Experimental 4G Phone Service Faster Than Cable

JymBrittain writes "NewScientist reports that Japanese researchers have achieved blistering rates of transmission for cell phones that allowed for viewing of 32 high definition video streams, while traveling in an automobile at 20 kilometers per hour. From the article: "Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute." These transmission rates were achieved using new experimental methods of multiplexing."

Comments

Wow

[Tidal Flame]

Wow. But if you think the data rates are amazing, imagine what the cost is going to be!

Re:Wow

[Zorilla]

Where in Japan are you? For $40 per month, I can only get 8Mbit ADSL with real world speeds that don't even exceed 512kbit/second.

Re:Wow

[delirium_9]

I was in Kyoto on 47Mbit ADSL, and I could download at about 16Mbit/s (2 megabytes/sec). Which I only ever got if I was downloading a lot of torrents or a linux ISO from a good Japanese mirror.

A friend of mine (also in Kyoto) is on 100Mbit fiber, and I think for her the bottleneck is finding places which actually provide content at that speed.

I'd figure it was the same for any of the larger cities, so the better question is where in Japan are you?

Home Usage?

[weilawei]

One wonders if it's even feasable to take this sort of technology at some point and use it within the home or for local ISPs. I'd certainly pay extra per month for gigabit wireless.

But what if there was 1 million of them

[CastrTroy]

Somehow, I don't think the phones could acheive the same bandwidth if there was 1 million of them withing an area the size of a normal city. There's limited bandwidth on the airwaves. Might be good for broadcasting video streams, but if everyone wants different data, it won't work. Besides, we already had technology to transmit 30 channels of video to handheld viewers 20 years ago.

But the cost...

[guard952]

So, with telcos providing data at 2c per kB, downloading that DVD in less than a minute will cost you $98,000.

Surely it's gotta be cheaper to just buy a helicopter and fly to the video store.

Gentlemen start your servers

[Lord Kano]

I would imagine that this could make raiding a warez operation even harder.

High speed connectivity on the go would be a dream come true for big time movie, music and software pirates.

LK

Hmm, I'll believe that bandwidth when I see it...

[DamonHD]

Hi,

As a 3G user that rarely achieves 200kbps out of the originally-hyped 2Mbps, even in the the best-served parts of London, I think at least a 10-fold scaling of expectation-to-promise is in order here.

As pointed out, data prices will have to scale too!

Rgds

Damon

Re:20 kmph?

[Zorilla]

My compact car sputters in first gear at 10 kph. 40-60 kph sounds more logical for city traffic.

Re:Thanks, NTT DoCoMo Officials, for the perspecti

[Nogami_Saeko]

Don't worry, it'll never reach North America, regardless of what it's being used for.

It would break the cardinal rule of mobile technology over here, mainly "give them the least service for the most money to maximize profits".

N.

Re:Thanks, NTT DoCoMo Officials, for the perspecti

[MegaFur]

Maybe it's because some of the companies started to roll out new tech, or more often the hot air promise of new tech, too soon during the .com bubble. Now, after it's exploded, the companies that remain are too scared to stick their neck out by putting forth novel technology. Or maybe not. *shrug*

Re:Thanks, NTT DoCoMo Officials, for the perspecti

[Decker-Mage]

You are probably on the mark here. What most people don't realize is that business is fundamentally risk adverse except in a bubble where the bandwagon effect seems to overcome that risk adversion. Or at least that is what I've observed over a rather lengthy lifetime. In some ways this resembles the prisoners dilemma in games theory, a fundamental part of current microeconomics.