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Germans Reach 360 Mbps in Mobile Network Tests

Posted by samzenpus on from the but-I-want-it-now dept.

povvell writes "German telecomms giant Siemens has managed to hit speeds of an astonishing 360 Mbps in field tests in the centre of Munich using 'orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and the so-called multi-hop technology'. This is not the only demonstration of OFDM producing super fast wireless speeds, as other companies are also working on variants of the technology. It surely can't be long now before we're all streaming the latest blockbuster movies to our laptops on the commuter train home?"

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Raw Speed Doesn't Mean Much by femto · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's the 'spectral efficiency' (the number of bits per second per unit of bandwidth) and the ability of the receiver to reject other users signals that is important.

    It is relatively easy to do 360Mbps given the whole radio spectrum to play with. It's a lot harder when it is necessary to coexist with all other users or a limited bandwidth is available.

    The article doesn't give such information so Siemen's acheivement may be impressive, or then again it may not.

  2. I doubt it.... by novalogic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Doubtful, if the current trends in American markets keep up, it would be a decade easy before we get to this point. If you don't belive me, just look at this link it's more profitable for a company to offer slower service, not upgrade, and charge by the Kilobyte, rather then broadband us.

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  3. Re:radio pollution and the shannon limit by div_2n · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Increasing signal cannot and would not provide you with more bandwidth. It might help you overcome noise thus maximizing your current maximum capacity. But increasing signal also increases the possiblity of reflections which in turn increases noise.

    The best possibility is to use the maximum signal strength required to be "heard" over the noise which, given the possibility of reflections, it is sometimes actually less and not more.

    All things being equal, the only real way to increase bandwidth is to increase the amount of spectrum you use. But not all modulation is created equal as is shown in 802.11g (ODFM) vs. 802.11b (DSSS). Same spectrum, different results. Wimax is one attempt to not only increase the amount of spectrum used, but increase the effeciency of the modulation technique to make the most of the bandwidth in that spectrum.

    That and it also happens to be a theoretical competitor to telcos (cellular included) because of the possibilities it might offer.