Can Mobile Broadband Solve the UK Digital Divide?

MJackson writes "Lord Carter's interim Digital Britain report recently proposed a new Universal Service Obligation (USO), which would effectively make it mandatory for every household in the UK to have access to a broadband service capable of 2Mbps by 2012. Since then there has been much talk about Mobile Broadband (3G, 4G) services being used to bridge the UK Digital Divide, but is that realistic? The technology has all sorts of problems from slow speeds and high latency to blocking VoIP, MSN Instant Messaging and aggressive image compression ... not to mention connection stability."

Comments

Re:USO sounds like a really great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. All towns are wired and all new housing is mandated to be constructed with fiber optic cable within the walls. Naturally not all wires leading to the homes are fiber yet, but that process is constant and gradual with approximately 45% of Japan's inhabited areas wired with fiber and 100% wired for broadband (defined as minimum 30Mbps).

Your population density assertion has never been true in the UK where populations are mostly centered in cities and towns. And it has only been marginally true in the US where wiring to very remote areas for very few customers has been considered too cost inefficient.

Re:overload

[evilandi]

3G as an alternative to domestic fixed broadband in remote areas doesn't have to support many people. You're forgetting that the UK is a densely populated area. I live in what is considered a rural area - the Cotswolds (postcards of thatched cottages etc) - and I can get 2.5Mbit/s ADSL.

The areas we're talking about are really, really remote like the Scottish highlands and the deepest parts of English and Welsh moorland.

You're talking about two or three households per tower, plus three hikers sending cameraphone pics, two businessmen on an expenses-paid grouse shoot checking their email and a bloke on a tractor arguing with his boss. It'll cope fine.

My problem with the proposal is the conflation of 3G with broadband. 3G is not remotely equivalent to broadband, and I speak as someone who uses 3.5G regularly on my netbook in a high-signal urban area (Cheltenham). 3G has massively high ping times, it's unusable for anything other than browsing static web pages, FTP and SSH/Telnet sessions. Attempting to run video, gaming, VOIP or J2ME content over 3G is utter, utter pants.

Never mind the bandwidth, feel the latency.

Re:overload

[rtfa-troll]

unless you actually *lower* the power on them to create smaller cells

Dynamic power control; where the mobile and base station lower the transmission power to the minimum needed is a standard feature on all proper modern mobile networks and has been since the start of GSM. Putting in cells more densely automatically lowers the power requirement for almost all mobiles. For some CDMA based networks (IS-95) there is a problem with "cell breathing" in that heavy traffic may leave gaps in coverage, however modern CDMA networks (UMTS and on) support controlled inter-frequency handover and so having multiple network layers works well; one providing coverage and and another providing capacity and then keep only a few mobiles (fast moving or very unlucky location) in the coverage layer, moving all other ones to the capacity layer.

Re:Yes and No

[R_Dorothy]

The T-Mobile connection manager allows you to disable image compression, it's two clicks away from the tray icon.