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Cutting Through the 4G Hype
crimeandpunishment writes "Cell phone companies are about to bombard us with advertising for the next big thing — 4G access. The first 4G phone, Sprint Nextel's EVO, comes out this week. But just how big a deal is 4G? Is it fast enough to warrant the hype, or are consumers better off waiting a while? AP technology writer Peter Svensson looks at the differences between 4G and 3G technologies."
It's 9.80665 newtons of force per kilogram of mass.
Canadian carriers just upgraded their networks to 3G, so I'm guessing we won't hear about 4G until 2015.
You guys are just posting this story because...Apple doesn't have a 4G and you're jealous.
Sorry.
Had to be said.
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difficult to find at first, but when you find it, reactivity is good, data flow takes off
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
4 > 3. 'nuff said.
For the first time we'll get decent latency over cell phone connections with 4G.
LTE atleast promises huge cuts in latency which will make many new applications possible.
Raleigh-Durham, 4G since November as my primary home internet connection.
It doesn't work well in the rain or a thunderstorm. 6-7 Mbit down 1.5 or so up. That is as fast as the DSL connection I could get. I refuse to give money to Time Warner so that's out of the question.
The connection isn't as reliable as DSL or cable modem. It's kind of flaky and the DNS servers that come with Clearwire service are bad. Use Google's or opendns.
That said, it is basically a wireless DSL connection. It is way way faster than a 3G signal. Don't know how it will be on the EVO, but unless the iPhone 4G/HD blows me out of the water, when my iPhone 3G contract comes up in July, I'm going to Sprint to take advantage.
Other than that, it's difficult to point to completely new uses for 4G phones -- things they can do that 3G phones can't.
Couldn't you say the same thing about Dial-Up? After all, its difficult to point to completely new uses for broadband, things they can do that dial-up connected computers can't. The point of 4G isn't to be "revolutionary", it wasn't claimed to be. It is simply trying to be faster. The same thing could have been said about EDGE to 3G.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Technically speaking. The various G definitions are based on the underlying technology that is used for hauling the bits over the air interface 1G - Analog technology (AMPS et al) 2G - Digital transmission (GSM, TDMA, CDMA et al) 3G - WCDMA (UMTS (aka the orginal 3G), HSPA, EVDO et al) 4G - OFDM (LTE, WiMax et al)
Getting Sprint's 4G Evo this Friday. Replacing my Palm Pre for it.
I could care less about the 4G side. Being faster is nice, but they put so many features in it. FM Radio (now just need a ATSC tuner:P), a wifi endpoint for half the cost of a USB dongle, Google OS with HTC touch skin. Did I mention the same cpu as the nexus with double the flash?
My only worry is the speed HTC updates the firmware. The 4G is just a nice feature.
I found this article to be poorly written and researched. Including such weasely gems as:
For consumers, 4G means, in the ideal case, faster access to data. For instance, streaming video might work better, with less stuttering and higher resolution. Videoconferencing is difficult on 3G and might work better on 4G. Multiplayer video games may benefit too.
might may might maybe
I hate sigs.
Ever have a fast connection to a network with a slow backbone? Then compare that with a slower connection to a network with a faster backbone?
I have, and I'd take 3G on a fast network to 4G on a slow one. I even made the move from 2G to 3G when 3G was worse than 2G. It eventually got better, but they started 3G in some areas very poorly. Maybe they were holding back bandwidth at first to make sure the demos and "protected" content (videos and such from specific providers) worked best, but the first 3G networks seemed universally slower to me. So I don't trust demos and marketing. Get the devices in the hands of the reviewers who aren't paid to review and have to buy the handsets themselves. Then we'll have a better idea.
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3G is a weird system that mixes voice circuits and packet data. 4G will be pure packet traffic. The really interesting thing that I'm looking forward to is: how will carriers justify charging so much more for a one minute voice call than they charge for half a megabyte of data, when the load on the network is identical? Hands up if you think they'll just accept the loss in revenue. Anyone? And packet data will need to be low latency and reliable, otherwise voice calls won't work. It should be fun to watch.
So far my experience with 4G has been Clear Wireless. What I can tell you is that initially, the latencies were not something to write home about (110), but the bandwidth was fairly decent. I could easily hit 3mb/s during testing throughout the city.
Based on my experiences I deployed a large number of them as wireless backups at Kiosks and smaller branch offices.
8 months later now we are considering canceling all the accounts and going with something else as a redundancy solution. 9/10 the modems are not available when going over to fail over and need constant re-provisioning by Clear. Bandwidth is now very high latency (300ms+) and in short supply.
I have heard nothing but extremely negative feedback about 4G (for the last 3 months) in the mobile units as well as the standalone units designed to compete with non-mobile offerings like cablemodem and DSL.
I fear that 4G is really just a bunch of hype because the networks are not ready for the load and they are overselling their infrastructures to meet demand at the cost of actually being able to service the customer.
Just my two cents. If your an area where hardly anybody is using the 4G stuff you are going to have a fantastic experience... for awhile. Dense usage areas? Save your money.
So, I take it that the author of this article is happy just using EDGE, right? Since that's only distinguished from 3G by its speed?
You can't use data on EDGE during a phone conversation (nor receive calls). It's actually more annoying than you might think.
With both 3G and 4G you can do both at once.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If 4G doesn't take off, then will we start seeing ISPs throttling the speeds of 3G so as to make it look more attractive?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
I hope Apple takes a shot at 'simplifying' the terminology.
I really want an 'iG' capable iPhone.
iG? An imaginary connection will just make things more complex.
When Sprint & Verizon roll out their 4G networks will they be able to handle simultaneous voice and data
My sources say yes because 4G treats voice as VoIP.
Basically, the lower the frequency, the further it reaches. Verizon bought gobs of spectrum in the 700Mhz range, which is great for building penetration and longer reach. Compare that to Sprint/Clearwire's 2500Mhz spectrum, which is known to be blocked by wet leaves. T-mobile also bought spectrum in the 700Mhz range, but likely will use it to build out their 3G network.
AT&T pretty much sat that auction out, so I can't imagine their data service getting much better. I hope their pico cell strategy pans out.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
how will carriers justify charging so much more for a one minute voice call than they charge for half a megabyte of data, when the load on the network is identical? [...] And packet data will need to be low latency and reliable, otherwise voice calls won't work.
You may have answered your own question. Packets get routed through the slow backbone with 1000 ms ping and noticeable jitter unless you turn on expedited forwarding (RFC 3246) in the packet header's DiffServ field. They won't charge for minutes used for voice; they'll charge for minutes used for expedited packets.
Oddly enough, non-geeks seem to love video conferencing. We tend not to care much about seeing a person, but lots of grandparents of the world consider to be really great.
I think geeks are more interested in what a person has to say. The mundanes love all the non-lingual communication with body language, and seeing people smile and stuff. I don't really understand it, but it is very common.
Yes, some people play multiplayer games on their cell phones. As the technology improves, and makes a wider range of multiplayer games easy an impressive, I'm sure it'll become more common. The cell phone is becoming a more ubiquitous platform for applications than the PC, which means that people have come up with all sorts of uses for them, and will continue to push the envelope with new ideas.
And, Skype is one of the things people commonly use for video conferencing.
They already do. A 3G mobile broadband connection from any of the four major U.S. providers is limited to 5 GB per month, while Sprint plans to offer significantly higher monthly transfer caps to 4G customers.
After all, its difficult to point to completely new uses for broadband, things they can do that dial-up connected computers can't
YouTube. Now was that so hard?
CDMA is 3G. You could even make a decent argument that 3G is CDMA.
That depends on whether you're talking about cdmaOne or CDMA2000.
Yes they do here are my favorites..
http://www.chickenbrickstudios.com/games/projectinf
http://www.chickenbrickstudios.com/games/cestos
Uh oh. We better jump from our Mach 3G Turbo straight to 5G!! That's right, I said 5G!!
personally I've never been on a call and thought "You know what I wish I could browse the Internet right now".
Have you ever been browsing and wished you could receive a call? Or watching streaming video? Or using a GPS that pulls data frequently?
In all those cases you are potentially blocking incoming calls, which is the worse problem I think.
As for the use case you mentioned, browsing internet while on a call- what about looking up restaurants, or a map while you are talking to the other person? I do that pretty frequently. It means no data from any application can get out while you are on a call. It's not a bother all the time, just enough to be annoying (I had a 1st gen iPhone with EDGE only for around two years).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If anybody wants to really push "4G" product (using it as its defining quality), he's for a surprise...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia
Probably why that'll be 3G -> LTE actually; certainly why there's no S60v4 or 4xxx-series devices from Nokia.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Most people are ugly and put their fat ugly faces too close to the damn camera when they do it. If we lived in some kind of logans run paradise where it was all hot 20 somethings I think videoconferencing would be far more popular.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Uh? I found this article quite good: it explain to users why they could care about lower latency (not for surfing the web but for multiplayer games) and it doesn't oversell 4G.
As they say the 4G can theoretically provide higher bandwith and lower latency but as always it depends on the implementation:
if the backbone is overused for example, a better radio access network won't bring much benefit to users..
So that's not weasel words, just being cautious..
Latency : we will not see any change while people are still using MIP (Mobile IP) - this is the source of latency on mobile devices; it gives seamless roaming, but the price is playing ping pong with your packets.
Throughput : if you have a MIMO (multiplex in, multiplex out) implementation of 4G you will see 375 MB throughput in a cell as opposed to 75 ish with Wimax or 3G, the good thing about LTE as I understand it is that you can mix MIMO nodes and normal nodes in a network with no worries, so that means that you can put MIMO nodes where you want them. Of course you can get similar architectural effects with femento cells, but I think that the architecture will work out better and consumers will see better throughput for their devices and more consistency in metro areas even when there is heavy and popular use.
Having said that it is not going to be the case that you will want to switch from your DSL to this - or even more particularally from your NGA to this.
Another key constraint is the battery life of the devices using this - pulling through loads of data is going to drain those batteries, so we will have to see some improvement there just as we did for 3G I guess.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Disclaimer. I work for Clear, a wimax provider that sells it's servce as 4G.
I was in Chicago for ACen. I was checking work email on my data card. Someone asks me what's the big deal over 3G. I hop right over to speedtest.net and show him my speeds. 4 megs. 70ish ms latency.
He was blown away. Easy. It also depends on the coverage, YMMV, etc. But 4G is a big deal
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.