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Mobile Broadband to Hit 42Mb/sec In 2009

Posted by timothy on from the we'll-see-about-that dept.

Barence writes "Mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mb/sec as early as next year, according to Ericsson's chief technology officer. The idea seems far-fetched given that even the fastest dongles currently hover at around 7.2Mb/sec, but the technology to smash that barrier is thought to be just around the corner. One of the methods is very similar to the MIMO technology already used in draft-N wireless routers, but Ericsson believes a combination of factors may even squeeze that figure to 80Mb/sec in the longer term."

27 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. To soon.... by slakdrgn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ....to guesstimate early next year. Aside from FCC approval do you really think most mobile broadband companies (well, AT&T and such) will hurry to implement this while citing issues with bandwidth and creating caps. Add that to RIAA influence and technology upgrades for carriers, it'll probably be at least 5-6 years before we see any consumer use of this technology.

    1. Re:To soon.... by aliquis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Though, Ericsson is swedish (and current services offer 7.2 mbps here in Sweden to, but it will only be that in very selected areas in big cities, which Sweden has few of :D. For most people it will be slow as shit, as always with crap like this* and DSL.)

      Build fiber networks ffs.

      * Oh well, some day I assume wireless technology will be decent, but until then. And wireless access points connected to households fiber connections would work just fine for most uses.

    2. Re:To soon.... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Build fiber networks ffs.

      that's what i'm saying. most people here in the U.S. are still stuck with 1~8 Mbps asymmetric residential connections, meanwhile people in Japan and South Korea are upgrading from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps symmetric bandwidth FttH for about $56 USD. meanwhile, what Comcast arrogantly refers to as their "wideband" service offers only 50 Mbps and costs $150/month.

      i think the first thing we need to do is catch up on wired broadband infrastructure. internet usage is only going to increase, and bandwidth demand will continue to skyrocket as more and more bandwidth-intensive applications come into popular usage. the disparity in per-Mbps cost of internet bandwidth between countries, not to mention the lack of FttH/symmetric service availability is quickly creating a gap between the nations with the most advanced communications infrastructure and the nations being reamed by incompetent/corrupt Telecoms & ISPs.

      after the dearth in bandwidth is addressed via wired infrastructure, the next step would be to roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax as last-mile solutions to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access. right now mobile broadband services offered by telecoms are way too unreasonably priced to be accessible/practical for general use. this is in stark contrast with public wireless networks, which are of great benefit to everyone.

  2. Yep by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    42 Mb/sec.... standing next to the tower.

    Everywhere else, a tenth of that or less.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    1. Re:Yep by buswolley · · Score: 2, Informative

      42 Mb/sec.... standing next to the tower.

      Everywhere else, a tenth of that or less.

      ha ha

      I guess Your DONGLE isn't long enough.

      --

      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

    2. Re:Yep by p0tat03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Still beats 2 Mb/sec standing next to the tower and a tenth of that everywhere else.

  3. Latency by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear a station wagon full of tapes gets pretty good bandwidth, too.

    1. Re:Latency by tomz16 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Latency on 3G mobile broadband networks isn't bad. I usually see 100-500msec, with the average hovering somewhere around 200-300. Far from optimal for gaming, but enough to make the web feel snappy.

    2. Re:Latency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's what we called the internet before we started using trucks.

      Station-Wagon"

      Sneakernet:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

      In 2006 the largest backup tape available is the DLT-S4, with a capacity of 800GB. If a tape of this capacity were sent by overnight mail and were to arrive around 20 hours after it was sent, the effective data rate would be 89 Mb/s.

    3. Re:Latency by brucmack · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've been using a 7.2 Mbit HSDPA 3G dongle for about half a year, and I hate the latency. Even for web browsing.

      If all of the data was transferred in one go, sure, it'd be fine. But when a typical web page results in tens of requests (for images, AJAX requests, etc.) you can really feel the latency. And it is noticable that there's an extra pause between clicking a link and having the page start to load.

      This is why it annoys me that the mobile broadband providers here (Denmark) are arguing against the ongoing fibre roll-out, since their technology will be "just as good" in a couple of years... Sure, you might in theory get to 100 Mbit, but if everyone is trying to use it, it's not going to work. It'd require massive infrastructure investments to upgrade the capacity of the masts, and I don't even know if the technology can work if there's too much activity on the spectrum.

  4. Re:Wallets: Go run and hide... by aliquis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Over here "up to 7.2" mbps cost 199 SEK, 99 when introduced. So 24.3 $ / month.

    I don't understand why price would scale linear with bandwidth, for consumers it will probably raise much slower in price since most people won't use all the bandwidth anyway, even less all the time.

  5. And things will be the same. by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow. 40+MBps speeds on cell networks, and text messages will still be .20$ per.

    Meh.

    --
  6. Here in Australia by speeDDemon+(nw) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wireless is really the only hope we have for getting high speed broadband to all our country (7,686,850 sq km), and begrudgingly I must admit that our main carrier (Telstra) is actually doing a very good job.

    7.2Mb is available EVERYWHERE, not just next to the tower, not near a big city. Sure, for some people in distant locations they may need a roof mount antennae, but its everywhere.

    And they have on their roadmap 14Mb slated for next year, and 28mb for 2010. Now its just a roadmap, but so far they have met their promises with wireless, so I wont disregard them just yet.

    --
    DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
    1. Re:Here in Australia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      14.4 Mbps is already live in Australia nationwide on Telstra's NextG network. Telstra demonstrated 21 Mbps at their investor day in November and have committed to the market to have it available across the network early 2009. This isn't roadmap its real. Check their website and view the demo which was performed on the investor day.

      Roadmap they promised the market was to have 42 Mbps in 12 months time.

      If they don't meet these commitments the market will hammer them and that's not roadmap either, that's real.

  7. Radio WNBSITU by Ostracus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Heck, normal broadband speeds here are abysmal as it is."

    No. Dialup at 33.6 is abysmal. Broadband simply spoils you to the point were you forget what it was like "in the good old days".

    --
    Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
    1. Re:Radio WNBSITU by LandDolphin · · Score: 2, Informative

      As the average connection speed has gotten faster, the average webpage has gotten more and more bloated to use up that faster connection.

      --
      Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
  8. The Technology behind the speed by dutt · · Score: 3, Informative
    The technology is called Long Term Evolution (LTE) and is part of the 4th generation of mobile telephony.

    More information about it is found here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution

    The article doesn't mention a lot of facts and it also fails to mention that speeds upto 100 Mbit/s is the goal for LTE. So this will be the next step in broadband services over wireless mobile networks.

  9. Contractual Limits by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mb/sec

    I guarantee there will be one of two contractual limitations:

    1) "Unlimited" service forbids the downloading of any media files, use of any streaming applications, any online gaming purposes, any voip or video conference service, and has a cap of 100 megs per month which you'll reach in 2 seconds

    -or-

    2) "pay as you go data plan" only $150 for 100 megs per month which you'll also reach in two seconds.

    Cell phone providers are a confuse-opoloy of crooks whom exist solely to screw over their contractually enslaved victims as much as possible before they switch to another provider, whom coincidentally also only exists to screw over their "customers". Nothing but pure distilled "marketing". I hope they all go out of business in the recession.

    Other than that, yeah its great news.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  10. Who would pay? by JSBiff · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mobile Co. pricing on data connects makes no sense to me, at least here in the USA. I was checking prices at ATT, Verizon, Sprint, and T-mobile the other day.

    AT&T Data plans are fairly typical (the other providers are basically the same, with the exception that none of the others offers a $20/mo 'tier'; Sprint only offers a $60/5GB tier, T-mobile offers unlimited bandwidth for $50/mo [which is the best value for data plans of all the carriers, but they have a ToS which prohibits you from doing a lot of things like P2P, hosting servers, etc on it], while Verizon offers $60/5GB and $40/50MB tiers).

    From that page, you can see the following absolutely insane pricing structure:

    $20/mo for a total of 10MB transfer for the whole month
    $40/mo for a total of 50MB transfer for the whole month
    $60/mo for a total of 5GB transfer for the whole month

    Now, some interesting things to note is that somehow that phone company can afford to give you 100 TIMES more bandwidth when you go from $40/mo to $60/mo. What. the. hell? That'd be like a butcher offering you 1 lb. of steak for $10, or 100 lbs. of steak for $15. I understand the idea of 'the more you buy the more you save', but that is just freaking ridiculous. They are obviously price gouging any customer who wants to pay less than $60/mo, on a cost-per-MB basis.

    It has always been my understanding that wireless networks are cheaper to build and operate than cable or telephone networks, so *why* are they charging so much? The simplest answer would be 'because they can'. In a free market, any provider of goods or services will charge as much as they can. *But*, one of the principles that they teach in High School economics classes is that price and profit form a curve. If you charge to little, you make less money, but if you charge too much, you also make less money. There is a 'sweet spot' where the price maximizes revenue.

    Now, since I don't really know *anybody*, personally, who their mobile phone company to connect their laptop or desktop to the Internet, it tells me that, possibly, the mobile phone companies are seriously limiting their own growth in the ISP business. The only thing I can conclude is that the mobile phone companies, even though they have these high speed wireless data networks, can't actually handle the amount of bandwidth that they would need to compete with cable and landline telco companies.

    Because, I imagine that if they offered 1 GB/mo for $20, 3GB/mo for $40, and 6GB/mo for $60, they'd have MANY more customers than they currently do, so I can only conclude that they don't want a lot of customers; they want a relatively small amount of customers, all paying $60/mo, or if paying less, getting *dramatically* less bandwidth, which keeps the majority of potential customers off of their network. I'd probably sign up for 1GB/mo for $20, but there's no way I'd ever pay $20 for 10MB.

    1. Re:Who would pay? by JSBiff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "You ever build a network that stretches from one city to the next? With access points all along the highway?

      I bet it cost you a hell of a lot more than $60 a month."

      Wait. Did you just compare the cost for a single user to use a network to the cost to build an entire network for only 1 user?

      If you want to make a comparison, you have to compare the costs of building a Co-ax or copper twisted-pair network (with fiber backbones) to every house and apartment in the city. If you can get Cable or DSL for $40/mo or less, and they have to run individual cables to every building in the city, versus setting up 4 or 6 or 10 Cell Towers, I bet it costs far *less* than $40/mo to build and operate the cellular-based network than it does to build and operate the co-ax or copper network.

      Oh, by the way, the cellular companies aren't setting up Wi-Fi hotspots every 500 yards along the highways. They build 1 Cellular tower every what, 5 or 10 miles. So, with cellular technologies, to cover 100 square miles, you might need 5 towers (1 at each corner of the 10x10 mile square, and maybe 1 in the middle), whereas if you tried to use WiFi, you'd probably need hundreds or thousands of hotspots.

      Again, going back to one of the points in my original post, the actual costs to run a wireless network are basically fixed, whether you have 10 users or 10k users. If the cell companies introduce 42MBit connections, but then try to charge people 200 bucks a month, very few users are going to pay 200/mo for Internet access. You might get some very rich people doing it as a form of conspicuous consumption, and you might get some business users who desperately need the capability and who can pass the costs along to their customers, but overall, you will have a fairly small user base.

      I'd also like to point out that I never said $60/mo is too expensive for wireless internet (just that I'm surprised that wireless internet isn't *cheaper* than wired internet connections, because there is no line-installation and line-maintenance related costs). What I was saying about their pricing structure is that it's crazy how much the bandwidth cap jumps between the $40/mo and $60/mo tiers, which indicates to me that the cell networks must have some bandwidth issues, because a lot of people don't have $60/mo to pay for Internet access, no matter how convenient it is, and the extreme restrictions on the lower tiers seems to serve no other purpose than to discourage people from using their service. For some reason, they've chosen to keep the 'population' of their wireless networks low via their pricing scheme, so they must have pretty limited bandwidth.

  11. Who cares about bandwidth? by noname444 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about latency and reliability?
    I'm happy with 3.6 Mbit/s, or even lower, if I get a reliable connection with low latency.
    Rock solid 512 kbit/s with 20 ms latency would be preferable to anything available in the mobile market right now.

    1. Re:Who cares about bandwidth? by George_Ou · · Score: 5, Informative

      HSDPA 3G is the technology we have now that's 7.2 Mbps. It has a interface latency of 150 ms round trip.

      HSPA+ is the technology coming out in 2009 that this article is talking about which has a downstream capacity of 44 Mbps, and I think they're trimming the latency down to about 90ms round trip.

      LTE is the next gen technology launching in 2010 and it will go 85 Mbps downstream on 2xMIMO using 10 MHz of frequency. It can go 300+ Mbps using 20 MHz 4xMIMO. They're getting the air interface latency down to 20 ms round trip which is getting really good and it's only 10 ms higher latency than wired DSL. It all depends on your application requirements. If you only care about VoIP and online gaming, you don't even need 100 Kbps and all you want is the lowest ping times. You only need the burst speed for web surfing and downloading new maps, etc.

  12. Re:EM Spectral Analysis by Kickersny.com · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here's a diagram that I refer to: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/electromagnetic_spectrum.png

  13. view from the tranches by slonik · · Score: 4, Informative

    As someone who works in the field of wireless cellular physical layer (MIMO, FEC, etc.) I would offer a bit of a reality check. As a rule of thumb in a wireless mobile environment with large cells even with MIMO, LDPC or Turbo coding, advanced QAM modulation, etc one should not expect spectral efficiency more than 4 bits/second/Hertz for an average user. And even this number is optimistic and assumes low mobility speeds and low interference.
    For a 40MHz full-duplex channel (half the resources in uplink, half in downlink) one would optimistically expect 80Mbits/sec per cell downlink or uplink. This capacity will be shared amoung all the users served by the cell. If, as a user, you get 8Mbits/second sustained throughput, consider yourself lucky.

  14. Re:It's a WNBSITU by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Funny

    >So can we just call ourselves U from now on and (States of America) is implied? Then we can call Australia, A. Europe, E. Africa....F? Antarctica... N?

    Good idea, now African-American can just be abbreviated to F-U. Err, wait a second...

  15. Multicarrier HSPA+ by Erich · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Telstra is rolling out HSPA+ Jan 2009 @ 21Mbps. That's 21Mbps in a single 5Mhz band of spectrum, without MIMO.

    If you use two bands (10Mhz) you get Multicarrier HSPA+, which peaks at 42Mbps. I'm sure you could stick more bands together and get even higher rates.

    With HSPA+ getting 21+ Mbps in a single 5Mhz carrier, are folks really going to get that much improvement in areas with lots of users with WiMAX at 100Mbps in a 20Mhz carrier? There's only so much spectrum...

    --

    -- Erich

    Slashdot reader since 1997

  16. MIMO does get around Shannon's limit by George_Ou · · Score: 2, Informative

    Shannon's limit states that you can't go faster than 1-7 bits/sec/Hz, but that applies to a single spatial stream. If you have 4 spatial streams with good multipath, then it is possible to go 4 times faster. This is why LTE 4xMIMO with a 20 MHz channel can go past 300 Mbps which is 15 bits/sec/Hz.