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Wireless Networking Hardware

Is 3G Irrelevant? 252

Posted by timothy from the almost-universally dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Network Magazine asks 'Are We Better Off Without 3G?' in which the author notes that many networkers are giving up on 3G as a data services alternative due to high deployment costs and slower speeds vs. Wi-Fi. Given these issues, are we likely to see carriers like Nextel bypassing 3G for 4G technologies such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) by Flarion Technologies?"
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Is 3G Irrelevant? More

Is 3G Irrelevant?

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  • I just tried to visualize that... I think I burst an artery.

  • Irrelevant technology (Score:4, Insightful)

    by frankthechicken ( 607647 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:00PM (#6173396) Journal
    All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the public.

    • How much do you actually want to do, while mobile? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tgma ( 584406 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:31PM (#6173737)
      Couldn't agree with you more. I have a SonyEricsson P800 running GPRS, and I can use it to check stock prices and sports scores, and, at a pinch, to send email. But in reality, I don't need to use it that much.

      If I need to contact someone when I am out in a car, then I can call them. Almost any situation when I am going to do something that I normally do on a computer (eg. edit/read documents or spreadsheets) I am going to want to sit down and do it, whether I do it on my phone, or on my laptop. And any phone that is small enough to be portable is going to be too small to be useful for anything that needs a decent sized screen and a keyboard. Is it so important to be able to send an email from the bus stop? More importantly, you aren't going to be compiling a megabyte sized spreadsheet or document in the brief intervals when you are completely unable to sit down and take out your laptop, or get to an internet cafe.

      These limits mean that I don't need that much bandwidth - if you haven't got that much screen to fill, then fewer pixels are required, which means fewer bytes. I've been at conferences with mobile operators, and the only use that these guys can claim for 3G is video, and increasing the amount of bandwidth so they can have more 2G users on their network at one time. I remember having similar conversations with them about WAP - they were hard pressed to come up with an application that I could imagine myself, or a mass market, using. All they came up with for WAP was betting, and for 3G, it's sports highlights. My experience is that if you really care about a sports event, you are going to organise yourself so that you are near a TV while it's on. There is a high-end, limited niche, that will buy 3G to watch video while mobile, but you can't base a billion dollar investment on this segment.

      My guess is that operators will roll out 3G networks, but they will be mainly used to increase bandwidth for 2G applications. No one wants video phones in the fixed wire world (except for high end users, who videoconference), and my guess is that they will not want them in the wireless one either. Some people will pay for sports video and similar, and there will be some revenue from this, like for pay-per-view sports. The problem for 3G is that it took so long in coming, that 2G had time to catch up.
      • The mobile phone service providers are frantically adding extra features to their phones and networks to prevent cell phones from becoming a commodity. Companies don't want to compete on the prize because that cuts right into the margins. So they try to compete on value. If they stopped adding those features to your phone, cell phones could be treated like land line phones where it looks like the only reason to switch providers is to enjoy lower prices. When have you switched your home phone because somebody else offered a new/better feature not related to pricing?
        • I *can't* switch my land line provider, because Qwest has a local monopoly. There are no other land line providers in the area. period.

          The thing that bothers me is, with absolutely no extra services (no caller ID, call waiting, etc) the basic service is $15 - fine. but they add in $15 in taxes too... I can't believe a 100% markup for taxes.
        • when have you been able to choose what providor you use for your home phone service? Your choice is in long distance carriers, not the actual line carrier.
        • I've found that (in the case of '3' [three.co.uk], the UKs first 3G supplier to the market) they are provinding the extra features INSTEAD of a data link to the web - after announcing a large price reduction I had a look around their web site for data tariffs and found none - after a call to their customer services center, I was told that you could not get internet access.

          All three of the available phones support JAVA and a web browser (from what I can gather looking at the online manuals [three.co.uk] [PDF] ), but instead they have
    • "All new technology is irrelevant until it is taken up by the public."

      And how many members of the public with atomic bombs do you know ?

  • OFDM != 4G (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:00PM (#6173397) Homepage
    OFDM is an encoding, not a protocol. Both Wi-Fi and WiMax (802.16) use OFDM, and I wouldn't be surprised if 4G (802.20) systems end up using it as well.

    • Re:OFDM != 4G (Score:4, Informative)

      by Artemis P. Fonswick ( 680020 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:24PM (#6173664) Homepage Journal
      OFDM is more resistant to multipath effects. In conventional spread spectrum, data is pumped rapidly through a single carrier, modulated by a spreading code. With OFDM, the data is modulated and sent across a large number of closely spaced RF carriers at the same time. Sort of like parallel, as opposed to serial transmission. Because the bits are sent in parallel, they can individually be sent at a much slower rate, while still yielding the same overall transmission throughput. Because each bit is "on the air" for a longer period of time, there are less problems with multipath effects.
    • The main reason why we are seeing growing implementations of OFDM is because companies want to avoid Qualcomm's CDMA patents and the associated licensing fees.

      Ask anybody in the know (who doesn't have a vested interest in seeing one of these technologies implemented) and they will concede OFDM is not inherently superior to to CDMA, or vice versa.

  • Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mindwarp ( 15738 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:00PM (#6173402) Homepage Journal
    Given these issues, are we likely to see carriers like Nextel bypassing 3G for 4G technologies such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) by Flarion Technologies?"
    I suspect that will be almost entirely dependant on the amount of political lobbying carried out by the 3G and 4G proponents. Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days.

    • Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Falrick ( 528 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:17PM (#6173588) Homepage
      Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days.

      Unless, of course, you are using an Iden system, which is what Nextel uses. Iden is contrary to everything that most of the Slashdot crowd cries for: it's a closed proprietary standard owned and developed by Motorola. However, because it's a closed standard Motorola is more free to do crazy and wild things with it than they (or Ericson, Nokia, Qualcomm, etc...) are with, say, 3GPP or 3GPP2. It's free from the political squables of which handoff algorithm should be included in the standard.

      Of course, these are all of the plus points and none of the detractors, but you get the idea. Because there is no politics (or relatively so) involved in Iden technological inovation is arguably simpler than when dealing with the standards body. Its hard enough getting everyone within a company to agree on how to do something, let alone trying to convince other companies of the merits of your pattened process from which you stand to gain financially every time your competitor makes a phone.

      • Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by andy1307 ( 656570 ) *

        Iden is contrary to everything that most of the Slashdot crowd cries for: it's a closed proprietary standard owned and developed by Motorola.

        Since there is no US standard(GSM/CDMA etc), each carrier is free to choose the technology it needs. IDEN is important to Nextel for their walkie talkie feature. The walkie talkie feature, used by small business workers and public safety officials, is Nextel's USP. They need to go with IDEN for that reason. Without IDEN and the walkie talkie feature that works well

        • The entire original purpose of the iDEN system was the walkie-talkie style dispatch call feature. The first set of phones available for the system looked a lot like classic walkie talkies instead of the other cell phones that were available at the time. (IE, a big brick! But you could drop it down a flight of stairs with little damage, and some even worked after being in a fire)

          The dispatch call made Nextel and iDEN quite popular with construction companies first, as they'd normally use walkie talkies f

    • Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by posa ( 677461 )
      "Technical superiority is only one small part of the puzzle these days"

      Yes, you right on that. But as a teacher ones said to me then I asked if 3G was out of date before it had been deployed "Never underestimate the power of a standard".
      Of course there are better technology today than it was for ten(?) years then 3G became a standard. But it is like buying a new computer "Hey, Intel will realese a new processor that will be better. I wait just a title bit longer". So, if we are to use a better technology,

  • what 3g? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fragged one ( 632414 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:01PM (#6173411)
    hell, we don't even have 3g in the us at this time. we're still on 2.5g, hopefully to have 3g by the end of 2004-2005. with ntt docomo testing true 4g in japan recently, it makes you wonder why even bother with 3g?

    • re:what 3g? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ed.han ( 444783 )
      this is what we get for taking so long re: GSM. and remember, japan's mighty small: upgrading the infrastructure in an area the size of connecticutt (or is it rhode island) is vastly easier than it is elsewhere.

      ed

      • Re:what 3g? (Score:2, Informative)

        by jaoswald ( 63789 )
        Japan has a land area of about 378,000 km^2, or 146,000 mi^2. That is between Arizona and Montana in area; only about 15% smaller than California. Connecticut is about 5,500 mi^2. So Japan is over 25x the size of Connecticut.
      • Last I checked most of japan was not on GSM. There is GSM service for travellers, but for the most part it is CDMA. Same with South Korea. That is part of the reason they have had 3g services far quicker than Europe. CDMA to CDMA2000 handoffs are relatively easy compared to GSM to WCDMA handoffs.

      • Re:what 3g? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by goofrider ( 598120 )
        That's an unfair analogy. Japan might be small, but most of the major cities in Japan has much higher population density that even Manhattan.

        And of course, the Japanese customers are generally more welcoming to new technologies altogether.

        The combination of smaller size and higher population and lower barrier makes it a hotbed for new wireless technologies.

        On another note, Three UK and Three HK will have limited 3G service in their repective markets by the end of 2003 / start of 2004.

    • Re:what 3g? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lpret ( 570480 )
      ed.han has a good point, but let me extend it further: It's because the U.S. is so big that it is hard to roll out new tech. As another poster noted, GSM coverage looks like a road map with smudges in a few major cities. However, the tech-centric user is only going to need these areas, and this coverage is based on need.

      I mean, honestly, think about you're cellphone user in bumfsck, Iowa. They don't need to be able to connect to the internet with their cellphone, they don't need access to their email

      • Iowa... what? (Score:2, Informative)

        by debugdave ( 153189 )
        You don't think farmers in Iowa need cell phones? They do. With email and all that. They need voice plus data. I guess technically those people don't need the internet either, right?
        I used to sell mobile phones, and I also live in IA. I can say without a doubt there is a need for reliable voice / data on the cornfields as well as in the city.
        Just because there is'nt a lot of people does'nt mean there is'nt a lot going on.

        dave
      • As a storm chaser techie, what I need is high bandwidth internet connections in Nowhere, Nebraska and Outback, Oklahoma. You wouldn't believe the lengths storm chasers go to for good data! Imagine a van with DirectWay on the roof - yep... it's out there chasing tornados.

        Of course, we are hardly an interesting market to mobile phone providers... but hey, please waste the resources, just for us.

    • Re:what 3g? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Matrix272 ( 581458 )
      3G, 2.5G, 4G, 18G... Je(pun intended)sus, how many G's can a human being take before his brain is squashed into the size of a pee in the back of his skull?

  • Nextel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by madowl ( 516811 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:01PM (#6173415)
    As a daily user of Nextel's services, I think they should be concentrating on improving the reliability of their service before they even think of what technology they are going to move to next.
    • "I think they should be concentrating on improving the reliability of their service before they even think of what technology they are going to move to next."

      What if the new technology fixes the problems?

      This is largely just rhetorical, since I have no idea what the problems are that concern you and how they would be affected by any of these new technologies. But fundamentally the argument that you should fix your problems before trying something new is flawed, since you can never fix a problem unless yo

  • Don't expect 3G for quite some time.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stanmann ( 602645 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:01PM (#6173422) Journal
    Most people have no desire to pay for another upgrade to their voice service. This is a lesson that must be learned, and re-learned. Customers don't want convergence unless it is cheaper than the sum of the parts. Joe Average is fully prepared to pay $40 each for 3 products and services that give him exactly what he wants, but is unwilling to pay more than $80 for one product and service that provides the total package.
    • You do have a point.

      I know that Sprint has their "vision" service which is Internet over cell phone, I've read it's equivalent to 2.5G, whatever that means. It is an extra $10 a month.

      The problem is that I don't want to read email or web surf on a 100x100 pixel screen. The downloads they direct you to are for ~100x100 pixel backgrounds, and they charge $3 for that small image that expires in 60-90 days. Ditto for ring tones and animations. It's all worthless crap, which I can't even sample it to see i

  • Forget high deployment costs! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Abalamahalamatandra ( 639919 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:02PM (#6173424)
    How about high USE costs? AT&T Wireless seems to think that I personally am going to pay the entire cost of building their network - $5.99 for a megabyte of data a month?

    And meanwhile they're happily signing up Blackberries with unlimited data for peanuts.

    Is it any wonder the average joe is telling them what to do with it?

    • T-Mobile's rates were just as stupid. It would appear that they have a new method of disguising this fact. They don't charge per megabyte, they charge per minute. $40 a month and .20cents a minute. At 1k bytes per second (optimistic GPRS avg. transfer rate (really, try it)) it's $3.33 per meg.

      On the second megabyte in a MONTH this is more expensive than my cable modem.

      Even if you lived near a transmitter and got 3k bytes per second (30k bits avg.), clicking the "Little Coders predicament" Read More b

  • There will always be early adopters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bhsx ( 458600 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:02PM (#6173428)
    Why give up on it? Surely the outlandish pricing will come down, as that is set for early adopters to offset the research costs. 3G has had this crowd drooling for 1.5yrs (at least), someone will cash in on that cow.

  • Fix the voice first. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zaphod B ( 94313 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:04PM (#6173443) Journal
    I'd like to see mobile providers concentrate more on getting their 2G (voice) networks rolled out and matured across America and Canada. You in Europe are lucky -- you have almost 100% coverage. Here in America that is patently not the case - even in large cities such as San Francisco, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

    Have you SEEN the GSM map of the US? Looks like a road atlas with smudges.

    Fix what you have, mobile providers, and then start dreaming of 3G.
    • This is a bit misleading, but you have a point. Quality of service needs to be adressed in the US mobile industry. I get an inexcusable number of dropped calls, largely because Sprint (and their competition) has failed to increase the capacity of their networks to meet demand. However, this has nothing to do with GSM. In fact, to fix what they have, the operators who are starting to transition to GSM should abandon that immediately. Fix the CDMA network and then build a euro-compatible 3G network.

      GSM
    • Yeah, it seems like less than 5% of the US has GSM coverage, but in the four months I've had a GSM phone, I haven't ONCE been somewhere without access, except in a few spots on the Acela from Boston to NYC. And this is with a pretty heavy travel schedule. From my base in Portland, I've been to San Jose, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Wallingford CT, Albany OR, Las Vegas.

      I could see it being a problem for a tractor salesman or anyone else who finds themselves in rural America a lot, but as a technology c

  • OFDM? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:06PM (#6173461) Homepage Journal
    Ok, first of all, wi-fi is great and all but it's range is very limited, and the lack of regulation means that no one can 'own' any piece of spectrum. The range is so small that it would only have a chance of working in dense city places, while cell phone towers can handle miles of land. If anything Wi-fi will augment standard 3g connections when available.

    And second of all, what the hell is OFDM? I've never heard of it. Why link to the company page and not a page that actually explains what it is? And anyway, FDMA/TDMA/CDMA are not 'g' technologies, but rather the underlying technology behind them. A new modulation technique (if it turns out to be useful) would take a long time to roll out. CDMA took four or five years before it became all that wide spread.

    • Good point. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      FYI, Flarion has some excellent whitepapers on their site describing their tech, and the idea of OFDM in general.

      If all goes well I'll be a Flarion employee in a month or so. (Getting laid off, applying for a position at Flarion which is 20 minutes away from here, and coming into the application with great references, as my current company and Flarion are both spinoffs from Lucent's wireless division in Whippany.) So I've done quite a bit of research into the company and their tech. :)

      FYI, European digi

    • Re:OFDM? (Score:2, Informative)

      by luisdom ( 560067 )
      Maybe because he supposed that this is a technical enuogh forum in which people can google for this stuff?
      Google first link:
      ODFM Forum [ofdm-forum.com]

  • Naw.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 ) <sharper@@@booksunderreview...com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:06PM (#6173473) Homepage Journal
    It's not any more irrelevent than IPv6 or .

    Seriously, there will always be standards and technologies that make it from being in the right place at the right point of the implementation/budget curve and those that end up being skipped or never really fully implemented because it doesn't make sense for most to do so.

    The end result of course is, if you didn't spend years on the standard yourself and your company isn't betting the farm on it, then: "Who cares?"

    • Re:Naw.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 )
      Apparently ye olde slashdot filter removed the joke just after the . in the above post because it was written in the forbidden greater-than and less-than signs.

      Meant to say that:

      It's not any more irrelevent than IPV6 or (insert ISDN-style or .net-style standard or technology here).

  • 3G is a pathetic disappointment... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:07PM (#6173480) Journal
    At least that's the view here in the UK, where the 3G services available here so far are being sold on the strength of picture messaging and video phone calls.

    Unsurprisingly, sending a picture message or making a video call costs a lot more than sending a text message or making a regular call. New services generally command a price premium, so I guess that's to be expected, but what really gets my goat is how utterly useless (beyond the novelty factor) picture messaging and video calls are. Why use a picture message when a text message is so much clearer and 10-30 times cheaper? Why make a video call when a voice one will suffice at a fraction of the cost?

    I'm sorry, but I want more from my next generation handset than just postage stamp sized pictures. And, if the current take up of 3G phones here and elsewhere is anything to go by, so does everyone else.

    • Re:3G is a pathetic disappointment... (Score:4, Informative)

      by rcs1000 ( 462363 ) * <rcs1000&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:38PM (#6173778)
      Not only that but (and I speak as a 3 subscriber myself)...

      * You can get picture messaging on 2G phones. It works well, and there is (some) interoperability between networks.

      * The Internet access speed is LOWER than 2G's GPRS. I mean, what?

      * The picture call feature is useless. The picture lags the voice by several seconds, making it almost completely unusable. Aaaarggghh.

      Just my thoughts...

      Robert
    • > Why use a picture message when a text message is so much clearer

      Because a picture says a thousand words?! Just kidding. I think the industry has shown a phenomenal lack of foresight with UMTS. The writing has been on the wall for over a decade that the trend is towards integrated services--everything over one pipe, hail TCP/IP and open standards. The slate was clean, they could have gone for the grand slam of moving to IP phones and leaving proprietary protocols behind. With time and extra spectrum it

  • Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:08PM (#6173498)
    Given the huge investment in 3G licensing throughout Europe which nearly bankrupted many of the phone companies (and incidently made goverments such as the UK lots of £££)
    I don't see 3G going away too quickly, the phone companies have too much invested to throw it all away and start again, video services are just starting to be offered, the companies CANT afford to use alternate systems.
    {[ www.insightdynamiks.com [insightdynamiks.com] ][ psychedelic trance parties]}

  • I have the ultimate mobile bandwidth solution (Score:4, Funny)

    by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:11PM (#6173531)
    I carry around my own spool of fiber wherever I go which is plugged into a SONET backbone at my apartment...yes I get some stares as I unspool the orange cable while walking down the street, but at least I got 10Gbit/sec of bandwidth at Starbucks rather than having to use their paltry WiFi! ;-)

    -psy

  • 3G (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:12PM (#6173545)
    3G put huge debt every uk telecoms provider who signed up for it. Mobiles had stopped bringing in much *new* money, so new services seemed the next big step. As such, they acutely overpaid.

  • The problem is the charging model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beautyon ( 214567 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:13PM (#6173552) Homepage
    The discussions have been going on for years in the comms newsgroups, and the consensus from below is that its insanity to try and charge by the amount of data you use. Still, 3G has been rolled out with precisely this charging model.

    Everyone is already acclimated to flat rate charging for internet; the idea of having to watch how much you are using makes 3G unnatractive; you have to keep "looking over your shoulder", and you dread the size of your bill at the end of the month.

    Combine this with no killer app in site, and you have a pretty unnatractive package. Texting hoever continues to grow and grow...but you know this.
    • "Everyone is already acclimated to flat rate charging for internet

      That's not stopping ISPs modifying their service so that they provide a bandwidth quota and excess charges for those that go over it. I suspect in ten years time, unlimited bandwidth will have been relegated to history.
      • That's not stopping ISPs modifying their service so that they provide a bandwidth quota and excess charges for those that go over it. I suspect in ten years time, unlimited bandwidth will have been relegated to history.
        That could very well be, but I suspect those quotas will be large enough that people who aren't running servers or doing multimedia P2P won't notice.
        • Why do people always bash those who run servers? I run mail and web servers, yet I don't use much bandwidth.

          Since my ISP started including my bandwidth consumption on my bill on January 2002, my Min = 737MB, Max = 4,712MB and Avg = 2,372MB. I work from home, I download CDROMs from MSDN and for Linux. I run a server. Using ifconfig on my Debian server typically indicates that eth0 transfers less data in a week than I used to do in a single evening playing Quake 2 over dial up. That includes all my LAN
          • Why do people always bash those who run servers? I run mail and web servers, yet I don't use much bandwidth.

            I didn't mean to bash, friend...I thought I said the only people who would notice, and I think even you might notice a sever slashdotting. But who knows, maybe not even then if your site wasn't multimedia intensive.

            I mean, there probably is a sense of "maybe the companies are right when they point X small percent of users use Y large percent of bandwidth, they're spoiling it for everyone" but you'
            • I probably over reacted, but when people start talking about "abusers", they invariably go on say "like people who run servers", or words to that affect. I've been noticing it a more and more recently as I've run my own server for a couple of years and never been an "abuser". It really irritates me when people (not you) suggest a solution to abusers is to ban servers.

              To be honest, if I got /.ed, my 800Kb/s upstream would soon choke. If it happened, I would just turn my modem off and call my ISP to filte
    • I work in network design at the University of Kansas and our programming group here has been working on a usage-based charging model for some time now. This is the charging model of the future, not just for cellular, but for in home solutions as well. We were prompted to move to this model of charging after realizing that the percentage of traffic from P2P and other entertainment applications was much higher than that of academic applications. They are still going to get extremely inexpensive access to t
      • KU is not a business, and it can do all sorts of things that consumers would reject.

        I think the charging model of the future is tiered service, not per-usage billing.

        Consumers don't like usage billing. If you don't believe me, notice how the cell phone companies in the US use "free one gazillion minutes on weekends and blue moon days" as their major enticement in their ads. Furthermore, local cell service is now often sold with unlimited time for local use (to compete directly with land lines).

        Off the su

  • 4G (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spaic ( 473208 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:13PM (#6173559)
    4G is the future. It's supposed to be a combination of all these techniques. When I'm in a city I'm connected trought high speed Wi-Fi, when I get out of range i move seemless over to 2 Mbit UMTS (3G) getting further away I'm on 115k GPRS.

    All this is great. The problem is how to get operators to cooperate, so I can move seemlessly between different networks and know what price i pay.

  • Ten minutes before the meeting with the VC people (Score:3, Funny)

    by heldlikesound ( 132717 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:14PM (#6173569) Homepage
    Ralph: That's the thing, we don't really HAVE a business plan, I was just going to wing it...

    Cliff: Ok, well we need SOMETHING to sell them on.

    Ralph: Dude, I am so ahead of the game, check this out: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing.

    Cliff: Now that's good, worth at least 50Mill! How did you think of it?

    Ralph: I just scrambled the letters of the ingredients from a Taco Bell hot sauce packet.

    Cliff: Niiiiiiiiiiice....

  • What?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:22PM (#6173647)
    What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi? 3G is a phone standard. You get 3G stuff anywhere you can use your phone. Wi-Fi is a wireless LAN standard. You need a pringles can to use it from two doors down the street. They're completely different technologies, designed for two completely different things, how can one make the other irrelevant?

    -JDF
    • What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi? 3G is a phone standard. You get 3G stuff anywhere you can use your phone. Wi-Fi is a wireless LAN standard. You need a pringles can to use it from two doors down the street. They're completely different technologies, designed for two completely different things, how can one make the other irrelevant?

      Mod the parent up, this is just as much an "Apples and Oranges" story as the Bluetooth piece the other day. I can use my 3G phone to browse the web anywhere I have a dig
      • It's probably only "Apples and Oranges" because 3G stuff doesn't have enough range, is too expensive, doesn't have the throughput, etc. Think about it, if 3G was *really* good, and it was just as cheap and easy and powerful to stick a wireless modem onto a laptop than hook into your Wireless LAN, WiFi would be a niche product for people who were too paranoid to use VPNs or whatever...but that's not the way the technology is, so we have WiFi as a...I dunno, way of avoid excessive cable in your house and may

    • Oh, but it can (Score:2, Informative)

      by SpiffyMarc ( 590301 )
      What does 3G have to do with Wi-Fi?

      Google for WiMax. Here's a link to get you started [wimaxforum.org].

      From a random article about the WiMax 802.16a standard: "802.16 WirelessMAN (Metropolitan Area Network) fixed wireless broadband, has a range of up to about 30 miles with data transfer speeds of up to 70mbps". Also, "802.16a is considered the next step beyond WiFi because it is optimized for broadband operation, fixed and later mobile".
  • Now we have companies named after Pokemon? I'm moving to Mars.

  • gems in the 3G muck (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:25PM (#6173669) Homepage
    Everyone concentrates on 3G's bandwidth as being its predominant value-add, and it's difficult at the moment for the phone companies to figure out a sufficiently compelling application for all that bandwidth. But 3G has some other features which make it interesting - it's a shame the CDMA and GSM markets didn't include these in their 2G/2.5G offerings.

    Chief among these are:

    • Packet-switched operation. To transmit data (except SMS messages) it's necessary to open an end to end virtual circuit. So you can't trickly information back and forward to the phone all the time, at a very low bandwidth (and consequently very low cost). And there's no multicast, so software download to each phone has to be done one at a time.
    • Location-specific services. "Where am i?", "Where is the nearest gas station?", or that DoCoMo fave "beep me when a single girl my age who also likes ninja manga is nearby".
    These don't need 3G's bandwidth, but the 2G network can't really deliver either. If the phone companies had been conservative and added the above, they'd be in clover. That's not just 20-20 hindsight - DoCoMo in Japan did both, and they're making enough money to actually pay for the 3G network they're building - and simultaneously getting their consumer base onboard with the idea of getting games, media, etc. on their phone.


    • Packet-switched operation. To transmit data (except SMS messages) it's necessary to open an end to end virtual circuit

      Have you never heard or GPRS? The "P" is for "Packet"


      And there's no multicast, so software download to each phone has to be done one at a time.

      Two words... Cell Broadcast. *Every* GSM network has it, they may choose not to use it though but it's been there for over 10 years.


      Location-specific services. "Where am i?", "Where is the nearest gas station?"

      Any 2G WAP capable phon

  • convergence is overratted... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by krb ( 15012 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:28PM (#6173700) Homepage
    the next phone i buy will be purchased for one of the following two reasons, and they're the only ones :
    1. it's smaller and more comfortable to carry in my pocket, without being microscopic.

    2. lets me plug in my laptop and use the cellular network for data transmission at a reasonable speed for as long as i want, up to my alotment of minutes. a friend of mine has a phone that he can connect and use this way, but it's mercilessly slow and substantially limited in terms of how much use he can make of it.

    i suppose it's possibel that public WiFi access will become common in the city, so i guess that'd reduce the need, but i'm not holding my breath.

    who wants a damn video phone is my question? i don't quite see how this adds value to my life. then again, i only just bought my first cell phone 9 months ago, so maybe 6 years from now i'll think 2.5G/3G is pretty cool, when everyone else is picking up their holoCell-9000's or something.

  • Irrelevant? Absolutely. I kicked the habit! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Panther! ( 448321 ) <panther&austin,rr,com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:36PM (#6173767) Homepage
    About six months ago, I cancelled my two cell phones and decided to "rough it" for a while, saving money in the meantime. I haven't looked back. I never get rings in the middle of the night asking me to come in to work, never get the spousal unit 'checking up on me' periodically throughout the day and ruining my concentration, and I no longer have to answer tech support calls for my entire family whenever they can't get Windows to print a frickin' greeting card.

    So, yes, 3G is irrelevant, unless you're tied to your cell phone like a dog to its master. <grin>
    • This point always comes up, and it always makes me wonder: What kept you from turning off the ringer? I can understand the whole spousal checkup thing making it hard to do, but it seems like 'sometimes the ringer will be off' is at least as good as 'I don't have a phone.'

      Maybe I just don't get it because nobody ever calls me...

  • WiFi for this, WiFi for that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrWorf ( 216691 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:39PM (#6173788) Homepage
    ...is it just me or does it seem like WiFi is going to replace everything??

    It's weird. First, people complain about bluetooth, saying:

    "Hey, Bluetooth is slower and doesn't have the range of WiFi, it won't have a future."

    *duh* Bluetooth is a replacement for IRDA and cables. Which means that it has an entirely different set of goals than WiFi, thus, it supplements WiFi and should not be considered an alternative to WiFi. Works great for connecting my PDA to the internet using GPRS, or when I use the BT headset. Playing a game against a friend over bluetooth during a boring meeting is also nice (and doesn't look as strange as when you use IRDA and need to point the damn thing against eachother)

    And now:

    "3G is to slow/troublesome/expensive, lets use WiFi instead, its faster/easier/cheap"

    Again, *duh* ... different goals. 3G is the next step in mobile phone communications. Much like 2.5G (GPRS) was the next step after dialup gsm data connections. Ofcourse, having the 3G standard hyped as "Watch streaming DVD movies on your phone" or the likes doesn't help it much.

    Yes, I've tried it in real life (Malmoe/Sweden, using 3's phones & networks) and it works. Okay, so I might get a better image if I had a laptop + webcam + WiFi, but then, it isn't really that mobile, now is it? (Imagine making a call with that thing whilst riding a bicycle or something :) )

    Besides, if you compare the powerusage, you'll soon find that you probably wouldn't want a "wifi-phone".

    To conclude this post, WiFi is great, but so is 3G and Bluetooth. They are all different technologies, designed to fit different goals. I for one would love having a PCMCIA card that did WiFi, 3G, BT and GPRS. This way, nomatter what, I could always, somehow, get online.

    Anyway, this is my take on it... Bash away :D

  • 3G/4G/NG Needs An Application (Score:4, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:58PM (#6173964)
    ...beyond wireless email/messaging and web browsing.

    So far we don't really have any applications. The overwhelming majority of mobile users have decided that the primary purpose of their devices, telephony, is perfectly adequate.

    A remaining minority is content to get email or other text messages, but they're early adopters, pioneers and gadget freaks who buy anything and their aren't enough of them to make change-the-world money off of.

    An even smaller minority have developed proprietary applications, but they've been doing that over more expensive technologies forver, this just lets them do it with greater freedom. They're not a growth medium, though, since they're generally large businesses that negotiate deep discounts and optimize for minimum usage anyway.

    Right now there's just not a compelling application for wireless data at the price at which it is available.

    A wireless technology with sustainable node throughputs in excess of 10 megabits and ranges equivilent to cellular and all-you-can-eat pricing would be compelling, but the application wouldn't be mobile as much as last-mile fixed, mobile data would just be a side benefit.

  • Wake me when I can get affordable IP to my laptop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Paul Carver ( 4555 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:06PM (#6174055)
    I don't even care about high bandwidth, wireless broadband, 3G, 4G, 6G, whatever.

    If I could get a modem speed connection to my laptop for a reasonable price (i.e. $30/month for 10-20 hours/month of web browsing) I'd buy it. More than that I just couldn't justify unless I had a business need for it.

  • Ever get the feeling... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:13PM (#6174143)
    That technological development was seriously outpacing consumer need?

    I admit a lot of these things are interesting, but just not practical. For instance, downloadable java games. I know atleast 25 people with cell phones... none of them play games on it. Why would you? Can't wait until you get home to your PC/PS2/XBox?

    Sending pictures is pretty cool, but again it's very rare that I need to send someone a photo RIGHT NOW! I'll just get my digital camera, snap a photo, and e-mail it.

    The only application on Cell phones I use besides actually talking is text messaging... that's rare, and definetly not 3G...
    • Sending pictures is pretty cool, but again it's very rare that I need to send someone a photo RIGHT NOW! I'll just get my digital camera, snap a photo, and e-mail it.

      Technology has a way of creeping up on people. Here's an example: a tech I know once had to wire up some equipment in really tight space, and he can't really squeeze his head in behind the rack to see the connectors. He takes out a digital camera from his pocket, reaches behind, and snaps a picture. This allows him to finish the job withou

  • Well... (Score:3, Informative)

    by dcs ( 42578 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:22PM (#6174234)
    Meanwhile, The Register reports that in one place in Asia where WiFi *is* widely spread, they gave up on it and went 3G.

  • WiFi speed is a red herring (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PolR ( 645007 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:25PM (#6174268)
    I have not checked all carriers, but the carrier I know of doesn't pull fibre to install a Wifi hot spot. They connect it to a DSL line instead. Guess where the bottleneck is.

    Although WiFi speed is irrelevant its existence still cause trouble to 3G deployments. WiFi hot spots just eats the bulk of the users in high population density areas and divert associated revenues from 3G. The business case for 3G is severely weakened.

    From a speed point of view, it would make sense for carrier to skip 3G and go directly to 4G. But speed is not enough. They need an attractive application to get customers. Mobile Internet could be it provide they stop billing by usage as other posters have mentionned. They must also understand people will want to use the full potential of real Internet, not just the subset available through AvantGo and other WAP services.

    There is also a need for a cheap PAN that can connect the PDA, the laptop and the mobile phone and also other portable devices such as digital cameras and camcoders as well as MP players. Customer would then move pictures, video and audio recordings over the net.


  • I would say so... it's been what, 5 years since Satriani, Vai, and Johnson took their guitar-god triumvirate act on the road now?
  • 802.11 is constantly being compared to cellular phone networks, as an option for ubiquitous data access. But, I'm not seeing how this is going to work in terms of geographic coverage. Are they talking about the next generation of 802.x that will support metro-networks? Or, do they really think they can get broad 802.11a/b/g coverage?

    802.11 is fine when I'm sitting in an airport, and my flight is delayed. But, for quick checks of my inbox, or other online data, it's got a long way to go.

    Even for si
  • Did the WiFi proponent groups launch an orbit hype satellite to grab all this ridiculous hype for WiFi? I really don't see why WiFi seems to be the solution to all bandwidth and connectivity problems that exist in the world.

    WiFi is a decent but not necessarily great means to bridge a wired Ethernet network to remote nodes. It works pretty damn well in my house letting me browse the web or stream music. It also works decently as a way to connect to the internet from a Starbucks or internet café.

  • Don't forget about W-OFDM (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lawmeister ( 201552 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @05:43PM (#6175781) Homepage
    The Wideband-OFDM also shows lots of promise: from patent holder Wi-LAN:

    http://www.wilan.com/technology/main1.html

    Wi-LANâ(TM)s Wideband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (W-OFDM) is a transmission scheme that enables data to be encoded on multiple high-speed radio frequencies concurrently. This allows for greater security, increased amounts of data being sent, and the industries most efficient use of bandwidth. W-OFDM is the basis of the IEEE standard 802.11a, which is the foundation of the proposed IEEE standard 802.16. It is a patented technology in the United States under patent number 5,282,222 and in Canada under patent number 2,064,975. W-OFDM technology is currently used in Wi-LAN's broadband wireless access systems.

    W-OFDM enables the implementation of low power multipoint RF networks that minimize interference with adjacent networks. This reduced interference enables independent channels to operate within the same band allowing multipoint networks and point-to-point backbone systems to be overlaid in the same frequency band.

  • maybe companies need to find a GOOD use for the technology before people buy in. Playing splinter cell is NOT a good use.

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