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Cingular To Offer Mobile High-Speed Internet
ArbiterOne writes "ZDNet has the story: Cingular is moving ahead with its plans to offer wireless high-speed Internet access to consumers. Lucent Technologies has agreed to provide the technology, and Cingular has agreed to buy out AT&T Wireless, and become the number-one cell carrier in the US."
...as much as I love the internet, and new technologies...interent on cell phones is too small to do anything with!
I mean..it's great if you wanna...uhm...uhh...
oh wait! it's not great, it sucks!
But people, seriously...if you want to get on the internet so badly...don't leave your house
There is no need to sqiont at a little tiny screen that wont even display anything right.
The choice of UMTS sets Cingular apart from Verizon, which is further along in using a system known as EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). UMTS is based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology that supports data rates of up to 384 kilobits per second, Cingular said. An enhanced version called High Speed Downlink Packet Access would offer peak data rates of 14.4mbps. GSM is well-established in Europe but less widely used in the United States.
Hopefully this will mean that it will be easier to travel from a cell phone usability point of view... on the other hand, CDMA is superior to GSM, so is this a case of comprising technical superiority for the sake of compatibility?
Brandon Glass's personal site.
1. When we say "high speed", what bandwidth are we talking about?
2. How accessible is this high speed for today devices like say, mobile phones? Can I use my cell phone to browse at high speed?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
It's only rape if you don't want it. ;)
There is no mention of what the cost is or indeed what the price model is. Do you pay for time, bandwidth, QoS?
Having a high bandwidth connection is all very well but if it costs $10/Mb then ill just wait until I'm at the office to connect.
Technologies like this are only useful to the vast majority of people once a certain price point is met. I imagine there is a large cost to recoup be the OpCos so it will be sometime before we can all sling a 3G modem in our laptops and forget about it.
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I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't mind if cell-phones had built-in wifi support. With wifi hotspots becoming more prevalent these days, they would seem a good alternative to lugging around a laptop, and (somewhat) cheaper than buying a PDA.
Any thoughts?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Cingular is my cell phone company (at least until my contract expires) but their customer service reps are completely clueless about most of those little technical details such as how to get voice mail to work (they only know how to reset it). Forget it when it comes to "data" services. I have been told that I had to take my phone to an authorized service center (not my local phone store) to enter the IP address for data services. They would not give me the address to enter myself. Cluetrain doesn't stop here!
Many cellular phones feature browsers that were created on a whim, as a way of beefing up the features list prior to going on sale. Most Ericsson phones for instance have very poor browser functionality. A lot of the new phones coming from Nokia and Sony are light-years ahead of the first primitive attempts. A word of advice though - stay away from imported asian phones, they may look flashy and high-tech, but any are designed to be used for as little as a month before needing replacement.
Of course, this being slashdot, home of the technically adept, I feel obliged to mention the ultimate way to experience the internet on a cellular phone - via linux. Of course, this way is not for the faint hearted, but those steadfast in their dedication to that plucky Swede's OS will find that the Kyocera 1080 is admirably suited for an ultra-light linux distro, with built in internet functionality. If only I still had mine, I could truthfully claim to be making this post by cellphone!
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
I know this is an unfarmiliar concept tosome of you, but hear me out.
One GSM Modem + One Laptop + One provider offering High Speed wireless internet over its network = a Laptop on the internet.
We've got such setups going in New Zealand, and it's slowly becoming mainstream.
1. When we say "high speed", what bandwidth are we talking about?
The article says: It has already signed up Lucent Technologies to provide equipment that currently supports data speeds of up to 2 megabits per second (mbps). The gear ultimately could support speeds of up to 14.4mbps.
2. How accessible is this high speed for today devices like say, mobile phones? Can I use my cell phone to browse at high speed?
No, it will be available for the yet to come 3G mobiles that have been promised for many years already. I have a feeling that we will need to wait more for them and when they become available they will be called 4G, skipping 3G. We have seen such thing a couple of times already.
Now we're getting mobile wireless (which of course means we can do mobile VOIP) can we please get rid of telephone numbers? They feel increasingly primitive to me. It's much easier to remember name.surname@company.com than 023633463453.
Of course the problem is with personal numbers, rather than office-based ones. Of course your work is one thing that defines you (bob.thompson@company.com), as does your physical location bob.thompson@london.uk. But not everyone has a job, and location based identifiers don't make much sense for mobile numbers. Any solutions?
The story of a botched CRM upgrade that cost the telco thousands of new customers and an estimated $100 million in lost revenue. Hard lessons learned.
http://www.cio.com/archive/041504/wireless.html
Cingular, in a statement announcing the 3G testing, described general aspects of some services it might offer consumers with the new network. The offerings could include downloading film trailers and sports highlights, access to e-mails with large attachments, and locating automated bank machines, movie theaters or restaurants.
If this is what they're thinking of, they don't get it, and if that's what they offer, I certainly won't.
I realize not everone wants/needs SSH. But the thing with this kind of offering is to offer a *platform* open enough that all kinds of folks can develop interesting services. Do this, and you don't have to do focus groups to discover what people will like -- a market will do it for you.
Tweet, tweet.
Because if it's anywhere near as bad as their normal phone service, you'll never be able to connect.
I just moved into a new apartment (about a week and a half ago), and my phone, with Cingular service, isn't much more functional than a paperweight now.
There are about three spots in my apartment I get any signal at all, and I have to be standing up to do so (one spot is right at my couch, so I can test this).
I thought it was because GSM sucks, but that was dispelled after I talked to two of my neighbours, both on the same floor as me--one has AT&T (now owned by Cingular, but they still probably use their old equipment), and the other has T-Mobile. Both are getting great signals, and both providers use GSM--it looks like the problem is entirely Cingular's fault.
Ach--why the hell did I have to get a new phone in December, thus renewing my two-year contract? I'm this close to hiring a lawyer to bully/harrass Cingular into releasing me from my contract...
By any chance, does anyone know anything about how to boost power to the internal antenna of a Sony Ericsson T226, or if doing so will matter signal-wise?
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Here's a thought, just let me have the plain old fucking internet access through my phone without having to jump through any co-branded, stratigic partnering marketing hoops to get there.
I found a F/OSS Midlet RSS reader on sourceforge.
Unsurprizingly, It's called 'RSS Reader MIDlet'.
It's available here. Cheers for the slashdot rss link as well(I feel so dim)
To avoid this comment as being blasted offtopic, I will add that cell phone growth would be increased if more cell phone owners knew about the existence of rss readers for phone(or perhaps of the existence of rss at all).
At the moment most providers just push their ludicrously overpriced games and ringtones as the main feature of GPRS/WAP. It's a shame. If only more people knew what was possible with mobile browsing, they'd use it a lot more, hence better apps, more investement etc,etc.
As it stands the only java Midlet investement is in overpriced and frequently shoddy games.
Oh and the cost of GPRS is too high! 3c per KB!! Come ON!!!
I also hear that the US mobile phone industry is in a bit of a state due to incompatible technologies and unreasonable tarrifs. A least that's what they tell me
May the Maths Be with you!
Which Mobile Internet technology is the best ?
May be you can find it, by playing this simulation game here at Lucent.com. The simulator here shows the differences in bandwidth and roundtrip delays for various mobile technologies. The simulator compares CDMA2000 EV-DO, CDMA2000 1X, GPRS and EDGE. A UMTS, GPRS, GSM-Data and Modem version. There are two version of the simulator one with EV-DO & one with UMTS.
It still does not take away from the fact that AT&T Wireless has, by far the worst customer service I have the displeasure to experience. I hope cingular can fix that...
It's all fun and games until someone takes an eye out!
OMG, that's so novel, so un-thought of ever before.
That's so outside the box! And just think what if we put wifi cards in laptops! Then you could surf the web, without paying outrageous telco charges!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Looking at movie traliers while your at the theater trying to decide what movie to see might be kind of convienent.
:P) or Slashdot, or whatever.
But yeah, these kinds of suggestions (other then large attachments) have been bandied about since the beginning of the 'information superhighway' talk.
It has more to do with the fantasies of corporate pigs then the desires of individuals.
It isn't what you or I want, its what the CEOs and stuff wish would want. You know what the original conception of the "information superhighway" was? Basically interactive Cable TV. You'd be able to "Fast-forward and rewind", shop over your TV, play video games, etc. Everything they thought up was another way to fork over money.
meanwhile, why they tried to develop that, people just began connecting to the internet.
That's why these phone sandboxes are never going to catch on. In a couple years, most people are going to be able to find free, wireless internet everywhere in most cities. It won't be as ubiquitous as the Cellphone system is now (at least I don't think so. I hope I'm wrong on this point) but for the vast majority of people, it'll be there the vast majority of the time.
People aren't interested in what big corporations and marketers want to feed them. Give them an open platform, and someone will come up with the 'next big thing.'. Big companies would never have thought up ebay, or hotornot, or autopr0n.com (okay, maybe that one isn't so big
I'd say more but it's 5 in the fucking morning and I'm tired.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
They bought out Cellular One.............which really sucks ass. Now they are buying At&t.........I have Verizon. I'm happy with it.
$>man woman
$>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
They all blow.
I would settle for reliable coverage when making normal phone calls. Frequently the network is spotty in my area, and has been "scheduled for expansion" according to customer service. How about you get that right and then try something new? Since I'm using my phone primarily as a um... phone.
For T-Mobile customers: all T-Mobile accounts -- including prepaid EasySpeak customers -- have free WAP access available. T-Mobile doesn't charge minutes usage or bandwidth used for GPRS internet access. If your cell phone can connect to your laptop via Bluetooth, IR or with a cable, this means free internet access via GPRS from your laptop. The speeds aren't great, about that of a 56K modem, but definitely useable for the convenience it offers. Check out T-Mobile.HowardForums.com for more details and discussion. If you're interested, more information on my experience with T-Mobile GPRS internet access and a Nokia 6610 here and here.
I predicted to my parents, when I heard of the Cingular takeover of AT&T that the service would be unmatched, and it is. We recently got a letter in the mail from AT&T saying that "due to the recent buyout from Cingular, we will now offer no roaming, and 95% U.S. coverage on your network', that my friends is the best part. I also spoke to someone on the phone who said that rollover will make its way to AT&T as well.
1) Verizon already offers high-speed mobile data access to customers in San Diego and Washington.
This is based on CDMA EV-DO. This technology gets 2.4Mbps peak (500Kbps average) on the downlink, and 153Kbps peak (80Kbps average) on the uplink. A nationwide rollout is expected later this year.
2) Sprint announced that they are going to do the same thing yesterday. They expect to have service later this year/early next year.
3) CDMA EVDO has been successfully deployed for the last 2 years in Korea (6 million subs) and for about 9 months in Japan (subs not known). Dozens of devices/phones are available.
4) Cingular's service is NOT based on GSM. This is the next generation of GSM (3G) which is based on CDMA technology. The complexities of this upgrade are much more than that of going from CDMA to EV-DO. W-CDMA will give you about 2Mbps peak (500 Kbps average) on the downlink, and far less on the uplink. This is over 3 times the bandwidth used by CDMA EV-DO.
Magnus.
Nextel Broadband. Currently only available in Virginia, but it looks promising.
More like apporaching the speed of a 14.4 modem on a bad day. I've never got anything even close to 56k speed on GSM.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
This man has it right. If they provide bad service and customer support individually it will only get worse when they merge. Case in point: AT&T says they're going to charge for roaming, since their network covers 95% of the US. Try getting your money back for living in the other 5% of the US and getting an AT&T phone because it offered free roaming. Just try.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Everyone is buying each other, getting newer and fancier phones, getting fancy high speed internet, but still no one can match Verizon in terms of actually being able to get a signal and make a call... how come they are not focusing on that before all the extra fluff?
However, my story submission on Sprint moving to EVDO yesterday was ignored. I have detected an anti-CDMA bias in the /. coverage of wireless issues for some time now.
Everyone I know who owns a T226 complains about the poor reception. Two of my co-workers have them too, and inside our office building their signal strength shows barely off zero, barely able to work while I can stand right next to them with my Nokia and get more than half-strength displayed and no dropped calls inside the worst places inside the building. BTW, we're all on the same provider - ATTWS.
Your solution would simply be to get a better phone.
A company does not become the "Number One" anything just because of size. I stuck with Verizon Wireless because of their good customer service and wide coverage, even in the boonies.
Before I ever think of Cingular as "Number One," they're going to have to prove that they can be just as good at quality of service as Verizon.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Fido, a Canadian GSM cellular service provider is beginning to roll out a service called iFido... wireless 2.2Mbps internet access. Currently it's only available in certain areas of BC, but myself and a few others here in Winnipeg are (im)patiently waiting for it to come to the rest of Canada.
I'll be glad when I can finally move 100% away from the phone and cable companies here. Right now, I'm 100% off the phone company (MTS), using Fido for my phone service, but still stuck with Shaw (cable) for high speed internet access while using satellite for TV.
~jaraxle
P.S. - Amazon has some great deals right now on the t610, it's really good phone.
then they both suck
sprintpcs offers high speed wireless internet only with its own "aircard", which is $70/month and only for internet, at a rather low speed comparing to cable/DSL and really expensive. for the 30min commute I have, I can bear life without internet for a while, also for those who drive, they dont care any way.
what I really want is the ability to use my 3G cellphone from sprintpcs to connect to high speed internet occasionally, which, to my knowledge, they dont offer in USA yet. but you can get it in china and many other places.
I pay only $20 more a month for 56k mobile internet on my Nokia 6610 phone. A more expensive phone does it with bluetooth, but I used the Nokia because it talks IrDA with my palmpilot and it connects with a cable to my laptop.
I can listen to 2600.com, most other talk radio, and somafm.com's streams up to about 40k a second, while driving 80mph on the Interstate.
That's today. Not "soon" or "next quarter", or after we complete "infrastructure upgrades". That's right now. Beat that.
i'm down with the computer on my lap bluetoothing with the cell phone in my pocket to give me internet access.
i'm my own hotspot!
will this usher in a new trend of "war-walking"?
I was gonna say the same thing. Most people want 3G phones so they can be anywhere in the world (granted there's a signal) and surf the net. Need directions? hop online.. looking for a restaurant? hop online. Need to download the soundtrack from the movie you just saw and can't wait to get home? hop online. What I would really love is to connect my phone to a headunit in my car so I can listen to the thousands of internet streams. One in particular is there's a dance radio station that used to be in chicago, and it's now in arizona:t ml
http://www.energy98stl.com/listenlive.h
I'd be nice to be able to listen to it in my car as if I'm in arizona. This could possibly make XM and Sirrus radio obsolete, depending on how reliable the connection is with 3G.
If I'm not mistaken, this might have something to do with a (publically known) contract stipulation that they would build out 4 high speed data markets by X date.
And not to fan old flames, but isn't UMTS basically WCDMA ? Such that the gsm vs cdma arguments are largely mooted by the fact that all of the next generation GSM protocols are carrier division based rather than time division (GSM works by dividing the broadcast frequency into multiple time chunks for each device)
I already use my Sprint Phone along with the data cable from Future Dial to get my Internet access. I get speeds about 3 times as fast as dial-up, included with my Vision package. So basically $15 a month and I'm getting 150K. It's not blazing fast, but it works for me.
Add a BlueTooth cell phone and a BT module [integrated | USB Plug] to your laptop and you don't even have to take the phone out of it's holster.
Mac users are doing that with compatible phones, as all Mac laptops have integrated BT now. Is that standard on PC laptops?
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$tar -xvf
Since FCC regulations of public spectrum use was something of a hot topic on /., thought I might bring this up...
Cingular is now planning to simultaneously run four different cell network, Analog (AMPS), IS-136 ("TDMA"), GSM and now UMTS/WCDMA. This is going to take a whole crapload of spectrum space, considerably more than any other carrier. Since spectrum limited, doesn't this concern anyone? How is planning to get away with this?
Well, in a way..
AT&T Wireless bought out Cellular One in the SF Bay Area - the changeover was a bloody nightmare.
Now Cingular is buying AT&T Wireless. So, they kinda got Cellular One that way.
Oh, and SunCom.
While I welcome new data services as much as the next geek, shouldn't Cingular be focusing on improving their voice service (primary business) before implementing UMTS? Also, what about the task of merging theirs and AT&Ts GSM networks?
I have two phones, a Verizon phone for voice and a T-Mobile for data. The T-Mobile is a ridiculously good deal, since I'm on the EasySpeak prepaid with the $25 card that lasts for a year, and EasySpeak now includes unlimited GPRS, but that's beside the point. Since I live in L.A., the T-Mobile phone runs on Cingular's network, and I have to say that, while their service is pretty good, they still have some catching up with Verizon to do. They've also had some major problems with their network in the past. AT&T (when I had it) was better, so when the merger goes through Cingular will probably get better in my area, too, assuming the network fusion goes well.
While I'm sure it's exciting that Cingular will provide high-speed Internet, I'm more interested in when they will provide reliable voice service. Unfortunately my neighborhood in Silicon Valley gets either zero bars or one bar of signal from Cingular, and the same from T-Mobile (who uses the Cingular network).
First things first. Voice before data. Sigh.
"Open platform." These two words instill fear and dread in telcos and handset manufacturers. I've worked in the mobile phone industry, and we asked these kinds of questions. When we asked a major handset manufacturer how to develop software for their phones, their eyes got all big and they said, "You can't really do that." Why do people buy PCs? To run applications of their own choosing. Would you be happy running only the software that Dell packaged with your PC? Hell no, you'd go buy something else. If the handset manufacturers could grok this, they would sell more high end phones! As for the telcos, they're just as bad. They'd be a hell of a lot better off having an open system and just taking a tax on access, rather than trying to sell all this lame garbage. (Anyone remember Prodigy? GEnie? I didn't think so.) They fundamentally don't understand that people don't want to pay $5 to download a movie trailer. They don't get that people might want to download apps other than the five they offer on their lame portal site. People want choices, lots of choices. But Microsoft does get it. Windows Mobile isn't the most open system in the world, but it is a hell of a lot better than anything else out there for mobile phone software development. If Nokia/Siemens/etc don't get off their asses soon, people will start developing Windows Mobile apps, people will like them, and Microsoft will very rapidly dominate the smartphone market and leverage that into the rest of the mobile phone market. Telcos and handset manufactuers, get a clue before it's too late!
yes there is a way (two which i have used) to view slashdot on a handheld phone. one is to setup avantslash on a webserver you can access from your phone. if that's not practical for you, there is also http://slashdot.org/palm/ which gives you a basic WAP version of the front page and the articles, with the ability to view 5 or so comments as well. i much prefer avantslash because you can easily view all the comments above a certain threshold with it.
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babybird
but I noticed you added me to your friends list :)
I'm honored, what did I do to deserve this?
-zoloto
OK...so maybe viewing the internet as we know it(such as the one that you must be viewing currently) would be by no means the same when viewed on a two inch moniter at a slow pace because of the phones inability to process data rapidly. However...there are a few ways that high speed wireless internet via cellphones can work. 1. I beleive that a seperate type of browser, such as that is already in place in cell phones, but would be updated to provide certain attributes such as email access etc. could work, and would prove usefull to the public and people on the go. 2. I suggest however to get away from use of the "high speed" wireless directly from the phones(though a browser should be present)...but instead to use the phone as a modem, wheras it can be connected to other consoles such as a laptop (via an internet jack or usb), or a pda through some adapted port, or through modern mobile game systems which could provide live gaming on the go. I believe that the advantages to both situations, mainly the latter, would be tremendous. For example, a business man could sit down almost any where and access the full intact internet(unadapted) through the combination of his cell/laptop at almost the same speed as he would likely have at home. or another situation, such as a child who loves to game online, but cannot during a car ride. This would open up a completely competetive market for handheld game systems that supported a port for cell phone connections. This could be done also with laptop gaming on the go. Another feature that could be useful, is forget the cellphone part, and just consider wireless highspeed internet. This could open up possibilities that would have u have a central modem in your house, but that would act as a router to the rest of the house making one's house wireless. ....here i have just named a few of the things that i believe to be possible if this technology were to be successful, and in my opinion, this could be highly profitable for many corporations.
...im searching for my interests