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."

Comments

Difference between 3G and 4G

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 9.80665 newtons of force per kilogram of mass.

Re:Difference between 3G and 4G

[oiron]

Is that an African sparrow or a European sparrow?

Re:Difference between 3G and 4G

[ducomputergeek]

Well, if it were an european swallow, it would be running GSM. But you see it is sprint, which uses CDMA based technology and so.....

4G?

[Yvan256]

Canadian carriers just upgraded their networks to 3G, so I'm guessing we won't hear about 4G until 2015.

Re:4G?

[uvajed_ekil]

I'm in the US, in a somewhat outlying suburb but certainly not in the "country," and still waiting for 3G at home. Verizon seems to have 3G coverage here (I will not use them), AT&T's 3G is very spotty, while T-Mobile and Sprint have no 3G coverage here. How about bringing the networks up to date before hyping the crap out of the next technology?

Oh c'mon

[morgan_greywolf]

You guys are just posting this story because...Apple doesn't have a 4G and you're jealous.

Sorry.

Had to be said.

for optimum data speed use, look for the 4G-spot

[youn]

difficult to find at first, but when you find it, reactivity is good, data flow takes off

Marketing 101

[Anonymous Coward]

4 > 3. 'nuff said.

4G is a big deal

[zyklone]

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.

a brief experience with 4G, since november

[Texodore]

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.

Re:a brief experience with 4G, since november

[crossmr]

I noticed you're still waiting for a response...

Wasn't the same thing said of Dial-Up

[Darkness404]

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.

G definitions

[bhaktha]

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)

On paper it looks like a good phone.

[WarlockD]

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.

Re:On paper it looks like a good phone.

[karnal]

No need to worry about HTC (who, with your worry about speed, will probably only ever update your device once. Or twice) - just jump on the XDA-Developers bandwagon!

http://forum.xda-developers.com/

Pricing?

[Zuriel]

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.

More than likely not

[EdIII]

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.

Re:More than likely not

[lidocaineus]

My experience is completely different. In Chicago, we literally have 50+ of these things deployed all over the city, all at 6/1 speed tiers. We regularly get 10mb down (well above our bandwidth tier), and always get at least 1mb up. Latency is anywhere from 50-100ms to most hops; it could be better, but Clear is somewhat nacent and I hear they're focusing more on raw bandwidth than latency (apparently with 4G you can approach the latency of wired services). We've had these units in place for about 7 months now, both as primary and out of band connections - we really couldn't be happier. The only thing that could be improved upon is the lack of NAT control on the devices they currently use.

I have a feeling that wherever you are, the backhauls are completely overloaded. This actually happened to a couple of our POPs - one in particular was only getting 1/1 and was getting daily dis-associations from the WiMax tower sometime between 1 and 3AM for about 20 seconds. Customer service was unbelievably accommodating though - they said that work was being done on the tower that particular POP was associating with, and that we wouldn't be charged AT ALL until the tower work was verified complete and our connection was stable. Basically we had an ok and usable connection for free, and when whatever work was completed, we knew right away - the bandwidth jumped up to right where the other POPs were. Consider me impressed with their customer service, to which I'm normally used to horrible, horrible experiences.

Actually one other large difference - data + voice

[SuperKendall]

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.

Imaginary G

[tepples]

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.

Re:Imaginary G

[Santzes]

Imaginary connection is pretty much what you get with AT&T

Simultaneous voice and data

[tepples]

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.

Voice has low latency

[tepples]

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.

Video is a new use for broadband

[tepples]

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?

Other way

[SuperKendall]

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).

Re:Asking the obvious?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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