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Beyond 3G — Practical Cellular Internet Access
PreacherTom writes "For years 3G, or 'third generation,' denoted some future wireless utopia where voice, data, and video would all merge into a wondrous amalgam, marked by snazzy phones that do everything perfectly — and fast. There is indeed a new wireless utopia, and again, it's about merging voice, data, and all the other stuff at even faster speeds. It is known as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HSDPA, and it has started appearing on wireless networks operated by companies such as Vodaphone in Europe and Cingular Wireless in the U.S. Meanwhile, South Korea's Samsung has even started building HSDPA-ready phones. The technology promises wireless speeds as high as 3.6 Mbps but in practice will be much slower than that — fast enough, though, to make wirelessly surfing the Web and downloading music and video well worth the effort."
Doesn't some IP firm have a patent on this?
Taking bets on how many companies will try!
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Not to sound like a troll, but in what ways is this different than the technologies already out there (like EvDO)?
The article seems information-free, largely hype with no substance, by someone who appears to have limited understanding of the issues. Even Vodafone is spelt incorrectly.
HSDPA is actually just an improved version of W-CDMA, the underlying air-interface standard used by the UMTS and FOMA 3G standards. It's an incremental improvement on W-CDMA, it brings more bandwidth but more importantly it brings lower (sub-100ms round-trip ping) latency. HSUPA is the "next step" from HSDPA (HSDPA concentrates on the downlink, HSUPA combines with HSDPA and improves the uplink) and brings better-than-DSL latency to UMTS.
There's nothing that revolutionary about the whole thing. It's still essentially "3G" (which is mostly a marketing phrase anyway) mobile phone technology. Bandwidth is still limited enough that you'll not see operators marketing it as a true alternative to DSL in the same way as, say, WiMax will be.
The article itself seems a little wierd. It's as if someone just found out about SMS text messaging and is enthused about it. HSDPA isn't new, it's been part of Cingular's UMTS roll-out for the two years or so they've been playing with UMTS. Nor is it significantly better or worse than EVDO revision A, which is being rolled out by Sprint at the moment (though there are advantages in the fact that HSDPA is generally implemented with UMTS at the upper levels, rather than the AMPS-derived upper-level protocols that IS-95/IS-2000 networks like Sprint's use.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
GSM is fine by me.
Deleted
0 kph, I guess... How well does it behave when you're in your car at, say, 50 km/h? Or in a train at 100 km/h?
What's the fastest you can move you make cell handover feasible? That's one of the issues of 3G, isn't it?
My 0.02 cents
-b.
I fear that technology speed is too high when compared to mobile Internet access speed.
There is too little time in order to get those technologies more mature, wider spread and accepted.
As of today GPRS/EDGE is the real solution (at least in Europe) unless you want to mimick your xDSL.
Instead of putting money in those 3rd, 4th and 5th technology dreams I would both enhance the services and lower the cost for both the services and the terminals.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Digita is building country-wide solution in Finland based on first one.
What's interesting about their project, is that they started building in mind of covering all rural areas before offering service to larger cities.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Now I can watch Bangbus while I wait at the DMV office! What could I ever do without something like this guys?!!!
....
I regularly travel between several countries in Europe and would like to use one method to access the internet in all countries. But what I've found is that the "roaming" charges are huge, and if you get, say, access from a UK mobile company it treats the rest of Europe as "abroad" and you pay huge roaming charges, even if it is with the same company.
Anyone know of a way to do this, with good speeds and reasonable prices?
Rogers Wireless, the bigest Wireless carrier in Canada as also lauched HSDPA last week. The current [real] speed is about 1.4Mbps.. which is really good for an un-tuned/new network!
I have a 3G phone (Orange SPV M3100) - no problems with the speed at all.
The problem is prohibitive data prices - at £4 a megabyte from Orange, I literally can not afford to use it.
These 3G wireless services are all locked down by the telecom companies. I just bought a phone from T-Mobile that purports to support Java applications, and I have a data plan. However, it turns out that T-Mobile locks out Java applications that T-Mobile did not itself distribute. I cannot use the new Mobile Google Mail application, nor can I use Google Maps on my phone. It's not because the phone does not support it, but because T-Mobile has decided that it can enforce vendor lock-in with DRM'd Java apps.
And judging by my recent reading of the various newsgroups and forums, it's not just T-Mobile that does this -- pretty much they all do.
One can get around this by buying a non-subsidized phone, one that is completely vendor neutral, but these cost considerably more, to the point of making it economically unappealing.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I wish I could subscribe to a mobile phone provider just like any other internet service provider.
Then I could choose whoever would charge me the least for the traffic, and I could do VoIP (or any standard TCP/IP traffic) with anyone on the internet without extra costs.
Have the "phone" companies switched to end-to-end data calls yet? If so, why are we forced to use them for voice calls? Shouldn't I be able to use my SIP provider?
90% of my phone calls are to people within thirty miles, a city-wide mesh network would handle that traffic for free... I want this option!
Is this impossible?
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
I have no problem with the speeds that evdo offers me. I can do everything I need with Verizon's EVDO. The only issue is the horrible latency. Not sure how much the HSDPA is going to help with that.
fast enough, though, to make wirelessly surfing the Web and downloading music and video well worth the effort."
Music? Yes.
Web surfing for anything other than a quick information lookup? Maybe.
But I do not comprehend the attraction of looking at video on a postage stamp sized (slight exaggeration) screen.
Most of these services are priced several times the cost of other Internet access and they all seem to have restrictions to limit access to brief email and browsing use. For instance, they specifically prohibit streaming music or video... unless, of course, you are paying them big extra bucks for their "special" DRM content.
This will take off big when they get realistic about pricing and use but I don't think this will happen... ever.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
..at least for me. I am being charged 45 bucks a month for EVDO on my Treo 700w from Verizon. I do like the EVDO, but I do not feel that the bang per buck is there. Better technology is good, but at current high price points I dont see adoption quite taking off. While EVDO is nice and relatively fast, there is no reason it should be about 50% more than my 6 Mbps cable modem at home.
I currently use Sprint's EvDO and get 1Mbps at my house and about 0.25Mbps at my office (lots of rebar/concrete tho). This would be a nice speed upgrade if it actually delivers. The one big drawback to the cell data tech is latency. Can't really play games too well, but on a good day its passable. I have the Samsung A940 attached to my MacBook right now via a charging/data usb cable. It also works great with bluetooth but the bandwidth is limited to bluetooth transfer speeds.
I thought it was a good idea
I, a college student, have next to no use for the EVDO provided by Verizon. Even if I had a use for it, I have to buy a separate (and expensive) data plan, a cell phone that supports DUN or an EVDO card. It's a wet dream to be on the internet at any given moment, but we're still some ways off from DSL-like speed on the pooper or on a train to Odessa (or both).
The market for cellular internet is small right now, catering to the business professional or the extreme geek. Maybe in a few years I'll be able to walk from a wifi spot and my laptop will switch from wifi to 3G.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
I made the geek-error of buying a house before inquiring about Internet access. The location was great -- a huge lake just 100 yards in my back yard. Lovely setting. No Internet. I was depressed. Researched and researched options to finally decide to try GPRS through Cingular.
I will say that as far as surfing at home I might as well have bought a land line and used dialup. The connectivity simply blew. Yes, I'm talking GPRS here as someone will surely point out is inferior, but that's not the worst of it. Besides constant drops and inability to get connected a major problem arose. I do want to say that I did enjoy surfing the web while stuck in several traffic jams -- made the wait much more bearable.
So, I get it for around $80 extra a month. I justified the cost based on not having a land line, paying for dialup, etc. The difference was minimal and the mobility made sense. So, around the second payment I get this extra charge of around $30 or so. I walk into the Cingular store where I bought it, to the girl who helped me, and she made a phone call or two and got the charges dismissed, no questions asked. I don't even think I really looked at what the charges were for.
Another 4 or 5 months go by and I'm still using the service. I get this bill one day for an extra $1000. I was mildly shocked, looked over it to realize that these were voice charges for the phone number on the Erickson, wireless card Cingular provided for my laptop. This began a huge odyssey with Cingular. The charges piled up over the next 2 or 3 months and equaled $2500. For 2 solid months I called, walked into the cingular store, emailed, wrote letters, everything. For the first few weeks no one at cingular would believe that I had done anything less than taken the Erickson PCMCIA device out of the laptop, put the SIM card into a phone and made phone calls totaling 1000s of dollars. I even showed them where data and voice calls were showing on the bill at the exact same time, and that with the technology I was using, this was impossible. They still failed to believe me, or, really, show any care at all. It was maddening as each person I talked to seemed to have the job of deflection. It was a basic, "I can't help you, and I don't know who can." No matter how far up the ladder I went.
Finally, after weeks I got through to a manager at their support center who heard my plea, looked at the bill, saw what I saw -- simultaneous data/voice calls -- and got the first month's charges dismissed. I told him there would be more charges, probably, next month and wanted him to help. He said he would. He didn't. For the 2nd months charges, I leaned on the local store manager (I now know why he works behind a vault-door with a key code to get in). He began the investigation anew, as if nothing happened. His method of investigating the bill was to actually call the voice numbers on my Erickson SIM card, and ask the people if they new me (....). He did this even though I showed him the same facts that data and voice calls were simultaneous which was technically impossible.
He finally was convinced when, on a specific day I walked in to the physical store and swapped out the Erickson SIM card, and voice calls showed at the very moment across the country. I had to ask him to look at ledgers that would show the date/time when I was in the store swapping out the SIM card, and then compare that to the roaming voice call made 1000 mils away in Roanoke VA at the same time. His response was, "you do have a point." (....).
I even took half-days off from work to stand in the Cingular store waiting to talk to someone, or on hold with their support. No one cared, no one knew why. It even went through their tech division and security divisions twice I was told, to come back each time with "nothing wrong on our end. This guy is making these voice calls."
In the end, it had to go two managers above the local store manager to dismiss the final month. I was told by the one guy
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Cingular & T-Mobile customer service people can't even explain how to set up a Bluetooth capable phone to get low speed internet access to a laptop (believe me I tried with these people).
Then the website help areas are, not surprisingly, NO HELP. Out of date instructions, etc.
The average customer service person is someone young, out of work, lacking skills, not very motivated, and probably making $10/hr and figuring on 'moving out & up' fast, and not interested in learning.
If "NEXT GENERATION" cellular service is coming, the providers better rethink their personnel training, help files, web sites, etc. or the uptake will be slow.
We ran some tests with HSDPA hoping to see at least a speed of around 600-700kbps,
the pcmcia card connected to the network at 1.8mbps but the speed tests showed something
around 300-400kbps depending on where we tested. This was with an "extra" external antenna.
So while promises might be somewhere around 3mbps you really can't expect even half a meg from these connections.. (sadly)
-Anonymous coward
I believe Telstra here in australia is pushing this whole "wireless broadband HSDPA" thing.
Although personally I have no plans to go near it untill Motorola have a HSDPA capable phone.
force these carriers to charge sane rates. Come on, all this hype about internet, broadband speeds, listen to music and watch tv on your phone is all great until you see your first bill and crap bricks as it adds up to $200 a month. SMS messages are insanely overpriced, now companies are going back to charging per incoming and outgoing messages.... and people on plans that are supposedly their "good" customers get gouged while the pay as you go people get the best rates on internet and SMS messaging.
Cripes I dropped my Nextel for a Boost Moble and cut my work phone bill in 1/2 and kept all the features I had. I still have a blackberry and still get email (*not through the BB service or app but a jme app) I get 24/7 unlimited internet access that my laptop happily still uses, and 2 way "beep-beep" they like to call it, and pay HALF of what I paid on a plan.
none of this will take off until the phone companies stop screwing the customers that are loyal and signed up for a plan/contract...
Then we get to coverage, most cellphone companies have crap coverage, my family has personal cingular phones and they recently did a change to the tower software ot hold onto a call as long as possible... so you dont get a dropped call. you get a 30-60 seconds of silence until you get fed up and press end... OHH! fewer dropped calls!!! my ass. my stepson has a "go phone" cingular's prepaid... he get's SMS for $0.05 each outgoing and free incoming..... while as a good doobie contract holder I pay $0.10 for every incoming AND outgoing...
They can develop all the technology they want, the customers will not use it or want it until it's not at gouge you to hell prices...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is known as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HSDPA
UUWAW (Unfinished Unpronounceable Wearisome Acronym With) (pronounced ooh-wahw) with the added bonus of starting with a vowel, so people can debated whether the preceding word is "a" or "an", refers tio a list of acronbyms made, just to be acronyms.
"HSDPA" doesn't sound whizzbangy, but is useless and hard to pronounce. Definitely a low qualifier.
Have you read my journal today?
People who blather on about "Downloading songs," "Surfing the Internet" and "Watching Video" on cellphones (or other similar sized devices) are either ignorant of the interface obstacles, or heavily invested in Wireless stock. It's not the lack of speed that prevents people from doing these activites on their PDA/Phone, because people on dial-up (yes, there are millions of folks in the US who are still in that world) do all of them on their PCs. The videos may just be clips, but folks are downloading them.
The real barrier to getting people to do this stuff on their phone is the interface. A 1.5" x 2" screen, a keyboard that's designed for quick entry of numbers rather than letters, and a limited number of "option" buttons just don't cut it. I have a Treo, and it has a QWERTY thumb-board, 3" screen, and ten or twelve non-keyboard buttons, and I still only use it to surf in "emergencies"--like when my wife wants to stop and ask for directions ("No honey, I'll just use google maps" <Whew! that was close >) Heck, the only reason I even use email is to get images from the camera to my work PC, where I don't have the Palm software installed. Trying to search for a song, or watch a video is right out, as brother Maynard might say.
Until the interface problems are solved, the up-take on these services will be limited to early adopters and situations where the "need" for some bit of information can overcome the pain of entering everything on a tiny and/or non-QWERTY keyboard. Does anyone see Joe Sixpack being willing to enter 777784446647777 3-33777337778 777666777733 to find a song? I don't think so.
Eventually, someone will come up with a way to resolve this problem. Perhaps a "projected" keyboard, or voice recogition (Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all) or some solution that no one has thought of yet. For the moment, I don't see this "4th Generation" content going anywhere.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
The problem with GPRS, in the UK at least is the cost. It's ridiculously expensive for non-business contracts to be used to check even your email, let alone streaming music and video.
I would love to have my phone used for sending and receiving email, browsing the web, checking my RSS feeds, and using IM, but I simply can't justify the cost.
PCs have at least XGA, 1024*768 pixels *24 color bits *30FPS = over 550Mbps just for video display (the vast majority of needed bandwidth). Even compressing that by 20x is over 25Mbps. But mobile phones' much smaller screens are probably quite good looking with QVGA, 320*240, 55Mbps, perhaps compressible to 5Mbps or less, maybe 3Mbps.
500Kbps compressed audio will also complement the small, detailed screen with the (relatively) hifi audio that is the priority for mobile media.
Which puts HSDPA's 3.6Mbps max right at the basic upper limit for bandwidth demands on these devices. So the next generation or two will probably reach 3.6Mbps as a minimum reliable rate.
Just in time for displays to get bigger.
--
make install -not war
I wish they would actually take a technology and push it all the way out first before jumping on the next thing. Get coverage everywhere--even small towns. The way it is now, someone intros something new, it gets rolled out to the large cities because they have more people. Then something new comes along, and the first product is abandoned and the new one is rolled out to the large cities. The people in smaller population centers end up with nothing despite all the promises of great coverage.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Blah blah blah faster blah blah blah voice and data blah blah blah it's gunna be awesome blah blah blah dynamic synergistic vertical integration category-killer blah blah blah buy a new handset blah blah blah it doesn't fucking work blah blah blah 3G/wCDMA was supposed to do the same thing . . . blah blah blah same old shit at twice the price . . .
How much will the service cost though? If I remember right, Blackberries use 3G right? Which happens to cost around $60 to $80 USD monthly, correct? So I would have to assume that this new "HSDPA" (advice to marketing: don't use confusing naming conventions, lest people be tongue-tied when they try to order it) would either cost over $80 USD monthly, or the current network would have to drop the price of the monthly bill - why pay for the old one if the new one is faster AND costs the same?
Blah blah blah standards disagreement blah blah blah patent fight blah blah blah implementation delayed 20 years blah blah blah obsolete when implemented blah blah blah . . .
or get a really long extension cord and put a WiMax card in your desktop.
/. crowd) who take their laptop with them everywhere? Better yet, what's the proportion of laptop owners who carry their laptop around everywhere as opposed to the percentage of phone/PDA users who do so?
But that still doesn't answer the main question, which is how usable is this as a mobile technology? If you're talking about sitting in Starbucks or at the bookstore and using your laptop, then why not use the (free?) WiFi there? Maybe if you're on the train, you might have your laptop and the need for highspeed (some of the trains here have WiFi), but how many people do you know (outside the
It's not that this technology will never go anywhere, or that it's 100% useless. It just that the hype of "OMG pony videos on teh cell phone is the roxors!11!" is ridiculous. At this point, the interface available on those devices means that it's not ready for your average, impatient user.
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I am using EDGE access on TIM in Italy, and have flat plan with 9 Giga for 25 euro/month in evenings and at weekends. I must say, that the quality of the service is very unreliable. Sometimes I may see a download at 200 kbps, but sometimes I can hardly browse the web.
While I was not warned about any limitations on VoIP usage, I still observe frequent* loss of EDGE connection if I happen to use Gtalk or Skype. BTW, since not so long ago the same also applies to torrents. I believe this is done on purpose, because even with very heavy network usage but without Gtalk/Skype/Torrent there are no disconnects.
In addition to implicit prohibitive policy on VoIP and torrents, there quality of the connection varies greately depending on the week day. Say the sunday evenings are the worst.
As far as I may judge from the quality of EDGE service, UMTS or whatever next does not worth upgrading. Even with EDGE mobile operators do not use all the potential of the technology, applying draconian limitations instead. Only when EDGE works at 200 kbps all the time without those artificial limitations I am going to invest into better phone/data card. I do not believe that UMTS service is bettter.
* frequent loss of connection == connection is being interrupted every 5-30 minutes if I happen to use VoIP or torrent.
I was told that you need a separate provider (I have NiftyServe, which I use to get a login account on my home fiber connection from Tokyo Gas, which I can use apparently). There are 64K, 384K and 3.6M (2 models) but I am still trying to figure out just what it will cost and the flat rate for unlimited donwloading looks expensive.
I have one of them new fangled hsdpa devices. Pretty much, for what you would pay for it, it looks like any other cheap phone. It ought to look like a rich people phone given all it can do and how apparently exciting this is. But no. It looks cheap. Check out the Samsung ZX-20. Thats one of them.
WiMAX is currenty under development in our laboratories - it's like WiFi access everywhere.
Believe me, it's worth some patience.
/Joss
Due to different technologies, it is *much* easier to overlay EVDO on CDMA2000 systems than it is to overlay UMTS on GSM systems. That is why in the US all the CDMA2000 carriers (Verizon, Alltell, sprint?) are adding 3G (>1megabit) capable services quickly (broadband access, video clips). In fact, Verizon broadband is readily available in most metropolitan areas (my business friends love it). GSM carriers will be slower, with only Cingular having enough radio spectrum to deploy UMTS (W-CDMA, different from CDMA2000. Typical tech jargon, ok?), and T-mobile not in the game at all.
HSDPA doesn't change the bandwidth crunch for these GSM carriers at all. They still need to buy more spectrum. So in the mean time, expect Verizon to stay as the dominant broadband cellular carrier. Of course, WiMAX and VOIP could kill them off anyways.
Will the War in Iraq get better or worse in 2007? Vote here
Hello! Here in Portugal we have about 1 Million HSDPA users. Many people are connected using 1.8 Mbps cards from HUAWEI and now the GSM/3G Providers are making the switch to 3.6 Mbps USB Dongles. The service costs 39,90 Euro and includes a 5 Gb download limit. Currently there's a promotion of unlimited access until 31 December 2006 (which will probably be extended). Since I'm always on the run, and I noticed how stable the system is, I dropped my ADSL line at home. Happy user am I.
Think modems, as in external devices. With these phones you could be anywhere with your laptop, connect them, and have instant internet access at respectable speeds. Now you don't have to pay extra for whatever "hotspot" you happen to find yourself near.
I admit it is not the most astounding technology out there, but it could be pretty useful. I know I've even used by Motorola cellphone as a dialup modem (recognized by Windows and Ubuntu Linux as a Hayes modem) to dial up a connection in a few circumstances. Once, I was driving, hopelessly lost, and after calling a few people who couldn't help me, I finally grabbed my laptop from the backseat, hooked up the cellphone, and checked Google maps. (Slowly, I might add -- you're not going to get above 9600bps this way. That's 1.1k. Hello, 1993.)
Like many of you, I don't have a home landline -- just a cable net connection and cellphone. Well, if my cable goes down, I can try to find wireless in the area, but the neighbor's wireless is sketchy at best. If I absolutely must get something done, dialup is the only way to go, and my handy cellphone lets me do it. In fact, once my cable was down for a week straight because the idiots at Charter disconnected me when they meant to disconnect one of the neighbors and couldn't be arsed to send someone out to correct this. My cellphone at least let me get on IRC and AIM -- but if I'd had 3G speeds, I could have gone about my business much more normally.
If the price becomes reasonable and so do the speeds and reliability (and I believe all these conditions will occur sooner or later), I can easily see many people forgoing all traditional cable and internet access, and using their phone for a sort of all-in-one solution.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Yes, you read that right - there only one HSDPA-capable phone available in the US (from Cingular).
I am a proud owner of a 3.5G card (HSDPA) and I have some notes about its usability.
I live in Portugal, and not even 3G is accessible in every zone. Lately the cell companies have been improving the access points, and at least I can now connect using 3G in almost everywhere (even in the mountains).
Some things good about this tech:
* I have network access everywhere in my country, in those places I have cellular phones (that means 90+% of the country). It ranges from plain GPRS (64kbit),UMTS (384kbit) and HSDPA (1.8Mbit) - which I am using right now. Some providers are now deploying 3.6Mbit, but coverage and signal strength is not very good atm.
* It automatically switches between the three technologies.
The bad things:
* I never got more than 1.2Mbit.
* Low signal strenghts are prone to noise and to packet loss.
* Some cards have bad firmwares and crash all the time (mine doesn't so far).
I currently pay about 39 per month. Its slightly lower than I used to pay for 4Mbit ADSL. And I can use it everywhere, and at every time.
My country is about the size of Indiana, so full coverage is not so hard to obtain.
Oh wow. Another underwhelming 'innovation', another useless bell/whistle/dog/pony.
Here is a tip for what most people want: MAKE A DAMN PHONE WHICH LETS ME HEAR THE OTHER PERSON!!!!
When digital phones first came out, the service was so clear it sounded like the caller was standing next to me. Now? Cell-phone to cell-phone calls are literally hell. You have to keep asking the person to repeat what they said, or they are asking you to repeat yourself. Half the time, the calls just disconnect. What a fun game! Was it your phone which dropped, or theirs? Does it matter?
Phone companies need to get back to basics. If I heard people saying how good and reliable the voice service was on their phone or service provider, I would gladly switch. Unfortunately, they ALL stink. Unfortunately, their products and service are actually WORSE than they were over ten years ago. Is having a camera on my phone supposed to make me ignore that fact?
In Finland, Elisa for example is offering flat-rate internet access over 3G. Where there is no 3g connectivity, GPRS or EDGE is used. 512kbit/s mobile broadband costs 35eur a month and 1mbit/s costs 39eur. No data fees (/MB).
For many years I had mostly ignored CDMA systems and worked primarily on TDMA systems like GSM+GPRS+EGPRS, IS-136, PDC, DECT, PHS and PDC. I were of the impresseion that CDMA systems like IS-95, CDMA2000 and WCDMA R99+HSDPA were overhyped but I assumed they deep down had some merit despite the hype.
How dissapointing to figure out that the guys who worked on these standards had largely missed out on 10 years of development in GSM so now we are stuck with something that is a solution to yesterdays problems rather than a step forward.
WCDMA is focussing so much on circuit switched data. It seems like the people making it was much more inspired by SONET and similar technologies and not at all by Ethernet, EGPRS or other packet switched technologies. The WCDMA system seems to be made for video calls and nothing but that. What an idiotic non-killer app. If video telephony was such a good idea why do we not do it from our networked PCs?.
In WCDMA and in HSDPA you need to maintain a circuit-switched 15kb/s full-duplex control channel whenever you are non-idle on the network. This means that for a chat-session, joy-stick motions or coffee-pot statistics from a networked appliance you occupy what corresponds to two voice-sessions of guaranteed quality-of-service bandwidth before you start transmitting any data.
I do not doubt that WCDMA will mature, but right now the system seem so much more primitive than EGPRS and some serious work is needed to make it compatible with packet switced operation.
Phone-only service is boring, and doesn't need high data rates. Not only do most phones have screens that are too small (though a Treo has a bigger screen than the video iPods), but the audio on phones is mostly designed for telephony - low-bandwidth mono in one ear is not what you want for music. And many of the phone-only services seem to run walled-garden music access, which is also really lame. For listening to music, 128kbps is enough for most people, or at most 192.
But this is about data access, competing with emerging WiMAX services for fixed locations or Wifi access points for roaming users. I mainly deal with business users, who would *really* like to have some kind of wireless data access for smaller offices, so they can have some kind of backup to their T1 or DSL data lines. (The old solution was ISDN dial backup, but if the reason your access is down is that street construction takes out your main data line, it probably takes out your ISDN as well, and it's not uncommon that if a bad mux in the telco office takes out your main line, it also takes out the backup.) It's also useful for people who can't get good DSL or cable, whether that's a home user or a business office, store credit card authentication, etc.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is nothing new. Down here in Oz we have a national HSDPA network - 1.6 million km^2 coverage, 3.6Mbps to go to 14.4 Mbps next year. We already have half a dozen HSDPA capable handsets from the like of Samsung, LG, Motorola, HTC and a chinese manufactuer.
...measured right now is 2457.6kbps on Sprint's EVDO network while sitting in my apartment. I use an HTC PPC6700. My favorite speed record is arguably the 1228.8kbps I can pull down in rural Franklin County, Kansas. I am quite impressed with it. Until some service that is way cooler and some device that is way more powerful than the 6700 come out, I have little to complain about.
However, Sprint is retarded when it comes to PAM (phone as modem) use. If you have the cheap plan and try to use your phone as a modem, it will dial, authenticate, connect, and function at 921.6kbps, and then drop you after about 45 seconds. If you call to complain, they tell you to buy the $40/month data plan instead of the $15/month plan.
Yeah, you have to love Sprint's technology, but hate their business practices.