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NTT DoCoMo's 4G Tests Hit 300Mbps
haunebu writes "'Your brand-spankin'-new 3G phone is nearing obsolesence: NTT DoCoMo reveals the results from a new 4G test system.' says TheFeature. While in a car moving at 30kph, DoCoMo engineers managed a peak throughput of 300Mbps and a sustained transfer rate of 135Mbps with their new variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology. Who comes up with these names, and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
'Your brand-spankin'-new 3G phone is nearing obsolesence:'
Not in America it ain't.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
mobile ethernet would give my ISP a run for its money... I just got 1Mb!
A cell phone that's equivalent to 87.66234 T-1 lines..
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I just wonder when they will be coming out.
...that it's a very small island, just put big transmitters on mountantops and you're good to go
Who comes up with these names, and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
The obvious explanation for both of these seemingly puzzling questions is of course Pocky.
--Kevin
I don't speak Japanese, but shouldn't the acronym for ariable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing be VSF-OFCDM?
Simple, smaller area to provide coverage = lower cost. That's why in places like South Korea you can get a LOT of bandwith a whole lot cheaper than here (U.S.).
Might it be partially due to the higher concentration of people? Because the Japanese people live in closer proximity to one another, fewer cell-towers are needed to provide coverage for a comparable amount of people. Therefore, each cell tower can he of higher quality.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
"how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
Population Density.
After reading this article - it has led me to analyze the benefits of this versus traditional 802.11x and the application of 4G in the broadband arena.
:)
At a proposed sustained rate of 1G, this technology could revolutionize the Internet as we know it today. And, with more and more bandwidth readily available, there will be better multiplayer games online, as well as streaming on-demand cable-like tv off the Net.
I understand that the technology is proposed for gadgets such as a phone or wristwatch that can also watch HDTV - but imagine a world where everyone has a video-phone conference & everyone also has a 1G up/down broadband connection
In a word - WOW.
Does this need more power? I'm afraid as it is about using cell phones so close to my head (Richard Brandon, owner of Virgin refused to use a cell phone without a headset, and he has done stupider things like trying to balloon around the world!).
I guess the only mitigating factor is that you generally won't be using the 4G features with the phone pressed against your head....
Who comes up with these names...
Assuming the poster is referring to ``variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology'', the name describes exactly how the technology works. Without reading a technical paper on the technology, I don't know the exact details, but I know what it is doing and what it isn't doing.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
their new variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology
This is a lie!
I had nothing to do with this!
(And I don't do variable spreading of my factor. And certainly not in a car going 35 mph.)
(Ok, now that you've laughed at me, "Vote" in my unofficial presidential poll.)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Japan is small, The US is huge. Converting the entire japanese network is a meager task compared to converting the entire US network, or even in all the major cities in the US.
--Nerviswreck
...how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
It's a whole lot cheaper (especially per user) to deploy all-new equipment on a very small, very densly-populated island.
Now we can drive with one knee, eat with one hand and watch /.-The Movie at 90mph.
There is a race in technology : Things That Distract Drivers vs Things That Replace Drivers (TTDDvTTRD). If automatic nav doesn't catch up, we will all be victims of our own entertainment.
Cheers!
www.olin.edu
Ok, sure it works at 30Kph...but that's under 19Mph! Is speeding up like moving farther from your phone company's CO and using DSL? (slower speed)
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
That's all very nice, but the real question is: what's the bandiwdth of a station wagon full of telephones barrelling down the highway?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
That means that they got....let's see....carry the one...
135Mb of data through before the battery ran out.
Pretty good.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
You sure it's not WTF-OFCDM?
"variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology"
now i find it downright rude that you'd imply that the japanese population has trouble pronouncing the Voiced labiodental fricative (commonly known as the letter V).
In places like Japan or Korea, you can replace phone systems within a few months or a relatively short amount of time, as compared with the United States, which still doesn't even have coverage in some parts. When you live in a country the size of California, things can get done a lot quicker.
Small area to cover. And a population that is willing to send more on the latest gadgets than we are. Heck, most people here just take whatever phone comes with the plan.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I'll take a guess at that...
;)
Their not spending billions on two wars in two countries.
That and perhaps having a better business model
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
High speed data is fantastic..but will it prevent me from having dropped calls?
So many injustices..so little time..
These days we have problems with people talking on the cell phone while driving. With this bandwidth and video capabilities how soon before we have people watching pr0n and driving? Gives new meaning to the term "spill-over"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
because the alternative they have, which is to rewire the humongous buildings that they have in the very limited amount of space available.
Same story with Chine from a different perspective. Wiring the old buildings for phone communications is not feasible fianncially.
At the end, when alternative is very expensive, people tend to be more creative than what is expected of them. Can be applied to anything, not only wireless or technology...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
Can't tell you how, but why is obvious... You can't run cable through paper walls...
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
Might have something to do with the fact that they have 130 Million people in an area slightly smaller than california.
Lot less area to provide coverage for. Not to mention 26 million people in Tokyo alone, making it the highest density city on the planet.
.
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
Because Japan is densely populated on a mall landmass, it's not such a logistical nightmare to have almost all the area covered by high end wireless service. It also can offer a quick market turnaround and a stepping stone into the greater world market.
this is my sig, be amazed.
From what I understand (never been to Japan), everyone wants the best coolest *insert random item here*. People will upgrade their phones and other gadgets every month, and get rid of their old ones.
In the US (live in US so cant say the same about other countries), yes people will buy the latest greatest, but will keep it for years, how many people do you know that have cellphones that are 2-3 years old.
People will only upgrade when their gadgets break, or a new technology comes out they really need. so new phones come out slower, and cheaper (cheap = break easy).
No point in rushing out the newest greatest items when people will allways wait.
TruePunk | Games
Were they driving the wrong way down a one-way street naked from the waist down and surfing for child porn on a hacked wireless connection? If not they should talk to this man.
> ... [all kinds of anal-fisting-gaping-hole-miscellaneous-bodily-flui d-drinking deleted] ...
I think this is a description of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Because DoCoMo has an effective monopoly in a country that has 127 million people ( large mobile market) and is smaller that the state of California ( small network footprint). Think about the carriers in the US that have to support physical wireless networks that spread from Alaska to Florida. Also the demand for new wireless features is HUGE in Japan and people upgrade their phones (and other electronic devices) at a pretty rapid pace compared to the western markets. Mobile wireless in Japan is best compared to the Internet, instead of mobile wireless in the west.
My theory is that the Japanese have come here from a far superior planet to our own thousands of years ago. They are smarter than the average person, have interesting ceremonies and traditions not seen anywhere else on earth, and their language is designed in a way that makes sense.
It's not a coincedence that Vulcan in the Star Trek movies looked a lot like some of the scenes in Mortal Kombat (up in the mountains, japanese lookin' temples).
One more feature that will be over-sold and over-priced when it reaches the States.
I'll be happy if I can just get a working basic connection in the Bay Area (thanks so much, AT&T).
"...and how does Japan manage to stay light years ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
Population Dens... Ha! Gotcha! I'm not going to say what 47 other people did...
The real reason they can stay ahead is two-fold.
1.) They don't have near as many lawyers per capita and
B.) They have a different philosophy on devices that "thin the heard" being a "bad" thing.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Is speeding up like moving farther from your phone company's CO and using DSL? (slower speed)
The faster you are going means the Doppler effect is more pronounced. Wide Doppler ranges can be a pain to deal with in the receiver.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Three words (well, 2 and some ASCII art).
Japan <3 Gadgets.
Because they have enormous eyes, they all dress like schoolgirls, and they can't get enough math!
I'm not kidding. 20 people or so who are willing to mortgage their lives away, license this technology and get it out the door.
;)
300Mbit per sec to anywhere near a tower we can get on????
I kid you not. We could rule the world...until we get bought out.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Have you heard that weed is popular among a thriving subculture in Japan?
It was only a question of time before the engineers got a hold of some.
I can't see how the US can allow the Japanese to outsmoke them.
It's 'cause Japanese wireless companies tend to work together to advance forward instead of trying to promote their own standards and slowing things down.
Why do you think we have so many different cellular technologies here in the states...most of them aren't compatible with each other?
We just need to standardize and streamline (especially the FCC procedures) our wireless so we can get 300Mbps.
Also, Japanese wireless companies don't try to keep old technology active to milk money off of it; instead they continously innovate and improve the technology to entice customers to upgrade and buy new technology. That's where they make their money.
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
By protecting their secrets with giant anime robots.
Either that, or they found some ancient, advanced, lost wireless technology and got a patent on it.
Even Better, in UT2k3, I can drive the vehicles. Uhh ohh watch out for that RL, left turn----crash....bang, whoops I meant left arrow, sorry officer.
As if cell phone distractions weren't bad enough.
hahaha
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
Tentacle porn
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
A very densely populated country, with concentrated cities that allow a high level of money return for every repeater installed. Also, more repeaters imply less distance to the possible target, which allows for more data troughoutput^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspeed. A gadget-loving population also helps.
Who comes up with these names?
Uh? That should be self-evident^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hobvious. Committees, of course.
(revised by the anti-pedantic spell checker)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Is that like multi-modal reflection sorting? (link)
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Is it possible to fry a chicken or my boss with such a phone? I mean, 4.9GHz radio signal is really impressive... I'm not sure we'll use those phones here in Europe, where you need a permit to hold a weapon...
I'm CCNA nearing CCNP test readiness, have MANY years of ISP running experience, and am a bit fed up with the unlicensed spectrum.
Licensed technology. Real throughput. Cheap bandwidth abound to link it to.....ah, a network engineer's dream. And nightmare.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Wow, that's the coolest name ever...
It would be nice to mention that before the furor erupts...
Loading...
More specifically, financial density. Japan is the world's second biggest economy, with an economy roughly half that of the US, or three times bigger than the UK, but with only double the population of the UK. Money is also more equally spread between the rich and poor in Japan. This leads to a relatively high monetary density country-wide, meaning lots of people who can afford high-end services.
This would explain why other densely populated counties, like Bangladesh, aren't riding high on the wagon.. it's because Japan is rich, has wealth more fairly disitributed, and has a dense population. Scandinavia also has its wealth more fairly spread between its citizens, and also boasts some of the world's most impressive mass technologies.
I don't think there's much content out there. The only text messages I ever got on my phone were spam. Frankly I haven't been all that pleased with the "miracle" of the mobile phone to begin with. Pr0n on cell-phones is lousy, too,and everyone knows that Pr0n fueled the internet revolution.
Actually the original parent is funny, you insensitive clod!
I do not think that either reasons stated previously explain Japan's early adoption of new wireless technologies. For example, in New England, many cities are close in proximity and with a dense population, but wireless reception or adoption is not great. Yes, you can find many hotspots, but that's all they are, hotspots. You cannot walk around Boston and expect to have wireless, 802.11x, reception. And about cellular networks, well, many factors hinder its adoption, such as variety of cell phones, price, and ease of use.
NTT is a surprisingly large company (now a group of companies), and the bureaucracy of such a company is staggeringly prohibitive to actually getting anything accomplished.
We tried launching Wireless access there in 2000 and 2001, and the endless meetings and forms were more than discouraging.
But the real answer to how NTT DoCoMo (a division of the monster) manages to turn around so fast is that their researchers work with cell researchers from KDDI, J-Phone (now Vodafone), and that other one who nobody uses (TUCA).
Where does all the funding for research come from? Well, in a country of now 135 million people, there are over 80 million cellular subscribers. A good portion of these are also cellular internet users, paying an extra 100 yen here, 100 yen there for different services.
There is a LOT more income on a monthly basis to Japanese cellular providers than there is in America, or anywhere else in the world.
The easy bottom line is that all this cash can be thrown at research, and that this research is further supported by companies like National/Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, etc who make the phones for Japan.
The average turn-around time in phone ownership in Japan is 9 months. Your $150 top-of-the-line video-camera/mp3/digital still camera/phone is made obsolete in that short span of time. The furthering of technology by DoCoMo/Vodaphone/etc allows the phone manufacturers to move more units.
The consumer gets new features at the same monthly price (more or less), a new phone to show off to friends, and better service.
The providers and hardware manufacturers rake in the cash.
The cycle supports itself, and it makes everyone happy.
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
The thing is, Japan has investment capital for these research endeavors because their entire population is spread over a very small space. They can make major changes to their infrastructure and spend relatively little to do it. The other reason is that the Japanese, like Europeans, on average seem to have a greater interest in the technology. Part of this is due to standardization--but standardization can't account for all of it. The last time I travelled in Europe, I had a few young adults approach me at a train station and show me their cell phones. Weird, huh?
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
Maybe they don't have risk-averse, office-politics-obsessed middle managers more interested in shitting all over other people's careers than actually building something useful?
Maybe they have found a way to put capital to work employing people and building new products instead of sitting around a table whining that they might fail.
First it was cars, then electronics, now animation. So Japan is kicking our ass again? Well boo-fuckin-hoo.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
One working example on one day does not put them lightyears ahead of anyone. An installed, working system that people can use -- and afford -- might.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Who comes up with these names, and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
I came up with the name!! Why? What's wrong with it? You should have seen the Engrish they came up with the first time around!
And to answer the "How" question, the answer is simple! Smaller cost of roll-out, fewer zoning regulations (do they even KNOW what zoning is in Japan?) and a high-rate of initial adopters all spells a quick update of technology on their island nation.
The US has been very restrictive when it comes to radio frequencies and uses. Japan has some of the most liberal laws when it comes to that. Thus, Japan has the freedom to do whatever research and application they want. Almost anything anyway. And, the japanese love science more than anything else it seems like. And they really like wireless.
Also, the Japanese have more motivation to develop wireless technologies. A wireless infrastructure in such a small area would be more efficient, less expensive, and consume far less land/space/whatever than their wired equivalent. So they devote more to research than others.
Well, since they lost the second world war they were not allowed to have a army and had to do something to turn the ecoomony around and rebuild the mess that was made. They funneled enormous amounts of money into R&D since they couldn't spend it on anything else.
That's why they are ahead of us in anything related to technology.
... that 4G does not exist. What exists is a memorandum of understanding as far as the expected and required performance shall be.
There are no technical specifications for the time being, nothing concrete.
There's no guarantee that NTT's 4G will be the chosen 4G implementation, neither is any guarantee that NTT's implementation shall be the one to gain the biggest market share (see the FDD and TDD UMTS modes and just when a compromise was reached, China come up with their own system...)
/. Where the truth
variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology
I hear this is really only a placeholder to the followup technology, SUPER MEGA ULTRA HYPER-variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing COMBO RAVE, ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT EDITION (SMUH-WSF-OFCDM-CR,UTE) downstream technology.
Just a rumor. I work for Nintendo you know. In Japan. I have connections to this sort of thing.
Moo
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
They reverse engineer alien technology of course. I thought everyone knew that.
Jeeez.
VS-OFCDM (variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency AND code division multiplexing) is a special case of MC-CDMA (multi-carrier CDMA).
CDMA has lots of advantages for ease of frequency-reuse, as you can have a lot of people on the same frequency, but each one spread with different codes.
OFDM has a lot of resistance against fading (i.e. signal going in and out as you move through diffracted and relected signal peaks and valleys), because you are putting out your signal on a wide range of frequencies. You also get additional frequency diversity from OFDM.
Put them together by doing CDMA spreading first and OFDMing the result, and as much like in the combination of peanut butter and chocolate that results in peanut butter cups, you get an excellent result!
This paper and this paper gives some background.
VS-OFCDM changes the spreading factor adaptively based on cell structure, channel load, radio link conditions, etc.
The Japanese have that whole "honor" thing going, culture-wide, which I'm sure is a contributing factor. There's also the fact that they approach business the way our generals approach warfare. When was the last time you heard of a general firing several platoons, outsourcing munitions resupply and comminucations to India, running the Division into the ground and bouncing on to the next Division with a severance package the size of a smaller country's GNP?
:|
Of course, our Generals have to report to the penultimate PHBs, which nicely breaks my analogy.
Japan is very big on buying Japanese. America, conversely, is very big on buying Cheap, especially if it's Better (witness what Nintendo and Sony did to Atari; Toyota et al. to Detroit). American management doesn't seem to give two shits about American culture, prestige, prowess, capability, standing, or advance- they're in it for the money, focused on the short term, and are running American tech industry into the ground.
I know Japan outsources some of its animation to Korea (and dude, you can tell)- but what about their high-tech industry? Physical area and population density aren't the only factors!
I don't keep up much on mobile phone tech. so this is probably nothing new but with this kind of speed are we likely to see trojaned phones contributing to Spam remailing and DDoS when they start spreading to the masses and incorporating more user friendly software (read exploit friendly)?
One fundamental challenge for even 3G (such as 1xRTT, up to 144kbps) is the bandwidth of the cell site's backhaul link. With 3G, instead of bringing maybe one or two T1's to a cell site, carriers have to bring at least one more. In many cases, wireless broadband is completely overbearing for cells that already drop calls due to overloading. When you realize that each point-to-point T1 costs about a grand a month, you'll understand why deploying high-speed cellular data is so cost-prohibitive, and why this "4G" will never materialize in the US.
Isn't that shared, not switched, bandwidth? What happens to the speed when you aren't the only one in the whole damn country using the pipe?
Just like 802.11b -- where throughput drops proportionally to the number of active users.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Fast enough for mobile porn. We're going to launch an i-mode site later this year hopefully...
WSF is obviously a /. typo. Even on NTT DoCoMo's own website they refer to it as VSF-OFCDM.
I found a good PDF Presentation from NTT DoCoMo explaining in detail VSF-OFCDM. Of interest is its use of Turbo codes for the channel encoding (Turbo codes were mentioned in a previous Slashdot story), and that the uplink bandwidth of the system is 40MHz versus the downlink bandwidth of 101.5MHz. Very interesting stuff!
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
JAPANESE COMMUNICATIONS
Radio Broadcast Stations: 325
Radios: 120,500,000
Television Broadcast Stations: 211
Televisions: 86,500,000
Mainline Telephones: 60,381,000
Mobile Phones: 63,880,000
Internet Service Providers: 73
Internet Users: 47,080,000
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COMMUNICATIONS
Radio Broadcast Stations: 10,304
Radios: 575,000,000
Television Broadcast Stations: 1,500
Televisions: 219,000,000
Mainline Telephones: 194,000,000
Mobile Phones: 69,209,000
Internet Service Providers: 7,800
Internet Users: 166,000,000
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
Perhaps Japan gets more anual UFO crashes per year than in the US (it's been proven they are attracted to neon signs resembeling panda bears). The higher the number of crashed UFOs the more likely that peices of technology will be recoverable.
It uses both frequency division multiplexing and code division multiplexing.
That means that they split their frequency allocation into different bands, and then within each band they use Code Division Multiplexing to let multiple systems transmit at the same time.
Orthoganal seems superfluous to me - Essentially it says that the code patterns will be chosen so that no two transmitters overlap (for lack of a better laymans explanation).
CDM involves transmitting a large number of bits for each 'real' bit of data. The ratio of transmitted bits to real bits is the spreading factor.
Signals with a higher spreading factor can be received amongst more noise, but can carry correspondingly fewer bits. This is like 802.11b does when it drops down to 5.5Mb/s from 11Mb/s.
I think we've covered it all.
Doom has been ported to the Symbian Series 60 platform.
My Opinion; When a new technology comes out everyone pretty much has access to it. You can pay someone to recreate or reverses engineer it, if you have enough cash. Corporate America has access to all the resources they need to do that. When the Japanese come up with an idea they maxed out it's potential and then sold it. What Americans do it make it mediocre, market it as the best then sell you an upgrade. That's 2X the money. Ex. Modems started off with the 300bps modems on the same phone lines that you are using now. With the same phone lines we got up to 56Kpbs. Every 6 month modem speed just doubled why. It's more profitable that way.
"Who comes up with these names, and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
Take a land area the size of California. Now remove 90% of that land area because it's uninhabitable due to mountains, coastal water shifts, and the like.
Provide wireless access technologies to one third to one half of the US population in that area. It's easier to do when you have less to deploy, or redeploy.
Part of the reason Japanese 'toys', i.e. cell phones are far more advanced than their U.S. cousins is mainly due to their behavior in how they consume data services. One example is most metropolitan area rail services and their schedules are accessible via their cell phones. Considering the high reliance of the Japanese population up the rail system as a means of primary transportation, any means to increase the accessibility of these services would make their customers happy.
:-(
Not to mention, Samsung is also planning rolling out digital TV to cell phone so any high speeed would be greatly appreciated.
To put it lightly, the Japanese population is at best a good comparison to the BORG from Star Trek. They are the ultimate consumer and they will consume like there is no tomorrow.
*sigh* I miss Japan
..never mind the technology, my techno-analfabetic friends will certainly look up to me when I go tell them about the newest gadget I got:
:)
"A variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing downstream device."
"Wow... does that come with an optical mouse ?"
Can't wait to gloat
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I guess they must spell variable wariable.
Are bandwidth prices going to go down enough to make this feasable for the masses. I'm sure that's nice but I dont see DSL, Colocation, and other providers upping the ante on bandwidth anywhere. Most people have even seen their speedy DSL connections hacked time and time again until they're at 256/64 vs the 1.544/768 many started with when DSL became available. Even when I first got a cable modem through RoadRunner back in 2000 in NC during the testing phase and for a short while afterwards it was working at nearly 6mbit and 2mbit up.
Today I'm hard pressed to find anything better though speakeasy has many beat for the price.
I can get similar performance here but the prices are double speakeasy's are and they would limit me to 10 gigs of transfer a month. No thanks.
Right now my best option for anything better than DSL is Verizon Wireless's EvDO which will provide 2mbit peak both ways. But there's not a wireless technology that's not lag ridden becuase of constant retransmissions due to lost packets over the air interface.
Landline providers would still have no incentive to up their speeds and make their lines actually usefull for a chance. Seems they cant get past the fact that 99.95% of their customers habits wouldnt really change all that much unless there were some killer broadband apps out there which there is not becuase nobody will bring up the speeds.
That density that brought you bandwidth first also takes it away first. Everyone shares the same total bandwidth per area (air is the wireless "segment"), so you're all paying for the same segment. That achieves critical mass sooner, but all those people have to split it. And wireless scales over larger areas with low incremental costs. So thanks for driving the R&D expenses, early adopters - lower density gets the benefits, by being first to be second!
--
make install -not war
"The company said that the test achieved a maximum downstream data rate of 300Mbps ...
The frequency bandwidth[s] for the test [are] 100MHz..."
How do they get 3bits per cycle? Nyquist frequency limits mean 100MHz could optimally carry 50Mbps, not 6 times that in an actual test.
--
make install -not war
What you really need to look for in radio technology is spectral efficiency or bits per hertz per second. When you do the math this isn't that great of a technology, it just uses big channels.
"how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
Just to stay that much ahead to the US for wireless phone services, all they needed to do is virtually nothing for at least the last three years. At least, that's how long it seems to me that the technology of US wireless companies has been standing still now. Ok, so now you get 600 minutes, evenings and week-ends calling, for the price that three years ago got 300 minutes calling. Whooptydoo. Crap.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Since this is an article on Japanese cell phones, let me save people reading the comments a little time. These articles pop up about once a month and they don't seem to deviate much.
- Someone posts question of why US is so far behind.
- Americans get pissed off and post that they don't need these newfangled gadgets. A thousand descriptions of beaten up seven year old phones follows...
- Godzilla joke
- Giant robot joke
- People living in Japan post long comments, but really just want to show off their phones
- Soviet Russia Godzilla joke
"...and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
or most entertainment technologies for that matter...Japanese companies are far more willing to adopt new technologies than American companies. U.S. companies want to wring every last red cent they can out of existing technologies. Does anyone remember the fight to get broadcasters to adopt HDTV? HDTV was on the books since the mid-80s. The networks bitched about the equipment costs and wanted to cram more channels into the new bandwidth made available through a side-effect from HDTV called narrowcasting. Ultimately, the government stepped in, and said start working on HDTV.
On a side note, I'm now damn confused about cellular data service. I was looking forward to U.S. adoption of UMTS-enabled phones so that when I went on a trip to Europe next August I could get broadband. My hopes were pinned on ATT Wireless fulfilling its contract with DoCoMo by rolling out W-CDMA and UMTS in four American cities. Why is DoCoMo using OFCDM? Any help on this subject is appreciated...
America is big. We need big solutions. As soon as their engineers can make our phones do troposcatter at that data rate...let me know and I'll pop the cork.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Just what we need - live direct porn straight from the bedroom/studio to the nearest phone next to you on the bus!
The Christians are gonna love this! Hey, Ashcroft! Wanna move from Justice over to the FCC? Oh, wait, Powell's already there!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Seriously, folks, it will be ten or twenty years before this tech is *allowed* in the US...if ever.
A few more years of the Japanese doing this sort of thing, and they may find US troops standing on THEIR street-corners shooting civilians at checkpoints.
Of course, think of the spam possibilities!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The ones of you who claim the reason is Japan's population density is only halfway correct. NTT DoCoMo does not put up full coverage all over Japan, they start in the big cities, something that could have been easily implemented in countries such as the US as well. When DoCoMo launched its FOMA service (3G) they focused on Tokyo, if you lived in the countryside, and yes, there are plenty of rural areas in Japan, would not receive any signals. The reason for Japan's success in staying ahead is far more complex.
1. Young people often live at home up to the age of 30. They start working pretty early, not making a lot of money, but without many expenses, they have a lot of money to spend.
2. Most handset manufacturers in the Japanese market are located in Japan. This enables them to customize their product for one market only, increasing the chances of them being accepted by the customers.
3. Cell phones, or keitais as they are called in Japanese, have become sort of fashion objects. NTT DoCoMo pushes out new series of handsets once a year, having the latest series is a must. If you walk down streets in downtown Tokyo like Shibuya, you will see that after only a month or so from the launch of a new series most people around you have replaced their old one with a new.
There are several other reasons that I won't go into here.
Considering I pay something like 5 cents per Kb for cell internet, it's only going to cost me 843.75$ per second to download all the l33test warez to my cell phone.
Yay technology.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This is what a contry that produces more engineers than lawers is capable of doing. What's the ratio in North America?
Any chance of getting technology similar to this into a WAP?
This sig was generated by a barrel of trained kittens for SeXy_Red (550409).
Who comes up with these names, and how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?"
They actually invest in long term research as a society- as opposed to being tied to the three month bottom line and treating stockholders like they were gods.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.