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Comparing Wireless Internet Services
Carl Oppedahl writes "AT&T has released its new "Edge" wireless Internet access service, claiming it is twice as fast (100-130K) as Sprint's "PCS Vision" wireless service (50-70K). I have written up a few comments on my experiences with the services. What data rates are others getting with Edge? I rarely get the advertised faster speeds."
Just to clarify things, those speeds should be in Kilobits per second, not Kilobytes.
Looks like Sprint offers unlimited data for
$80 now. That's twice as much as T-Mobile.
AT&T does not appear to offer unmetered
service.
Things change fast in this market.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Perhaps this report may be of interest. Certainly worth considering before plunging into AT&T's more expensive services.
I pay an extra $10 for unlimited data services through my cell phone on Sprint. It's called "Vision" and it has been around for several years. The data minutes don't count against your regular cell minutes.
Overall, it works really well. It's not as slick as the PCMCIA card Sprint offers, but it works just as well, uses the exact same network & speeds, and even turns heads when they seem me surfing my laptop over my cell phone.
Wireless data rates are not unlike modem data rates, in that you're fairly unlikely to get the maximum speed unless conditions are optimal. In the case of a modem with, say, a maximum potential speed of 56k, that normally means being within a mile of your exchange on a good line (most of the time I get connect rates of 40-48kbps). In the case of packet data on a mobile network, your base station provides a fixed number of data "slots". Your phone can negotiate for up to the maximum number of slots it can handle at once (for example, in GPRS the Nokia 7650 handles 4 "down" slots and 1 "up" (or maybe 3/1). If your cell is busy, you may only get 3, 2 or even 1 "down" slot (this direction is the one which sends data to you, and so directly influences your experience of network "speed"). Also, data rates fall off as a reciprocal of the distance to the base-station. Combine these two factors and it's easy to see that you're fairly unlikely to achieve the maximum theoretical rate, no matter what the operator tells you :-) EDGE may work slightly differently (the previous relates to GPRS) but I suspect that the principal's the same.
It's too late for me to die young
Facts:
AT&T 100-130 Max 200 Kbps avail to 215 Million Customers.
Sprint 50-70 Max 144 Kbps avail to 230 Million Customers.
Verizon Wireless 60-80 Max 144 avail to 230 Million Customers.
Verizon Wireless' NationalAccess has average speeds of 60 - 80 kbps, peaks at 144 kbps and is available to nearly 230 million. BroadbandAccess,
Verizon Wireless's faster EVDO service at 300 - 500 kbps on average (2 Mb peak), is offered in the San Diego and Washington D.C. markets.
EDGE makes its debut after nearly two years' delay due to technology issues. With no evolution path, EDGE is seen as a stop gap before AT&T has to invest in yet another technology like WCDMA. In addition, EDGE does not improve voice capacity and due to deteriorating data speeds over great distances from the base station, requires greater base station density thus adding to AT&T network costs.
Neither Sprint or At&T wireless is in position to provide any broadband services past their initial offerings. Vzw will be expanding the market for EVDO in 2004 to other major cities (I hope Dallas) Also sprint and verizon's speeds are slower due to technology limits with the initial offerings but compared to CDPD which was most times at best 14.4 speeds it's a leap ahead. I would expect to see 10-100Mbit wireless within the next 5 years in larger cities to compete with landline DSL and Cable which both have limits well under 40Mbit.
The person mentions a few technical details that aren't quite correct. From the article, "The Edge service works by giving up to four time slots of GPRS service to a single user. The four time slots, each good for about 30K of bandwidth, thus can add up to around 120K or so."
/.ers should know that everyone is not always right. ^_-
This isn't quite accurate. GPRS itself ranges from using 2-8 timeslots based on the class of the device. Classes 10-12 typically have 4 timeslots for download which gives you about 32-48Kbps (you can effectively get 8-12Kpbs per timeslot with GPRS). See here for some specifics.
EDGE is, more or less, an upgrade to GPRS just to push more bits of data through. A quote from Ericsson's info page about EDGE: "EDGE uses the same TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) frame structure, logic channel and 200kHz carrier bandwidth as today's GSM networks, which allows existing cell plans to remain intact." Of course, there is a white paper linked off of that page that gives more technical details for eany who are interested. Note: It's not about using any more time slots than GPRS.
For carriers choosing the GSM route, the upgrade path is GSM -> Add GPRS -> Upgrade to EDGE -> Upgrade to WCDMA (aka UMTS). It is a little ironic that the eventual 3G network of GSM carriers will be a CDMA type technology (though with a massively huge spectrum requirement compared to CDMA2000). Only time will tell which turns out to be the better technology, though the CDMA carriers seem to be jumping ahead of the GSM ones. Of course, some might argue that almost the rest of the world uses GSM so it should be the logical choice. But then again, most
It's easy... and sort of touched on in the article itself.
Instead of installing the Connection Manager from Sprint, call you need to do in is make a new PPP connection, and for the phone number, put in the #777.
This directs the base station at the cell site to direct the call to the PDSN and make a data connection. Then your phone acts just like a 70k modem. This will work in any OS that can make a PPP connection, no proprietary software needed.
I have T-Mobile "all you can eat" with the VPN option (public IP and no blocked ports). The plan is called "T-Mobile Unlimited Internet VPN" if you're curious. It costs $20 per month, and I get data rates comparable to a 56K modem connected at near full speed. I go through my Sony Ericsson T610 with bluetooth for the connection.