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Cingular To Offer Mobile High-Speed Internet

Posted by timothy on from the a-held-breath-never-boils dept.

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."

8 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Don't expect it to work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:Don't expect it to work by Rebel_Princess · · Score: 5, Funny
      Being a CSR, you get sent to the store because trying to instruct/walk-through customers on how to do anything on their phones is far too time consuming to bother with - the blunt end being, you're gonna fuck it up anyway and get sent to a store, cut your losses and get to the other people waiting.
      If we had the ability to yank the phone out of your hands after you've unsuccessfully tried turning on your phone for the 19th time, we would sir.
      This doesn't apply to 1% of the calls, sorry if I sound a bit cranky, but after the 40th "What rate plan am I on?" and the answer of "See, at the top of your bill? In giant fucking letters that says Rate Plan and Rate Plan Summary? Well if ignore that, it's a trick! You're real rate plan is unlimited daytime with rollover, unlimited mobile to mobile and unlimited nights and weekends... sorry to mislead you there, but we can't just have everyone know they're on that plan, only the ones clever enough to call in!"

      Thank you for choosing Slashdot and have a nice day.

  2. Think OUTSIDE the box.. by Segway+Ninja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Interesting... by barcodez · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not really for use with your mobile phone.

    This is currently available in the UK. Which is a mobile modem for your laptop. Obviously there are other usages, like in car internet (not for the driver!), iPOD could connect to itunes to get tunes you want when out and about. It's not just about phones...

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  4. Re:small by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I disagree.
    Mobile internet still has its uses.
    GPRS is well suited to rss feeds in paticular. I have a small phone screen, 95*60 px I think and I always read the bbc news while I'm on the bus, or driving or just don't have a net connection handy.

    Though for anything else, it does pretty much suck, agreed.

    However a large number of, PDA type devices with larger screens are appearing, so there is hope for mobile browsing. Now if only web developers would embrace xml,rss and css like they're 'sposed too!! :E

    P.S. Is it possible to get slashdot on a mobile(wap) phone. Maybe an rss reader for phones?

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    May the Maths Be with you!
  5. Re:small by PaoloHu · · Score: 5, Informative

    there is an rss feed for slashdot...

    http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss

    it doesn't show the comments - but it is there

  6. Speed comparison simulator for CDMA2000 EV-DO, CDM by sanspeak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Interesting... by jodonoghue · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    I'm quite surprised to see such an inept statement from ZDNet. UMTS is an umbrella term which covers the set of specifications for GSM, WCDMA and their interworking.

    In this case, Cingular is focussing on WCDMA which, at the air interface layer has more in common with CDMA2000 than with GSM. WCDMA uses a CDMA-based air interface with upper protocol layers based on GSM (you could view this as like moving from copper Ethernet to fibre: the upper protocol is still TCP/IP, but faster...)

    At the risk of starting a flame war, I think it's reasonable to say that today, GSM/WCDMA has a more highly evolved set of upper layers than CDMA2000, but CDMA2000 has a better optimised radio interface (EV-DO is considerably faster than the 384 kbit/s you can get with WCDMA - I know colleagues who consistently get around 800 kbit/s real data rates with EV-DO modems, where around 200 kbit/s is more realistic for WCDMA).

    While, as explained above, I wouldn't like to characterise either CDMA2000 EV-DO or WCDMA as superior to the other, I think it is reasonable to state that EV-DO is the more mature and stable system right now. I use a 3G mobile in the UK, and there are still a few glitches around the edges, although things are improving rapidly (the main issue is handover between WCDMA and GSM, which is technically very challenging, and isn't an issue in CDMA2000 networks). I will say that if you're interested in data on the move, both EV-DO and WCDMA offer a user experience which is subjectively very similar to using a DSL connection, and is light years ahead of using GPRS (or CDMA2000-1X) in the performance offered.

    HSDPA is at least a couple of years away from deployment in commercial networks, and probably won't initially work at 14.4 Mbit/s.

    As for the issue of travelling... Well, WCDMA phones (almost) all have GSM capability, so will work in most parts of the world (the only place my GSM phone failed to work in the last five years was rural Laos!), and dual-mode CDMA2000 phones with GSM capability are extremely close to market, which will enable global roaming for CDMA users on GSM networks. From a practical point of view, users of either type of network will have the option of near global roaming.

    I suppose I would summarise by saying that both systems are 'good enough' for most data users, and both will offer global roaming. Most people will probably be quite happy to choose based on price plan and phone they like best...