wing it...

Cliff: Ok, well we need SOMETHING to sell them on.

Ralph: Dude, I am so ahead of the game, check this out: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing.

Cliff: Now that's good, worth at least 50Mill! How did you think of it?

Ralph: I just scrambled the letters of the ingredients from a Taco Bell hot sauce packet.

Cliff: Niiiiiiiiiiice....

What?!

[foxtrot]

What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi? 3G is a phone standard. You get 3G stuff anywhere you can use your phone. Wi-Fi is a wireless LAN standard. You need a pringles can to use it from two doors down the street. They're completely different technologies, designed for two completely different things, how can one make the other irrelevant?

-JDF

Re:What?!

[SomeOtherGuy]

What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi? 3G is a phone standard. You get 3G stuff anywhere you can use your phone. Wi-Fi is a wireless LAN standard. You need a pringles can to use it from two doors down the street. They're completely different technologies, designed for two completely different things, how can one make the other irrelevant?

Mod the parent up, this is just as much an "Apples and Oranges" story as the Bluetooth piece the other day. I can use my 3G phone to browse the web anywhere I have a digital cell signal (On the same network with the same IP address). Wi-fi is something that can be used only if I sit in the lawn chair closest to my basement window where the access point is....And if I do have a friend down the street running Wi-fi...It is another network and a different IP. Now until I see a company the size of Sprint (3G) installing prongles cans in every tree and billboard along the freeway and in the neighborhoods -- then this is still "apples and oranges".

Re:What?!

[kisrael]

It's probably only "Apples and Oranges" because 3G stuff doesn't have enough range, is too expensive, doesn't have the throughput, etc. Think about it, if 3G was *really* good, and it was just as cheap and easy and powerful to stick a wireless modem onto a laptop than hook into your Wireless LAN, WiFi would be a niche product for people who were too paranoid to use VPNs or whatever...but that's not the way the technology is, so we have WiFi as a...I dunno, way of avoid excessive cable in your house and maybe getting 'Net access at Starbucks, and 3G for getting e-mail and text messages and maybe very limited web browsing on your handheld. Frankly, neither 3G nor WiFi is all that exciting or life changing.

Re:What?!

[ctve]

Think about what they have in common...

Both are related to high speed wireless, and both CAN be used when someone is away from home.

So, for things like videoconferencing phones, I think 3G has big benefits. But take data, and the issue of someone working somewhere who needs to get a big chunk of data and they are far away from the office (something I could have done with in my past), and then competition springs in. I could use my 3G phone plugged into a PC, or I could go to a wifi hotspot and pick it up. Then, price starts to become an issue. If I can go into a cafe, pay a dollar for my download (or less) and be out of there, do I really need a 3G phone with a ton of features and a premium price plan?

Re:What?!

[ctve]

Generally you are right - although hotels and airports are also getting them - you won't be able to use wi-fi if you are on a road between two places. And I think many towns will get them.

My point is not whether 3G is better or worse, so much as whether it's worth the premium for a whole load of services, many of which I don't want. I don't want video clips on a 2" screen or videoconferencing. I do want data from a remote location, and only occassionally, and I'll travel as far as 10 miles for the privelege.

Maybe some people want those features. Unless they become very cheap, I don't.

My hardware cost for a wi-fi card is about £50 at the moment, and an hour of hotspot activity is currently abour £5, which I expect will go down. For me, this makes more sense as wi-fi gets rolled out further.

Re:What?!

[david_e_v]

You might want to consider that 3G is only providing the full bandwidth in the most crowded areas, and there is precisely where you can find WiFi access points as well.
It is not a problem of what do you use for accessing the network (a phone or a PCMCIA card supporting 3G, for example). The bandwidth itself is what count, as what justifies the high bandwidth is the data, not the voice, and for data you do not want to be tied to a small-screened, lousy-keyboard, phone, but to be able to use any system you find most convenient to access to the network.

That's what can make 3G fail against WiFi. They are competing if fact for overlapping markets.

Re:What?!

[TonkaTown]

You're missing the point...

3G is good, but it's not a LAN technology it's a WAN technology.

It's only a matter of time before you can get a 3G card for your PC, GSM/GPRS cards have been about for ages, and when they do come about, you'll be using the mobile service provider's network for your traffic on these cards and paying appropriately. Their licenses for this chunk of spectrum didn't come cheap so I wouldn't expect your bandwidth to be cheap either.

As you say the cold hard facts aren't that exciting, think of it as something useful for now, use the best one for the situation and look forward to something better in the next rev - 4G/5G whatever.

What kind of name is Flarion?

[n1ywb]

Now we have companies named after Pokemon? I'm moving to Mars.

gems in the 3G muck

[wfmcwalter]

Everyone concentrates on 3G's bandwidth as being its predominant value-add, and it's difficult at the moment for the phone companies to figure out a sufficiently compelling application for all that bandwidth. But 3G has some other features which make it interesting - it's a shame the CDMA and GSM markets didn't include these in their 2G/2.5G offerings.

Chief among these are:

• Packet-switched operation. To transmit data (except SMS messages) it's necessary to open an end to end virtual circuit. So you can't trickly information back and forward to the phone all the time, at a very low bandwidth (and consequently very low cost). And there's no multicast, so software download to each phone has to be done one at a time.
• Location-specific services. "Where am i?", "Where is the nearest gas station?", or that DoCoMo fave "beep me when a single girl my age who also likes ninja manga is nearby".

These don't need 3G's bandwidth, but the 2G network can't really deliver either. If the phone companies had been conservative and added the above, they'd be in clover. That's not just 20-20 hindsight - DoCoMo in Japan did both, and they're making enough money to actually pay for the 3G network they're building - and simultaneously getting their consumer base onboard with the idea of getting games, media, etc. on their phone.

Re:gems in the 3G muck

[mcmasuda]

To transmit data (except SMS messages) it's necessary to open an end to end virtual circuit. So you can't trickly information back and forward to the phone all the time, at a very low bandwidth (and consequently very low cost). And there's no multicast, so software download to each phone has to be done one at a time.

Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that this is an interesting feature? From your description it almost sounds like a disadvantage.

Re:gems in the 3G muck

[3eyes]

Actually I have been working on location specfifc 2g mobile services for the past few months. You use cell positioning which all phones can do. Any new symbian based phone plus a tiny little app can do a multitude of location based serves including "beep me when a single girl my age who also likes ninja manga is nearby". but hey like i said somewhere else shame no one has the imagination to use whats there. I agree completly that the american of idea of speed = good is such misconception. But then who doesnt like speed hey :D

Re:gems in the 3G muck

[DavidpFitz]

Packet-switched operation. To transmit data (except SMS messages) it's necessary to open an end to end virtual circuit

Have you never heard or GPRS? The "P" is for "Packet"

And there's no multicast, so software download to each phone has to be done one at a time.

Two words... Cell Broadcast. *Every* GSM network has it, they may choose not to use it though but it's been there for over 10 years.

Location-specific services. "Where am i?", "Where is the nearest gas station?"

Any 2G WAP capable phone on the Orange network in the UK can do this. I can find my nearest pub, curry house or cashpoint.

All of those things you meantion can be done on 2.5G.

David.

Good point.

[Andy Dodd]

FYI, Flarion has some excellent whitepapers on their site describing their tech, and the idea of OFDM in general.

If all goes well I'll be a Flarion employee in a month or so. (Getting laid off, applying for a position at Flarion which is 20 minutes away from here, and coming into the application with great references, as my current company and Flarion are both spinoffs from Lucent's wireless division in Whippany.) So I've done quite a bit of research into the company and their tech. :)

FYI, European digital TV broadcasts use OFDM modulation. The iBiquity IBOC radio broadcasting standard (Yet Another Lucent Spinoff) uses OFDM. IBOC was recently approved by the FCC as the standard for digital audio broadcasting in the US, although unfortunately for iBiquity, the economic downturn has caused nearly all broadcasters to cancel upgrade plans for the time being.

convergence is overratted...

[krb]

the next phone i buy will be purchased for one of the following two reasons, and they're the only ones :
1. it's smaller and more comfortable to carry in my pocket, without being microscopic.

2. lets me plug in my laptop and use the cellular network for data transmission at a reasonable speed for as long as i want, up to my alotment of minutes. a friend of mine has a phone that he can connect and use this way, but it's mercilessly slow and substantially limited in terms of how much use he can make of it.

i suppose it's possibel that public WiFi access will become common in the city, so i guess that'd reduce the need, but i'm not holding my breath.

who wants a damn video phone is my question? i don't quite see how this adds value to my life. then again, i only just bought my first cell phone 9 months ago, so maybe 6 years from now i'll think 2.5G/3G is pretty cool, when everyone else is picking up their holoCell-9000's or something.

Re:convergence is overratted...

[aaarrrgggh]

It's odd how the phone companies seem to ignore business users' needs. My monthly phone bill for my work phone has to be at least $200... and I only use it more every month.

The most important feature for me is battery life. A nice perk would be useful data connections for my laptop. Even if it just lets me access my webmail account on the road, I'm willing to push for a new phone, and spending more money.

Since they can't accommodate these needs, I will shift much of my phone use over to a Blackberry or Good device, at a loss of revenue for the phone company, and possibly even a net monthly savings.

How much do you actually want to do, while mobile?

[tgma]

Couldn't agree with you more. I have a SonyEricsson P800 running GPRS, and I can use it to check stock prices and sports scores, and, at a pinch, to send email. But in reality, I don't need to use it that much.

If I need to contact someone when I am out in a car, then I can call them. Almost any situation when I am going to do something that I normally do on a computer (eg. edit/read documents or spreadsheets) I am going to want to sit down and do it, whether I do it on my phone, or on my laptop. And any phone that is small enough to be portable is going to be too small to be useful for anything that needs a decent sized screen and a keyboard. Is it so important to be able to send an email from the bus stop? More importantly, you aren't going to be compiling a megabyte sized spreadsheet or document in the brief intervals when you are completely unable to sit down and take out your laptop, or get to an internet cafe.

These limits mean that I don't need that much bandwidth - if you haven't got that much screen to fill, then fewer pixels are required, which means fewer bytes. I've been at conferences with mobile operators, and the only use that these guys can claim for 3G is video, and increasing the amount of bandwidth so they can have more 2G users on their network at one time. I remember having similar conversations with them about WAP - they were hard pressed to come up with an application that I could imagine myself, or a mass market, using. All they came up with for WAP was betting, and for 3G, it's sports highlights. My experience is that if you really care about a sports event, you are going to organise yourself so that you are near a TV while it's on. There is a high-end, limited niche, that will buy 3G to watch video while mobile, but you can't base a billion dollar investment on this segment.

My guess is that operators will roll out 3G networks, but they will be mainly used to increase bandwidth for 2G applications. No one wants video phones in the fixed wire world (except for high end users, who videoconference), and my guess is that they will not want them in the wireless one either. Some people will pay for sports video and similar, and there will be some revenue from this, like for pay-per-view sports. The problem for 3G is that it took so long in coming, that 2G had time to catch up.

Irrelevant? Absolutely. I kicked the habit!

[The Panther!]

About six months ago, I cancelled my two cell phones and decided to "rough it" for a while, saving money in the meantime. I haven't looked back. I never get rings in the middle of the night asking me to come in to work, never get the spousal unit 'checking up on me' periodically throughout the day and ruining my concentration, and I no longer have to answer tech support calls for my entire family whenever they can't get Windows to print a frickin' greeting card.

So, yes, 3G is irrelevant, unless you're tied to your cell phone like a dog to its master. <grin>

WiFi for this, WiFi for that...

[MrWorf]

...is it just me or does it seem like WiFi is going to replace everything??

It's weird. First, people complain about bluetooth, saying:

"Hey, Bluetooth is slower and doesn't have the range of WiFi, it won't have a future."

*duh* Bluetooth is a replacement for IRDA and cables. Which means that it has an entirely different set of goals than WiFi, thus, it supplements WiFi and should not be considered an alternative to WiFi. Works great for connecting my PDA to the internet using GPRS, or when I use the BT headset. Playing a game against a friend over bluetooth during a boring meeting is also nice (and doesn't look as strange as when you use IRDA and need to point the damn thing against eachother)

And now:

"3G is to slow/troublesome/expensive, lets use WiFi instead, its faster/easier/cheap"

Again, *duh* ... different goals. 3G is the next step in mobile phone communications. Much like 2.5G (GPRS) was the next step after dialup gsm data connections. Ofcourse, having the 3G standard hyped as "Watch streaming DVD movies on your phone" or the likes doesn't help it much.

Yes, I've tried it in real life (Malmoe/Sweden, using 3's phones & networks) and it works. Okay, so I might get a better image if I had a laptop + webcam + WiFi, but then, it isn't really that mobile, now is it? (Imagine making a call with that thing whilst riding a bicycle or something :) )

Besides, if you compare the powerusage, you'll soon find that you probably wouldn't want a "wifi-phone".

To conclude this post, WiFi is great, but so is 3G and Bluetooth. They are all different technologies, designed to fit different goals. I for one would love having a PCMCIA card that did WiFi, 3G, BT and GPRS. This way, nomatter what, I could always, somehow, get online.

Anyway, this is my take on it... Bash away :D

Re:WiFi for this, WiFi for that...

[RevMike]

3G and WiFi do serve different usage models. The point is that customers don't seem to care about the mobility aspect of the 3G model. WiFi is great for sitting in a park, coffee shop, or airport lounge and using data services, such as email and the web. It is cheap, easy, and reliable. No, it can't handle hand-offs between access points very well, and No, it can't be used from a car at 55 MPH (say, 100 kmph for you foreigners :) but most users aren't interested in spending the extra money to read their email on a tiny screen. To put it another way, both technologies try to provide data services to people wirelessly. WiFi has satisifed that market sufficiently that 3G systems have a much tougher road economically.

Where 802.11 falls flat on its face

[Andy Dodd]

802.11 has some support for handoffs between APs, but not on a large scale, and not if it's occuring often.

It's also not designed to handle rapidly moving stations. Once you start going faster than walking speed, multipath fading and doppler shifts make things fun. Dealing with users traveling at 55 MPH is one of the biggest challenges of cellular network designers, and it just gets to be more and more fun as the bandwidth increases.

This isn't targeted at stationary users. It's targeted at people on the go. (Not drivers, mind you, but carpool passengers and people on buses and trains, etc.)

It might also prove useful for police work - Police departments have a use for high-speed mobile data. (I believe that the biggest customer of the Ricochet remnants in Denver is one of the local police departments. I know that there's a metropolitan wireless network somewhere that is used heavily by the local police.) It could (in theory) provide an off-the-shelf communications solution for a low-cost civilian Predator equivalent, which law enforcement entities would kill for. All of the advantages of a police helicopter without the exorbitant expenses...

Re:OFDM != 4G - superiority and patents

[HardcoreGamer]

The main reason why we are seeing growing implementations of OFDM is because companies want to avoid Qualcomm's CDMA patents and the associated licensing fees.

Ask anybody in the know (who doesn't have a vested interest in seeing one of these technologies implemented) and they will concede OFDM is not inherently superior to to CDMA, or vice versa.

Re:Useless shit.

[spaic]

Nobody needs 3G, nobody needs 4G.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates

Oh, but it can

[SpiffyMarc]

What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi?

Google for WiMax. Here's a link to get you started.

From a random article about the WiMax 802.16a standard: "802.16 WirelessMAN (Metropolitan Area Network) fixed wireless broadband, has a range of up to about 30 miles with data transfer speeds of up to 70mbps". Also, "802.16a is considered the next step beyond WiFi because it is optimized for broadband operation, fixed and later mobile".

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[sebmol]

The mobile phone service providers are frantically adding extra features to their phones and networks to prevent cell phones from becoming a commodity. Companies don't want to compete on the prize because that cuts right into the margins. So they try to compete on value. If they stopped adding those features to your phone, cell phones could be treated like land line phones where it looks like the only reason to switch providers is to enjoy lower prices. When have you switched your home phone because somebody else offered a new/better feature not related to pricing?

Re:Irrelevant? Absolutely. I kicked the habit!

[maxume]

This point always comes up, and it always makes me wonder: What kept you from turning off the ringer? I can understand the whole spousal checkup thing making it hard to do, but it seems like 'sometimes the ringer will be off' is at least as good as 'I don't have a phone.'

Maybe I just don't get it because nobody ever calls me...

3G/4G/NG Needs An Application

[swb]

...beyond wireless email/messaging and web browsing.

So far we don't really have any applications. The overwhelming majority of mobile users have decided that the primary purpose of their devices, telephony, is perfectly adequate.

A remaining minority is content to get email or other text messages, but they're early adopters, pioneers and gadget freaks who buy anything and their aren't enough of them to make change-the-world money off of.

An even smaller minority have developed proprietary applications, but they've been doing that over more expensive technologies forver, this just lets them do it with greater freedom. They're not a growth medium, though, since they're generally large businesses that negotiate deep discounts and optimize for minimum usage anyway.

Right now there's just not a compelling application for wireless data at the price at which it is available.

A wireless technology with sustainable node throughputs in excess of 10 megabits and ranges equivilent to cellular and all-you-can-eat pricing would be compelling, but the application wouldn't be mobile as much as last-mile fixed, mobile data would just be a side benefit.

Re:3G/4G/NG Needs An Application

[TonkaTown]

Do you really need just one application?

Couple the tech that's in a Symbian phone with 3G levels of bandwidth, and you've got a very interesting little device.

A cheap networked computer which fits in your pocket - I can think of more than one thing with something like that...

Re:3G/4G/NG Needs An Application

[mattr]

I discussed this with the guy in charge of i-Mode at DoCoMo in Tokyo recently. And a recet presentation I saw given by the president of DoCoMo was very similar.

Take it with a grain of salt, but they say they aren't worried. Their take on it is that since packet-based communications are cheaper with FOMA (3G) that people will switch to it. Some people apparently pay about 10,000 yen (US$85) a month for i-Mode and that is perhaps the crossover point.

Also they say they will be coming out with new services that should require more data and hence draw more 3G users. Personally I don't think it is fast enough! The videophone function will be much more compelling at 4G speeds, the FOMA handset has a zoom video camera lens, and the 505 series that came out this week has a megapixel camera in it, (Macromedia) Flash, and you can swivel so you just see the screen and no buttons. Game companies Square and Bandai also liscense content. I'm worried about the price of the handset, in one recent iteration the Sony phones were like way over $500 I think with memory stick.

Latest news, NTT announced wireless service at optical fiber speeds (100Mbps). I want it, but I don't want to put that antenna next to my brain!

Re:3G/4G/NG Needs An Application

[swb]

The problem with these scenerios is twofold:

1) Applications like video and gaming will be ubiquitous on mobile phones and will be expected and used _by_the_generation_that_grows_up_with them. Sure, if I'm 18 and my first mobile is a 3G with color and gaming, I'll probably expect and use that functionality forever, expanding the user base for nG-based handsets.

But it's a drag to wait a generation to finally build the base up to make a profit off of a tecnology that's essentially out of date in 5-7 years.

2) The cost of handsets. Even if the lame applications on tiny screens were appealing to a majority of adults, they will quickly revert to reality when they realize it will be competitive with the price of a low-end laptop. And this will also be a hindrace for hooking new users; not many 17 year olds will be able to afford a $500 phone.

Wake me when I can get affordable IP to my laptop

[Paul Carver]

I don't even care about high bandwidth, wireless broadband, 3G, 4G, 6G, whatever.

If I could get a modem speed connection to my laptop for a reasonable price (i.e. $30/month for 10-20 hours/month of web browsing) I'd buy it. More than that I just couldn't justify unless I had a business need for it.

GSM vs others (wsas Re:Huh?)

[bdc0]

That is because GSM for that carrier (VoiceStream, I assume) sucks; it has almost nothing to do with the fundamental technology. If you don't build enough towers, CDMA will be at least as bad.

And FDMA is old analog cellular, you meant TDMA.

4G = Low Cost 3G

[maitas]

Basically there are only 3 ways of encoding wireless binary data, FDMA (wrongly called AMPS), TDMA (used by GSM) and CDMA (OFDM seems to be a variation of CDMA). Basically, as any spread-spectrum (CDMA, OFDM or time-hopping) modulation needs a lot of spectrum, they are too expensive (thanks to FCC). That's why 802.11x is gaining market, a cheap not license alternative.

Re:4G = Low Cost 3G

[Wesley Felter]

You're confusing channel access schemes (FDMA, TDMA, CDMA, CSMA, etc.) with modulations (PSK, CCK, PBCC, QAM, OFDM, etc.). And no doubt I'm also confusing something, since I'm not a wireless engineer.

Ever get the feeling...

[Delphix]

That technological development was seriously outpacing consumer need?

I admit a lot of these things are interesting, but just not practical. For instance, downloadable java games. I know atleast 25 people with cell phones... none of them play games on it. Why would you? Can't wait until you get home to your PC/PS2/XBox?

Sending pictures is pretty cool, but again it's very rare that I need to send someone a photo RIGHT NOW! I'll just get my digital camera, snap a photo, and e-mail it.

The only application on Cell phones I use besides actually talking is text messaging... that's rare, and definetly not 3G...

Re:Ever get the feeling...

[hovik]

wow, you know 25 people with cell phones ?

Dude, try moving to a modernized country, or get more friends. Games on cellphones are kickass when commuting by train.

Re:Ever get the feeling...

[GlassHeart]

Sending pictures is pretty cool, but again it's very rare that I need to send someone a photo RIGHT NOW! I'll just get my digital camera, snap a photo, and e-mail it.

Technology has a way of creeping up on people. Here's an example: a tech I know once had to wire up some equipment in really tight space, and he can't really squeeze his head in behind the rack to see the connectors. He takes out a digital camera from his pocket, reaches behind, and snaps a picture. This allows him to finish the job without having to move a heavy rack of equipment. Before this innovative use, who really needs to see vacation pictures RIGHT NOW? You can wait a day or two for your photo shop to develop the pictures.

Ever seen a person on a cell phone in a supermarket, asking about what brand of peas to buy? This would not have happened unless people were very comfortable with their phones, and were not really concerned about how much the call will cost. Extrapolate this to sending pictures, and it's easy to see the stereotypical husband sending his wife a picture of a can of peas to make sure it's the right brand. It's these mundane uses that tell us a technology has arrived.

Re:Ever get the feeling...

[isorox]

I know atleast 25 people with cell phones...

Right, I know about 80 people. I know about 80 people with a phone. Most at the *very* least send 3 or 4 text's a day, a lot send over 10. Everyone plays games, even if it's just snake waiting for trains. I've sent quite a few pictures too, usualy to email addresses cause I only know a couple of people with picture phones.

A few people use things like calanders, alarms, notes, etc.

Just because *you* dont use the tech doesnt mean the majority of people in the advanced world dont.

Re:Ever get the feeling...

[bluGill]

I've considered getting a picture phone, because often a picture now is better. However it always happens at work, and so I figgure it is the boss's problem to buy a picture phone. I work construction, just today we had a situation that I can't describe with any hope that most of you will understand the problem, but a picture would make you all see it. (This is partially my inability to explain and partially the difficulty in explaining it to those who don't know the rest of the project)

I've always looked as a pciture phone as more a camera that I always have with me, whereas my camera is something I normaly leave on the table. Sure if I know I will want to take a picture I'll bring a camera, but if a situation pops up during the day I won't have it. (Nobody believes the girl two houses away was topless...) If it works and I can afford it I will get one. Right now I can't justify the cost, even though they are fairly cheap. It seems like an idea that could be useful though.

I play games on my cell phone once in a while, as does everyone I know with games. Everyone sits in a doctors waiting room once in a while. What else are we supposed to do when we get back from lunch 5 minutes before we have to start? Sure it isn't to the level of MYST or Doom, but it passes the time.

Re:Useless shit.

[deaddrunk]

Being able to do on-call work from my local pub via a laptop with a UMTS card would be quite nice :)

Re:The Lord Shines His Face Upon You.

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe did not start up with 2G and 3G.

In the Nordic countries we had ARP and especially NMT in the early eighties. They were 1G systems. Most of my friends had 2G phones back in 1995. I only got mine only in 1998 so that I could use it to send SMS back home from China.

No you don't.

[Andy Dodd]

CDMA2000 1xRTT (Sprint Vision, Verizon Express Network) is not 3G. It's considered 2.5G.

3G standards include UMTS (only 1-2 test networks in the US, and so far massive failures due to handset problems, especially in the battery life/heat arena, in Europe and Japan.), and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO (Which is available in Korea and also was rolled out by KDDI in Japan I believe.)

Well...

[dcs]

Meanwhile, The Register reports that in one place in Asia where WiFi *is* widely spread, they gave up on it and went 3G.

Re:I use 3G in the USA, right now

[Delphix]

Because the cost to benefit is way out of whack.

I don't really need it honestly. I have a desktop at work with net access. I have broadband at home for net access. I have a laptop I take with me on business travel. The hotel will definetly have dialup at a minimum. (I have yet to run into a case where they haven't and generally find broadband.) The places I work while on travel have net access.

The only place I don't have it is when I go somewhere with friends or to the store, etc.. in which case I don't want to bring the f-ing net with me. And people can still call me on my cell / text message me.

So why would I want to catch that boat?

WiFi speed is a red herring

[PolR]

I have not checked all carriers, but the carrier I know of doesn't pull fibre to install a Wifi hot spot. They connect it to a DSL line instead. Guess where the bottleneck is.

Although WiFi speed is irrelevant its existence still cause trouble to 3G deployments. WiFi hot spots just eats the bulk of the users in high population density areas and divert associated revenues from 3G. The business case for 3G is severely weakened.

From a speed point of view, it would make sense for carrier to skip 3G and go directly to 4G. But speed is not enough. They need an attractive application to get customers. Mobile Internet could be it provide they stop billing by usage as other posters have mentionned. They must also understand people will want to use the full potential of real Internet, not just the subset available through AvantGo and other WAP services.

There is also a need for a cheap PAN that can connect the PDA, the laptop and the mobile phone and also other portable devices such as digital cameras and camcoders as well as MP players. Customer would then move pictures, video and audio recordings over the net.

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[zapp]

I *can't* switch my land line provider, because Qwest has a local monopoly. There are no other land line providers in the area. period.

The thing that bothers me is, with absolutely no extra services (no caller ID, call waiting, etc) the basic service is $15 - fine. but they add in $15 in taxes too... I can't believe a 100% markup for taxes.

Alright smartypants

[NDPTAL85]

Why don't you fill us in on just 10 out of a million uses for 3G.

Re:Alright smartypants

[TonkaTown]

Well here's a few things I do now with my 2.5G phone (Siemens S55), with a better phone like say a Symbian one (P800, 3650) or 3G I'd do more.

Read email, write email, take pictures of things - the camera is always with me, so it's really off-the-cuff spur of the moment stuff - it's not megapixel but VGA res is good for quick snaps.
send pictures via email, send pictures via mms,
send pictures via Bluetooth to other phones and my PC,
chat on IRC - using Virca a J2ME IRC app,
chat on IM - using TipicME a J2ME Jabber app,
write SMS, read SMS,
surf with WAP - yeah it's not great, but it's pretty quick with GPRS,
surf the Web - the phone's got a built in XHTML browser so a few web sites work straight out of the box, otherwise I can use a proxy.
sync entries from my addressbook (the addressbook uses vCards) with other phones via bluetooth,
sync my addressbook with my PC with bluetooth,
Send my business card to other bluetooth devices,
play games,
update my blog via email.

There's probably a few more things I do like using it for voice calls too!

So you've got a computer? What do you do with it, look at websites? Email? Is that all?

A modern phone is a networked computer that fits in your pocket, if you can't think of anything interesting to do with a tool like that I'm surprised you even managed to find your way to Slashdot!

Re:Alright smartypants

[NDPTAL85]

I own a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone so I can do most of the things you listed if not more. The problem is regular people don't give a crap about that stuff. And thats why 3G is a failure here in the US.

Mine is a PalmOS phone. I can get on IRC using upIRC, check the weather via AWS or AvantGo, read the news from 50 news sources on AvantGo, update my livejournal blog via AvantGo, use it as a remote control, read ebooks, fax documents, edit MS word/excell documents, email documents with attachments, take pictures with a SD camera, surf the web with a variety of web browsers, send my business card to other PalmOS devices, play games, synch wirelessly.....etc.

All this in a world where most folks can't even figure out how to use the addressbooks on their run of the mill cell phones.

There's no hope I tell ya, no hope!

Re:I use 3G in the USA, right now

[Alan Partridge]

In the UK, 3Gs data speeds aren't any better than GSM/HSCSD/GPRS, which is what I currently use with my Palm Tungsten T, Nokia 8910 combination. Bluetooth lets you live the dream! (well, it let's you pick up and send email)

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[garcia]

when have you been able to choose what providor you use for your home phone service? Your choice is in long distance carriers, not the actual line carrier.

Is 3G irrelevant, you ask?

[poot_rootbeer]

I would say so... it's been what, 5 years since Satriani, Vai, and Johnson took their guitar-god triumvirate act on the road now?

Iowa... what?

[debugdave]

You don't think farmers in Iowa need cell phones? They do. With email and all that. They need voice plus data. I guess technically those people don't need the internet either, right?
I used to sell mobile phones, and I also live in IA. I can say without a doubt there is a need for reliable voice / data on the cornfields as well as in the city.
Just because there is'nt a lot of people does'nt mean there is'nt a lot going on.

dave

Flux Capacitor

[DigiShaman]

Wouldn't a Flux Capacitor be the same thing as a reusable EMP weapon?

Decent coverage for WiFi?

[-tji]

802.11 is constantly being compared to cellular phone networks, as an option for ubiquitous data access. But, I'm not seeing how this is going to work in terms of geographic coverage. Are they talking about the next generation of 802.x that will support metro-networks? Or, do they really think they can get broad 802.11a/b/g coverage?

802.11 is fine when I'm sitting in an airport, and my flight is delayed. But, for quick checks of my inbox, or other online data, it's got a long way to go.

Even for simple airport coverage, it has a long way to go. The first obvious step is a better billing system. I'm not gonna pay $15 for all-day access to the web in San Jose for 15 minutes before my plane boards, only to arrive in Denver and pay $12 to the other provider that happens to be there.

No thanks.. I'll take a per-minute decent bandwidth (~ 100kbps+ ) data service from my cell phone provider (preferably accessed directly from my PDA, or with a wireless CF card).

GSM range meeets my needs

[benwaggoner]

Yeah, it seems like less than 5% of the US has GSM coverage, but in the four months I've had a GSM phone, I haven't ONCE been somewhere without access, except in a few spots on the Acela from Boston to NYC. And this is with a pretty heavy travel schedule. From my base in Portland, I've been to San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Wallingford CT, Albany OR, Las Vegas.

I could see it being a problem for a tractor salesman or anyone else who finds themselves in rural America a lot, but as a technology consultant, GSM has had perfect coverage.

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[sebmol]

From what I remember, there are areas where landline companies compete. This is definitely true for a handful of metropolitan regions in German and the US.

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[Steve Cox]

I've found that (in the case of '3', the UKs first 3G supplier to the market) they are provinding the extra features INSTEAD of a data link to the web - after announcing a large price reduction I had a look around their web site for data tariffs and found none - after a call to their customer services center, I was told that you could not get internet access.

All three of the available phones support JAVA and a web browser (from what I can gather looking at the online manuals [PDF] ), but instead they have decided to get rid of the one thing I would use and replaced it with a naff list of services.

I can't blame them really - charging for services is how they are going to get a large portion of their investment back. But I'm dissapointed.

Interesting thing is though - they support the reading of emails from 'your ISPs' POP3 account, so its not as though they don't have a problem transferring data across their network. If you could upload a port mapping JAVA app to the phone via the data-link cable you *might* be able to get to another (reverse) port mapper running on your xDSL line (ie 80 -> 25....25 -> 80).... till someone found out :)

Steve.

3g was bound to fail

[d3faultus3r]

I really can't think of a reason to use a text based browser on a tiny screen. It's a giant technological step backwards in terms of capability compared to surfing the web on a computer. A palm pilot or a tablet pc would be better for extremely portable web browsing. And who wants to play games on a mobile phone? Playing a game on one of those miniature keypads is knowing true frustration.

Re:3g was bound to fail

[TonkaTown]

Why would you want to use a text based browser? Have you seen a modern phone?

Opera is available on the Symbian platform i.e. devices like the Nokia 3650, hell it comes as standard on the P800.

We're talking colour screens - about as tiny as palm screen - and normal web browsing.

But playing a game can be frustrating, I suspect you're talking about Vexed - http://www.symbiandiaries.com/vexed/

Re:Wake me when I can get affordable IP to my lapt

[RevMike]

I'm with you on this. My killer app would be a wireless mini-pc like the Toshiba Libretto series which would get at least ISDN style speeds - 150 kbs or so. Package that with a reasonable flat rate plan and I'd bite.

The problem is that a phone has a very limited user interface. It just isn't pleasant to use a phone for anything other than making and receiving phone calls. On the other hand, a (high end) PalmOS device, PocketPC, or mini laptop might hit a sweet spot of improved user experience with take almost anywhere convenience.

Although, if I could get a device which combined my Palm, phone, and LeatherMan tool into one unit, my wife would be happy that I didn't look like I had the "Bat Utility Belt" on.

Large antibiotics

[Graymalkin]

Did the WiFi proponent groups launch an orbit hype satellite to grab all this ridiculous hype for WiFi? I really don't see why WiFi seems to be the solution to all bandwidth and connectivity problems that exist in the world.

WiFi is a decent but not necessarily great means to bridge a wired Ethernet network to remote nodes. It works pretty damn well in my house letting me browse the web or stream music. It also works decently as a way to connect to the internet from a Starbucks or internet café. For situations where I'm remote but stationary WiFi is a cool way to connect to the otherwise wired network.

WiFi is not however a decent means to connect lots of other wireless devices. WiFi requires too much power for small devices like cell phones or digital cameras. It lacks the ability to hand off connections to other base stations which makes it an inane choice for large scale wireless internet access. It is a horrible method for connecting a large number of users in a small area because of collision detection schemes it uses. It is also a horrible idea for any amount of reliable long range communication, the part of the spectrum allocated to WiFi is unlicensed and thus anything is allowed to transmit there and must accept interference.

I suspect the WiFi interest group hype hounds have been working overtime to declare the death of any emergent technologies WiFi might in some way ever compete with.

Don't forget about W-OFDM

[Lawmeister]

The Wideband-OFDM also shows lots of promise: from patent holder Wi-LAN:

http://www.wilan.com/technology/main1.html

Wi-LANâ(TM)s Wideband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (W-OFDM) is a transmission scheme that enables data to be encoded on multiple high-speed radio frequencies concurrently. This allows for greater security, increased amounts of data being sent, and the industries most efficient use of bandwidth. W-OFDM is the basis of the IEEE standard 802.11a, which is the foundation of the proposed IEEE standard 802.16. It is a patented technology in the United States under patent number 5,282,222 and in Canada under patent number 2,064,975. W-OFDM technology is currently used in Wi-LAN's broadband wireless access systems.

W-OFDM enables the implementation of low power multipoint RF networks that minimize interference with adjacent networks. This reduced interference enables independent channels to operate within the same band allowing multipoint networks and point-to-point backbone systems to be overlaid in the same frequency band.

Re:The Lord Shines His Face Upon You.

[scoot32]

Actually, US/Japan/S.Korea have all started (and have mature) 3G CDMA2000 infrastructures. The migration path from CDMA to CDMA2000 is simple and very inexpensive. The migration path from GSM/GPRS->EDGE/GERAN->WCDMA is not.

The reason folks keep talking about holding onto 3G is that EDGE/GERAN allows faster throughputs (fast enough to qualify as "3G")... but it still DOESN'T address the issue of capacity... which GSM has a lot of trouble with (that's why so many companies are using 1/2 rate vocoders w/ GSM networks)

Bad planning by commitee left no future migration for GSM networks for capacity and now they're trying to squeeze as much as possible from last generations technology.

Re:Racist = Insightful?

[phenolphthalein]

To be fair, the rest of his post was well thought out and could be considered insightful. Just because he ended his post with a racist slur, doesn't mean we should disregard everything he said.

Is more better?

[Wesley Felter]

The 5GHz U-NII band is 3X the size of the 2.4GHz ISM band (IIRC), but it's hardly used at all. Is there demand for even more free spectrum?

Maybe

[briancnorton]

maybe companies need to find a GOOD use for the technology before people buy in. Playing splinter cell is NOT a good use.

Sprint PCS Vision

[michaelhood]

Anyone else looking to murder Sprint PCS over this sham they advertised-as-3G-but-never-works and call Vision?

It's a 50/50 shot for it to work, even with a full signal. I have an N400, by the way.

Would some of you mind sharing your PCS Vision results with me? I want to try a different phone. Be sure to include what phone you're using. Thanks!

Re:Sprint PCS Vision

[Mr. Grimm]

I have an LG 5350 and can get on the majority of the times, probably 85-90%.

Once again, WAN =! WLAN

[MobileDude]

>>networkers are giving up on 3G as a data
>>services alternative due to high deployment
>>costs and slower speeds vs. Wi-Fi.

Uh, excuse me, but 3G (WAN) is not 802.11b/a/g (WLAN). They do not have the same coverage nor target market.

Enjoy your latte while you park your booty at Starbucks (WLAN), but don't expect your web session to go smoothly while your on the #7 out to Shea to catch the lowly Mets lose another one (WAN)...

Mobile - and I mean TRULY mobile - workers need real time dispatch, status updates, messaging, etc and cannot depend on finding an open UAP every 3 minutes. Think field service (cable TV, telephone, LTL trucking, utilities) and you should start to get the picture for WAN's target.

My. Brane. Hertz.

[zogger]

/me walks into cellphone store:

"Hiyas! Like to get a cell phone please?"

perky little sellerette:

"Why yes, we have ernokssony 794i 2,,3,4G's of levels of service! You can pick from syncing to your PDAS, with blue,red, and green teeth, wifi, low fi, midfi, 8023.11a,b,c,d,e,f,AND g! You can get the family plan with 1700 minutes of some of the time service or the single parent with two kids service wituh 1700 some of the time minutesdexcept on friday when you can get text messages that only go to iceland but with out alternate lifestyle family plan menu you can get service that works underwater in bombay in several cool new colors like mud,ice,blood, and lice, but then you can get the single moms with two kids plans that has four pagers and six mailboxes with the synced video to use as a baby monitor except at wortk when it's a garbage disposal and vacuums, but those minutes are only with the service plan that you have to lease, with this other phone, the soneekisoni2k that has green red but no blue teeth with the wiiest fi we offer, until next october when if you are a preferred customer we offer a time share in new jersy over by the race track, but it's illegal to use the phone in the locker rooms there, so you have to take the bus to philly where you can beam it off the satellite service and that is only 98$ a year extra with the prepaid option that is void in most countries but I'm sure your's is ok, and that also has at least 15 minutes of actual voice phone calls per annum, two years minimum contract, that will be a free phone but we have a small 80$ a month service and configuration fee and if you want caller id forwarding and blocking in text measure mode you need to download the software that is windows only sorry we are announicing support for other platforms soon, so if you are ready here's your new phone, just sign here, k thanks, and BTW the ringtones are soo cool!"

"hiyas, I'd like to get a cell phone?"

Every time, the same song...

[Solomin]

Every time there is a new telecom standard, we here the sam complaints. When it comes to mobile phones, new systems seams to pop up evey 10 years and they are always said to have no future.
Here in Sweden where got GSM (2G) ten years ago, it was said that it would never work. The battery capacity was not enough, it didn't add any value and so on. Eventually everyone changed to 2G.
Today when 3G is comming out, we can hear the same argument. The battery capacity will be very bad and the converage will be limited, though the later problem is solved by having a dual mode phone (3G & 2G).

Whatever

[sharok]

When WAP came out, I considered it comical. Trying to connect to a WAP-enabled website on a 2" screen. Wow. Apart from the time it took (remember some carriers did not charge for time connected but for data downloaded ?), I would consider it an eyesore to squint over such a screen.
2G, 2.5G, 3G and now 2.25G and 3.5G are all just speed variations on one sad little screen. And that does nothing to correct the scrolling by buttons issue. Not to mention the real fun it must be to enter one's login name and password.

I wish to state for the record : for surfing the Web, I want 1Mb/sec, a 21", 32-bit color screen, a 104 key keyboard, an Intellimouse Wireless Explorer and a 120Gb HDD to store what I download.
I have that now, at home (okay, 128Kb/sec). If I am driving, I need to watch the road, not a puny little screen. If I am in a plane, I'll have a laptop (16" or better) with a touchpad, or a book. If I'm at work, I have my home setting almost exactly, and the Web access is faster.

There is no way I am going to use a phone for web surfing. Not now, not ever. A phone is for phoning someone I cannot talk to now, directly. Whatever I need on the web, it can wait for a proper terminal to get to.

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[mark2003]

Plenty more services coming out though and you have to admit the video calling is pretty cool and I personally am a big fan of the Premiership match highlights. They have a (I think) stupid concept of a walled garden because they don't want to have people accessing stuff that has not been designed for the devices.

Of course the main advantage right now is the cost of the calls - the new tariffs work out at 5p a minute to any network if you use the full allocation of "free" minutes".

Re:Racist = Insightful?

[palindrome]

That Hitler bloke had some nice ideas for the future of Europe. He really wanted a utopian Europe.
Just because he set about his goals with a touch of racism doesn't mean we should disregard what he said.
Maybe we should have a memorial for him or something.
Maybe not.

T68i is not 3G

[EnglishTim]

... it's 2.5G (GPRS) - 3G is considerably faster.

I have a T68i, and I quite like it. I connect to it via bluetooth with my Palm Tungsten T, and surfing the web with it is actually not too bad - speedwise it's like being back on a modem, but one of the browsers I've got (WebPro) goes through a compressing proxy server, so it's not too bad. Obviously some webpages don't work, but not as many as you'd think. Most that don't use Flash or Java for navigation seem to be okay. And it *is* useful. I've done my internet banking, ordered things from Amazon, settled arguments down the pub about who played who in films using IMDB, looked up phone numbers, read the news, got maps when I needed them from Streetmap.co.uk, sent email etc...

Of course, that does depend on having a fairly nice screen (320x320 in this case) on my Palm, but as a conduit to the internet, my T68i works pretty well.

Re:Racist = Insightful?

[phenolphthalein]

If this guy had advocated racism as the solution to 3Gs problems, then I would agree with you. He didn't however, so the analogue with Hitler's plans for a utopian Europe (based as they were on the extermination of the Jewish race) is invalid. If Hitler were to post in this thread, I would not ignore his opinions on 3G, just because I disagreed with his thoughts on race.

Re:Irrelevant? Absolutely. I kicked the habit!

[joib]

...But you couldn't kick your slashdot habit, huh? :)

But yes, I understand you. It's really irritating when you're trying to concentrate on something and people keep calling you, babbling about some shit that you really couldn't care less about.

Re:Bungle!

[akpcep]

Rod Jane and Freddy, Motherfucker!

Re:How much do you actually want to do, while mobi

[stiller]

But just because these possibilities are added to the mobile networks, doesn't mean you have to use them on your mobile phone.
Right now I'm thinking about a GPRS pcmcia card that vodaphone is currently marketing in Europe. It's their philosophy that, when you are using these digital features, you're probably not really using them on your phone. But rather on your laptop, somewhere where WiFi and landlines are scarce. Be it on the road or in the country.
The thing about 3 and 4G techniques is that they're much more location independant. Which is what makes them attractive for corporate users, because they want them to simply work, wherever they are. As long as WiFi doesn't form a viable alternative world-wide, which it won't for some time to come, there will be a substantial market for 3G.

AMPS

[comm3c]

I remember when people said AMPS was the standard and that digital (old school TDMA or whatever) wouldn't ever make it big time. Oh, well.

Re:Irrelevant? Absolutely. I kicked the habit!

[The Panther!]

I always kept it on vibrate, so it _never_ rang out loud. I also turned off the power when I absolutely could not be disturbed, ie. watching a movie or during important meetings. Still, I found having a cell phone was more a drag on my life than an aid. So they're history. I'm pretty happy with the results.