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Handhelds Hardware

3G Phone Trial Started in Japan 58

Posted by michael from the buck-rogers dept.
Reefa writes: "The first 3G phone trial has started in Japan. Of the 147000 that applied, 3300 lucky users have been given 3G phones (they have to pay for data access) to test out so that bugs can be fixed before a general release. Example of bugs could be screens freezing up, to which a re-boot (switch off/on) of the phone is the only solution. Kinda reminds me of Windows. Anyway, I am sure that it would be fun to actually test drive one of these FOMA phones. What I would really like to see is real figures of data rates on these phone during peak usage hours." There's also a Reuters story.
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3G Phone Trial Started in Japan More

3G Phone Trial Started in Japan

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  • Re:America is last, as usual (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The US is also a very large country. Cellular networks are best suited to smaller, densely populated areas like Europe. For instance, here in the UK, we have at least 97% coverage for 4 networks throughout the country. Pretty cool. Off-shore rescues have been co-ordinated via mobile phone on some occasions and I've managed to use my phone in Northern France without international roaming switched on.

    I wouldn't worry, you may get stuff last, but at least it's cheaper. Over here we're subject to the pound to dollar rule, which means we get a really rough deal. :(

  • Is that 97% by population or by land area? Because here in Australia they claim high %90 coverage too, but of _population_ so you are still screwed any sort of distance away from a town.
  • The 50 million peple is the footprint for the PLANNED coverage of the 128kbps service and that is in doubt due to Ricochet's money problems. Unless all of those 50 million people live at the airport.

    I'll chalk up your post as another Bay Area resident who doesn't know what the world is like east of Sacramento.
  • The punchline is that I was guessing about where you live. :)

    I've seen the coverage maps. Unless you live in the cities limits of the major cities in those area, you aren't getting coverage. What's the point then?

    By the way, I'm not from the east coast. Thanks again for proving your ignorance about things east of Sacramento. :)
  • The 50 million peple is the footprint for the PLANNED coverage of the 128kbps service and that is in doubt due to Ricochet's money problems. Unless all of those 50 million people live at the airport.

    So far, I've used my Ricochet service in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Phoenix, and yes, the Bay Area, and no, not just in the airports. I'm told that coverage is already rolled out in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, Detroit, and San Diego. 50 million might be a little high, but I'd buy 30-35 million people in the existing coverage areas, for sure.

    I do hope the service survives, of course, since it's been fantastic so far. It might take being bought out in bankruptcy by a telco (*cough*Worldcom*cough*), though, ala Iridium. It certainly wasn't cheap to build out that network.

    -Isaac

  • I could not agree more with your points, with this exception:

    >5. Is it really so hard to carry spare change to use a pay phone?

    Where I live (SF Bay Area) it is getting harder to find pay phones. They are being removed and by businesses that find they don't make money any more because so many people have cell phones. This really sucks for those of us who don't care to carry a cell phone but need to make occasional calls away from home or work.
  • Excellent idea.. thats what this message is. Thanks.
  • What sort of test is 3300 users? Have they all arranged for them to wander into one area at the same time and all try and connect at once? The system is in dire need of a 3G slashdot effect.
  • If you got caught in the trap on this link and you actually modded someone up, you can post a bogus message here in this thread, as an AC even. Once you make the post, your moderation will be UNDONE. No sense in giving the guy any more points by clicking on his link.
  • Yeah, but Ricochet is for laptops and pocket PC, not mobile phones. A slightly different market.
  • GPRS is not 3G. duh!
  • http://nooper.co.jp/showcase/gallery.php?s=15&l=en [nooper.co.jp]

    I thought this was already posted on slashdot last week though...

  • "of course, it runs NetBSD !"
  • Another poster already dismissed you but I'll add more arguments (Yes I'm in the industry)

    a)Not all users will be connected at the same time, not all time will they be able to pull 128K+ connections... people use mobile phones to talk and that's still their main function
    b)Capacity on already assigned spectrum allocations is running out... fast... most of the countries with more than 40% penetration have this problem... 3G main reason is to extend that capacity
    c)3G runs (Up to release 99 of the 3GPP) on top of ATM, ATM offers unmatched QoS and bandwidth management, it may move into the pure IP arena some day
    d)3G has other benefits such as IP mobility support, personal services environment support and open service access...

    I never assumed people will leave their phones on all day, browsing slashdot and trying to get a first post :)

    ZoeSch

  • I am all for freedom of speech, but since the bastard who posted this supposed reference to a screen shot has provided no relevant content to add to the discussion and has instead posted a link to some commercial site, I would like to suggest this be deleted from the slashdot messagebase - and perhaps the user who posted as well.

  • I couldn't help laughing out reading your post, 128kbps ? Wow ! That's surely impressive compared to 2.4 Mbps (which, although already released to testers, is vaporware, right ?). Oh and yeah, watching streaming video must be great with that ricochet, as long as you can bear 2fps rates ! ;9 Not even talking about using it for talking...
    Well as you live in the US you may have never heard about NTT, but given the money they're spending on this, you can be sure it will be a hit. Heard about i-Mode ?
    Your post was hillarious, but you should use quotes next time, some people could believe you were serious with your stupid points ;)
  • Yeah, it will provide 2 Mbps for fixed locations, I suggest you read about it before posting... Burst to one user ?

    Good luck getting 30 kbps ? Ha ! Man, you really have no idea how the 3G systems work. Did you forget the quotes again ?

    As for expandability, the initial network infrastructure planning will be quite a challenge and will determine its scalibility.

    As for Ricochet, with such poor coverage and features, no wonder it's dying and will probably not exist by the end of this year...

  • GPRS ? What are you talking about ? That's GSM, and I hardly see any link with 3G, you have quite laughable arguments as usual, like your ricochet, so you're downloading 60MB a day with that ? Get a life man, use a T1, Cable or ADSL, where I live it costs nothing. You should try, you could download even more of your pr0n Quicktime movies with that !
  • ... is that Japan's network infistructure can't support it. Ever noticed how expensive bandwidth is in almost any country other than the US? That's because there isn't as much to go around. Japan survives now because of of it's slow wireless (slow connection = bandwith thrifty websites = not much load on the network) and lack of high-speed connections. Try putting 30+ million people on 128K-300K connections. Their network will collapse.

    This is the most clueless comment I've ever seen about the Japanese mobile phone system, and trust me, after 4 years in the business I've seen plenty. Where to start?

    The whole reason DoCoMo is pushing 3G so hard is that they're running out of capacity on their current PDC network -- projections say PDC will hit a brick wall by 2005, possibly earlier. The fact that 3G has bigger bandwidth and can support video transmission yadda yadda is all nice and dandy, but what DoCoMo really wants is to be able to push penetration to the point where landlines are obsolete (they're almost there) and, even more importantly, increase the use of wireless phones for machine-to-machine data transmissions, which are almost all handled by landline at the moment. There is not enough capacity for this yet, but 3G should make this possible.

    Second, the i-mode wireless Internet system does not require dedicated circuits, it's a packet network. The current heavy congestion on Japanese PDC networks is caused by plain old voice calls, which are still circuit-switched.

    Third, as for the price and availability of bandwidth, Japanese companies didn't have to fork out a single yen for their licenses. Bandwidth would be expensive in the US if there was any to spare, but all the desirable frequencies (eg. those used by GSM in the rest of the world) are in use by the US military!

    And oh -- with 125 million people and penetration rates above 50%, you're looking at over 60 million mobiles in use right now, and quite possibly well over 100 million if Tachikawa's visions come true.

    Ijoo desu.

    Cheers,
    -j. (straight from rainy Tokyo)


  • L337 H4X0r5 w1LL g37 y0ur G1b50n!
    3y3 0wnz y0ur pH0n3!
    pH34r m3!

  • If I read the article correctly it sounded like these would be video phones. That would be pretty cool. However, if someone didn't know it was a video phone and they put it up to their ear, it could give the person on the other end a very unpleasant picture. Sorry, but looking at the inside of someones ear up close just doesn't sound very exciting to me.

    But other than that, it sounds like pretty cool technology. So when do we get it in the US?

  • Did you actually say this?

    Phones are for talking, not data.

    Have you ever heard of a 'modem'? :)

    Remember, the physical implementation of 3G nodes will START as handsets, but there's nothing preventing the creation of other compact access devices that connect to the 3G network, including modem equivalents that you could use in your laptop. (Although, with a 3G network, the device would not be a 'modulator-demodulator' per se, since it could just communicate digitally but hopefully you understand my point.)

    MeepMeep
  • This isn't just vapourware!

    My Nokia 9110i (wap + world's shoddiest net browser) is already capable of 'freezing up' with pulling the battery out and putting it back in being the only way of reviving it.
  • America currently has the fastest and most widespread microcellular data network commercially deployed. It's called Ricochet. [ricochet.com] And you don't need a buggy phone, just a rechargeable external modem or PCMCIA card. 128kbps...you'd need nine or ten cellular connections tied together for that kind of speed!
  • My point was that data rates for 3G phones are cited as some panacea for bringing data to the roving masses.

    Ricochet already does this quite effectively. I don't expect to talk to someone over my laptop computer; I don't expect to have to connect a phone to my computer for data or wait seven to ten years for reliable and fast mobile wireless data ransmission from my laptop/PocketPC either.

    As fas as the whole video phone thing goes...I think the only place we'll see widespread adoption of video phones int he next 50 years is in the movies.

  • Um, no -

    Actually, the coverage area encompases about 50 million people TODAY.

    New York City/Manhattan/Long Island, Houston/Galveston, Dallas Fort-Worth, Los Angeles, San Diego, S.F. Bay Area/Santa Cruz, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Denver, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Atlanta Metro....rumor is Chicago is coming soon, with serveral parts of the city under coverage.

    Sounds like about 50 million to me. Feel free to check census figures, but I stand by my assertion that these cities and their Ricochet coverage areas encompass about 50 million people.

    Sounds like just another hostile east coaster who can't chill out.

    (Former east coast resident)

  • I think they're test marketing the 44.95 plan in San Diego.

    If it does well, I'd expect that it would be rolled out in other coverage areas.

    I'm in L.A. and the Bay Area each week, so the $75.00/mo. service is more useful for me.

    Hell, if it lets me get an hour's worth of work done waiting for one of United's cancelled flights, it has paid for itself.

  • If you think 3G will actually provide those 2.4Mbps rates...

    ...well, you just admitted that you have no idea what you're talking about. I guess you believe everything you read from manufacturers. The 2.4Mbps figure is burst, to one user, on an unloaded network.

    Try watching your video at 6:00 p.m. when everyone is talking on their phones. Good luck getting 30kbps.

    Since 3G is monolithic cellular, deploying more towers to reuse spectrum is an expensive and time-consuming process.

    As for the spectrum Ricochet uses today, don't assume that the background technology wouldn't work on any spectrum you might want to use.

    2fps? I regularly watch videos using Windows media player at much higher frame rates.

    When people start paying to use 3G services in the U.S., then

  • Vodafone's GPRS system would enable customers to access information at speeds slightly slower than the average 56Kbps household modem but considerably faster than the 9.6Kbps available over the current generation of WAP-enabled GSM phones. Besides benefiting from faster download speeds, using WAP over a GPRS phone rather than a conventional phone has one further advantage: A WAP session can be interrupted in order to make or receive a call without the need to log on and start again when the call is over.

    Vodafone has already launched its GPRS service for business customers and is planning a prepaid GPRS service toward the end of the year. However, consumers who pay for their phones on a monthly contract basis will be able to use the new service starting Friday.

    After the cost of the handset there are two pricing packages on offer from Vodafone. Customers can either pay $10.60 a month and get 1MB of free data transferral per month - that equates to 500 to 1000 WAP page views per month. Each additional 1MB costs $7. That package is 72 cents cheaper than BT's offering, but BT only charges $5.65 for each extra 1MB

    Uh, what was that about 2mbps?

    Each additional MB costs $7.00! LOL! I just downloaded a 5MB QuickTime movie at 30kBps with Ricochet (yes, bytes)...that would have cost me $30.00 with a 3G service.

    I regularly transfer over 60MB a day with Ricochet...all for $75.00 a month. Good luck launching 3G here in the states. With the technical delays it's had, it'll be years before 3G services catch up with where Ricochet is today.

    Just a delighted Ricochet user....

  • Oh:

    Here's the Ricochet web site. [ricochet.com]

    Currently getting 260kbps - fast enough for streaming video. Outside, in a county park. And I don't have to rely on someone's 802.11 base station or pay per-minute charges to MegaCellCo.

  • 3G is vaporware; Ricochet is here today (Score:3)

    by vought ( 160908 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @12:55PM (#188405)
    I think all the excitement about 3G is hilarious.

    I'm using a flat-rate mobile TCP/IP based wireless system at speeds of up to 350kbps, and at nominal speeds of 128kbps.

    It's called Ricochet, and if you're one of the 50 million people that the Ricochet networks covers, you could nhave speeds that surpass what 3G promises today. The cool part is that it's mobile, so I can use it on the train or put my Novatel Merlin PCMCIA card in my iPaq and take it to the baseball game.

    3G=Big deal. Untold billions spent already for spectrum and NO infrastructure yet.

    I'd rather pay $75.00 a month for high-speed mobile access in 15 U.S. cities, with no per-character or per-minute charges. I get my high-speed access of 128kbps with speed bumps coming and 3G proponents get to twiddle their thumbs!

  • >Non-surfing on an "interface nightmare" tiny >screen, you mean? ......
    >3G will be fine for talking on the phone.

    There are 34.5 million people in Japan using internet-enabled phones (including myself). Most waiting for 3G.

    Ricochet has about 41,000 subscribers.

    Nuff said.

    Rob

  • You might want to know that a lot of pay phones are cellular phones nowadays. This allows pay phone companies to no longer have to string out a telephone wire to the location of the pay phones itself.

    By the way, there people that must have a cellphone--namely doctors, lawyers, or anyone that has to be on call very quickly. But a lot of them are now using two-way alphanumeric pagers, too (though cellphones can combine the functions of a pager).
  • The reason why the US will have later trials of 3G phones is because the US system of digital cellular uses the Qualcomm-developed CDMA system, very diffferent from the GSM system used in Europe and Japan.

    Unlike GSM, the new CDMA2000 standard that the US 3G phones use will have better voice quality, better data security and more stable high-speed data connections.

    I've read that test trials of CDMA2000-compliant 3G phones will start early in 2002. I think Sprint will be the company that is involved, though I need to check with Sprint, Verizon and Cingular web sites to see when each company will start 3G field trials.
  • As usual, with anything regarding to cellular/wireless, the United States gets it last, primarily due to our refusal to choose a standard for cellular phone communication.

    It kills me to think of how overcharged we are for cellular, considering how bad the service and equipment sucks compared to the rest of the world.

    Sometimes, I think they take all the cool Euro phones that didn't sell that great and ship them to the US for us to use!

  • FYI, Ricochet just announced $44.99 "local only" (no roaming) service in San Diego and San Francisco.

    I'm all over that - if they ever get around to offering it in Los Angeles. Right now we are stuck on $75 pricing plan - you get roaming, which I don't need... that's too much. I think a lot of people will bite at $40.

    Hopefully, they will last long enough to start selling it here!

  • Not true... we have GSM here as well (Pacific Bell Wireless in California, Nevada, Voicestream Wireless in many areas.) AT&T Wireless is TDMA, so not everything here is CDMA, although a lot of it is.
  • The cool part is that it's mobile, so I can use it on the train or put my Novatel Merlin PCMCIA card in my iPaq and take it to the baseball game.

    The un-cool part is that it's not a standard.

    3G=Big deal. Untold billions spent already for spectrum and NO infrastructure yet.

    You meant to say, in America, right?

    I get my high-speed access of 128kbps with speed bumps coming and 3G proponents get to twiddle their thumbs!

    Unless they live in Japan, in which case they get to test the vaporware 3G standard on the non-existent 3G infrastructure.

    Pretty soon, they'll be non-surfing around at 2.4mbps on VAPOR-AIR. (You heard it here first, folks.)
  • 1. This is where your "power as user" kicks in. Turn the phone off if you don't want imcoming calls. You miss out on half the point of owning a wireless phone, but that's your choice. As for annoying people with rings, many modern phones these days support vibration alerts. Also, a nice option is to have a "ring once". Most people don't mind the initial ring, it's the subsequent rings (as some lady digs in her purse to locate the ringing phone) that really drive us insane. And please, no "song" rings people :P

    2. Well, it's your bandwidth. The same would apply to any line. There could be too many cheap tricks you could do if incoming calls were free.

    3. This is harder than it sounds, as most phones these days are encrypted and frequency hopping. How would you be able to tell who is who? Identification should be after key-exchange. If it isn't, well.. it should be!

    4. Yes, but integration is good too. Witness the the Nokia 9xxx series. See http://www.nokia.com/phones/9210/ *drool*. This is much easier than aiming an IR port to your PDA or carrying extra cables. All-in-one has its drawbacks, but remember you are limited on pocketspace too.

    5. Ick, so you are going to borrow from someone else? I'll agree that payphones can be convenient, but the independence of "rolling your own" can be better. Usage anywhere, for one. I've connected to the 'net with my Laptop+Cellphone at friends' houses before, simply because I didn't want to tie up their line. Think about it this way: would you rather use a library computer, or your own if you had it with you?

    6. People are dumb. They also get in car crashes, and let their phone ring at movie theatres. The many idiotic users are what give this awesome technology a bad name.

    7. Funny

    I think you're missing out, my friend. "Wireless technology is somewhat magical. With the naked eye, it appears that data is traveling from one point to another invisibly. This teleportation trick would have you burned at the stake in the 1400's, but in the present it is a huge part of modern life. Cell phones, cordless peripherals, radios, TV, GPS, etc."* Warping data from point A to point B is fun! Don't live in a cave.

    -Justin

    * taken from my web page: http://www.affinix.com/~justin/stuff/#wireless
  • Ricochet is good, but the concept is not the same. Ricochet relies on very close-range (quarter mile) access points, and there is no voice capability (although that could be added I suppose). Wireless phones transmit across miles to the nearest tower and serve as an all purpose communications device for both voice and data.

    Currently, GSM (Global System for Mobile), the most popular wireless standard, has coverage in just about every country. With Globalstar satellite service, it has coverage of the entire planet.

    While data rates are limited to 9600bps in most areas, 3G is set to be an upgrade to existing networks. This means that when 3G is finally out there, the coverage will likely be just as great as GSM currently is now (maybe minus the satellite part). Other networks are planning a 3rd generation as well.. GSM is not the only one.

    Ricochet is a good deal, and if you live in their territory and you don't travel much, it can be useful. Like an extended wireless LAN or something. But for true coverage everywhere you go, you have to turn to wireless phones.

    -Justin

  • Comparing Richochet to 3G is like comparing a mono-propeller plane to a Boeing 747.

    Richochet is a very limited technology that works over the unlicensed band. The reason why it is out there today is precisely because of its limited ambitions. 3G is a much more comprehensive project that involves co-operation between gargantuan entities, so there is a lot of politics involved. But it will happen, sooner or later. And when it does, Richochet will sink without a trace.

    And BTW, 3G is not one standard, but a family. Check out IS-856, a member of this family. A cellular, CDMA-based standard for delivering 2.4Mbps shared/ sector. Worldwide rollouts in Mid-2002.

    And before you smugly report that "it is shared", consider this: so is Richochet. So is any access technology that does not involve a dedicated wire strung to your door.

    Magnus.
  • this phone only catching on in Japan? It looks like you'd need a lot of fast wireless access to make it work. While Japan, an island with tons of coverage, has this, the US is much bigger and... well... can't see anyone in the middle of Montana using this thing. Maybe New York, Chicago, big cities like that, but in anything other then a high-density super covered area you'd probably rather stick with wires.
    --------------------------------------
  • ... is that Japan's network infistructure can't support it. Ever noticed how expensive bandwidth is in almost any country other than the US? That's because there isn't as much to go around. Japan survives now because of of it's slow wireless (slow connection = bandwith thrifty websites = not much load on the network) and lack of high-speed connections. Try putting 30+ million people on 128K-300K connections. Their network will collapse.
  • Thanks for setting me straight. Actually, there were no facts behind my comment. I just wanted to take the oppurtunity to bash Japan. (stupid Japanese taking over our car and computer production. oh well, they make good games.)
  • These phones are very interesting. The video display and the phone itself looks impressive, and the rate for data transmission is no more than a minute on a regular cell phone here, although it might go drastically up, (bandwidth, etc).
    I'd love to have one of these phones, and I await when it shall come out. Although, have a buggy phone might be a problem, imagine getting the blue screen of death on one of these things, (of course, I don't think would be running windows)
    Imagine a Linux version of this, hehe.
    The Palm Pilot just got smaller and is now a cell phone.
  • Might be years, they expect to have 150,000 users of this in japan in the first year, only because of slow roll out, so don't expect it here real soon
  • But asked if it would change his lifestyle, Yamashima, who works for a printing company, said: ``I don't know if it will change anything.''

    The Japanese strike me as having a very wired lifestyle. Remember videophones? Remember the lack of excitement they recieved in the U.S.? If 3G were to catch on in the U.S. that would be a big deal, just because the general population doesn't want that sort of thing at present and the introduction would signal a significant change in the U.S. telecom market.

    The Japanese are wild about a new electronic gadget? That isn't news.
  • refer to subject^
  • an exciting and inovative new way to talk to people's voice mail and answering services. Yeehaw.
  • I'm not definate, but I'm 95% sure that BT had been trialing 3G phones on the isle of man for a few weeks now. If only they could be ahead with land based high speed comms...
  • I think all the excitement about 3G is hilarious.

    yeah well i'm not a yank, and i think there might be 1or2 other /. readers who aint either. anyway, i here ricochet coverage is pretty poor (major us cities, at best).

    one of the few cool things about my mobile is that it works up a mounatian. or botswana. or even in wales.

    therefore 3g offers the only hope of increased mobile bandwith worldwide - not just for the lucky few.

    offtopic mode on: However, here in the uk, we may have BIG g3 problems - the government (in their usual wise ways) auctioned the 3g liscence to the mob companies for bout a £kazillion. which sounds good.... untill you hit a technological slump. doh. erricson.... redundancies. nokia.... scale-down.

    i want my 3g :-(

  • Well, I know that Washington DC and Seattle don't have 128kbps service, just 28.8 service.

    As you can tell from the coverage map at http://www.ricochet.com/about_us/coverage_maps/ind ex.html it is doubtful that the "128kbps available now" coverage is 50 million.
  • You're correct. Manx telecom which is a subsidery of BT has been trialing 3G phones on the Isle Of Man, UK for a few weeks.
  • It's 97% of the population. Vodafone has 99.9% of the population. They never show the stats for land area.

  • Kinda reminds me of Windows (Score:3)

    by Invisible Agent ( 412805 ) on Wednesday May 30, 2001 @02:36PM (#188429)
    Example of bugs could be screens freezing up, to which a re-boot (switch off/on) of the phone is the only solution. Kinda reminds me of Windows.

    I know that was meant tongue in cheek, but the statement is nearer to reality than one might think. We've become used to embedded devices just working, but as they become more complex, they become more like a general purpose computer. So yes, your phone crashing with similar regularity to your desktop PC is something that will become much less remarkable.

    Embedded software developers have sometimes been a bit cocky towards their non-embedded bretheren ("well, we just code better see?"), but the truth is that embedded development hasn't typically been anywhere near as complex as s/w development for desktops (due to very limited processing power, memory requirements, etc. (If you don't believe me, think about how simple it would be to write the UI for any of the current generation of cell phones). All that's changing though, so learn to love those mono LCD screens o' death.

    Invisible Agent
  • ..increase the use of wireless phones for machine-to-machine data transmissions..
    Use wireless for machine-machine data Xmns? I remember a Pentium being able to saturate a 10Mbps network quite easily. While your other statements are quite right, this one is spoofy.. Ijoo desu
    Thats it?
  • You won't get them in the US for years because the US is years behind the rest of the world in cellular tech. Most of Europe will go live sometime in 2002. The US is adopting WCDMA as far as I'm aware but US cellular is a real mess due to the fact that a common standard (like GSM in Europe or PDC in Japan) was never adopted. It's a real shame for a country that's usually on the forefront of technology that the US is so far behind. -Sy/\/apZ-

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