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Beyond 3G — Practical Cellular Internet Access

Posted by Hemos on Mon Nov 06, 2006 09:49 AM
from the going-faster-and-faster dept.
Wireless Networking Hardware
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."
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  • Lack of substance (Score:5, Informative)

    by squiggleslash (241428) on Monday November 06 2006, @09:56AM (#16735181) Homepage Journal

    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.)

  • GSM is fine by me.

     
    • GSM is fine by me.

      That's because very few devices allow you to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the new bandwidth of these services.

      Contrary to popular marketing, people don't routinely download music and video on their phones via their phone's Internet connection. Why? Because the screens are too small, it's too expensive to do (because they charge you per song in addition to the Internet usage fees), and the devices themselves are poorly constructed for mobile Internet usage (for the
      • Here in the US, there are two main kinds of "data" plans - phone-only service (even if it's called "unlimited", it's still limited to your phone), and PC-usable service, either with PC-card (aka PCMCIA) or phone+USB/Bluetooth. Typical price ranges for "unlimited" service are $30 for phone-only and $80-120 for PC.

        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 p

  • we can have open standards for phones that'll allow us to run any (even unsigned!) software. Otherwise, the media that we'll be able to download on phones will come encumbered by DRM and other garbage restrictions. MS is the worst offender here, BTW. Windows Mobile phones come locked down and won't run a lot of 3rd party apps unless you apply some hacks that reduce security. This is even true of phones that are not locked to a provider's network.

    -b.

      • How so? I've never had to apply a hack to run any 3rd-party program on my WM 2003 phone.

        Micro$oft in their infinite wisdom started requiring tru$ted applications starting with WM2005.

        -b.

        • And I've never had to apply any hacks to run any third party software on my WM5 based Treo 700wx or PPC-6700.
          • Despite the very clever spelling of Microsoft, this is not true at all for my WM2005 phone (HTC TyTN). It seems you have some specific lockdown from your operator (happening on many phones/platforms, change operator/buy phones without bundled plans).

            Your reseller may have already unlocked it. Trivial to do with the right software. Also, you may have been using software that was signed and blessed by MS. The phone in question was bought from a reseller, not through a cell provider. New.

            The real PITA

  • 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.

      • As it is a quite deep stack of protocols, reasons can be variuos, from poor RF coverage to slower IP routing.
        Maybe choosing a hotel with Internet service can be a better and cheaper solution!
  • Take your pick..
    • WiMAX such as FLASH-OFDM
    • UMTS-TDD
    • TD-SCDMA
    • HSDPA

    Digita is building country-wide solution [digita.fi] 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.
  • Now I can watch Bangbus while I wait at the DMV office! What could I ever do without something like this guys?!!!

    ....

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What, no link?
  • 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?
    • Hey, guess what - the rest of Europe is "abroad", in much the same was as the US or any other country.

      The roaming charges stem from increased competition in the domestic markets pruning the monies raised from a finite number of local subscribers.

      In the beginning (I'm talking about 10 years ago here) I could roam abroad for just 120% of the local charge for a call. Now it can be 1000%.

      The easiest way of getting reliable connectivity is to use someone like T-Mobile's hotspots. THey bill consistently and cheap
      • Sorry but it still costs more to make calls in Europe than the US with an American plan.

        T-Mobile USA charge $0.99, $1.99 or $2.99 per minute for calls made whilst overseas.
        T-Mobile UK charge £0.50 to £1.40 ($0.95 to $2.66) per minute for calls made whilst overseas.

        My my maths (With an exchange rate of 1.9 USD to GBP) it's cheaper to roam from the UK than it is to roam from the US.
  • 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.
    • The problem is prohibitive data prices - at £4 a megabyte from Orange, I literally can not afford to use it.

      You might want to investigate T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk [t-mobile.co.uk] plans. I've switched over to them from Vodafone, for specifically this reason. i pay about £7.50 more per month that I paid under Vodafone, but I have a 2gig data transfer limit instead of paying £1 per megabyte.

      Cheers,
      Ian
      • Thanks - I'm aware of web'n'walk but firstly T-Mobile's service is crap where I live, secondly their handsets come in a crap brown or very gay pink compared with Orange's black.

        Finally 'web'n'walk' is web only - it's not all ports and protocols (although they tried to tell me in the shop that it was 'full internet access'), however they have been threatening to cancel the contracts of users running Skype [reghardware.co.uk].

        Orange do an 'off peak' for £5 a month where 'off-peak' is after 7pm until 7am weekdays and al
        • Finally 'web'n'walk' is web only - it's not all ports and protocols

          I know they limit VoIP, but I'm happily using ssh/sftp, ftp, iChat (AOL's IM client protocol, Jabber, iSync etc.. It's not purely a web service, just VoIP that's limited as far as I know. Not perfection, but compared to £1 a meg I'm prepared to overlook quite a few flaws...

          Cheers,
          Ian
          • Interesting - perhaps they are only monitoring VoIP (as obviously it would cut into their revenue).
  • 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 ap
    • Google the model of your phone and the word "unlock".
    • 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.

      I just downloaded and installed the Mobile Google Mail application on my Cingular phone, and it works fine.

    • 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.

      N
  • 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 netwo
  • 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.
  • The problem here is not technical. The problem is the high prices and restrictions on use.

    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

  • ..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 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 wors
    • When things get that bad, you have to write a letter and mail it. Talking to a clerk at a store or a service rep on the phone is wasting your time (and theirs). A clearly written letter to the company, with a CC to the Better Business Bureau, and this kind of crap goes away fast.
      • I think you are correct. I definitely learned some hard lessons in all of that, but bottom line, I should have resolved to a formal letter which I never did. I did get it resolved by forcing managers to actually do their job, but it took two months.

        The error in my thinking was assuming these people would do as good a job as I would, were I in their shows....

  • 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" cell
  • 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.

  • solution... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Monday November 06 2006, @11:04AM (#16736141) Homepage
    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...
  • 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.

    T
    • Or a USB or Ethernet jack to attach to a laptop.
      • or get a really long extension cord and put a WiMax card in your desktop.

        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 /. crowd) who take their laptop with them e
  • PCs have at least XGA, 1024*768 pixels *24 color bits *30FPS = over 550Mbps [google.com] 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 [google.com], 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 r
    • Your estimates of bandwidth are way, way, way, way, way off.

      Don't forget compression.

      AT&T is delivering 3 SD TV streams, and 1 1080p HDTV stream, over a 19 Mbps connection.
      With a modern codec you can do full screen XGA video (less bandwidth than 720p) in 6 Mbit/s. Apple does 720p Quicktime Trailers at 6 Mbit/s.

      For comparison's sake, they do 1080p trailers at 9 Mbit/s, and 480p at under 2 Mbit/s.

      Similarly 500 Kbps is WAY over kill. Most people say that stereo MP3's compressed at 384 Kbps are indistinguis
      • What do you mean, "don't forget compression"? In my post, I mentioned compression at every turn - even 20x compression for the "baseline" XGA. And again in the mobile scenario. And again, explicitly, for the audio. Which I can very much tell is better at 500Kbps than at 384Kbps, especially in the headphones that mobile devices prioritize.

        I'm not sure which post you're replying to. Because the mobile screen I detailed is QVGA, not QXGA.

        I have not seen/heard the AT&T streaming you mention. But since it's
    • Also, as a follow up to my previous content, you do not need to match your display's resolution bit-for-bit. When was the last time you watched "native resolution" footage on your PC? 3D rendered content via your graphics card does not count ;-)
  • 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.
  • 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 . . .
  • 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 . . .
  • I was just asking about this in a Tokyo shop last week. NTT DoCoMo now has a phone out (they made it look cyber-like but it is uglier than their other nice looking phones) as well as a pcmcia version for hsdpa (3.6 Mbps). News about it (from May) here [cnet.com].

    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

  • Yes, you read that right - there only one HSDPA-capable phone [phonescoop.com] available in the US (from Cingular).

    • HSDPA isn't going to help your EVDO latency. HSDPA is an enhancement to W-CDMA, the air interface system used by UMTS. EVDO is a CDMA2000 standard, CDMA2000 being a competing standard with its own air interface standard.

      FWIW, oart of the reason for HSDPA is to lower latency on W-CDMA networks (by optimizing the downlink.) With HSDPA, latency on a UMTS network is about 100ms for a round-trip ping. Add HSUPA (which improves the uplink), and the latency drops to around 10ms.

      As far as lowering EVDO latency

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