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World's First 21Mbps EHSPA/HSPA+ Data "Call"
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Dec 08, 2008 07:21 PM
from the faster-than-a-bounding-kangaroo dept.
from the faster-than-a-bounding-kangaroo dept.
gadgetopia writes "Although data 'calls' on 21Mbps networks and equipment have been made in the labs and in demonstrations, Australia is the first place in the world where such a call has been made on a commercial, deployed 21Mbps eHSPA network, with a full commercial launch due early 2009."
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Telstra Kicked Out of $15bn Broadband Project 158 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Australia's largest telco and ISP, Telstra, has been
kicked out of the bidding process to build a national broadband network (NBN) estimated to be worth $15 billion. The Aussie government had earlier
given assurances that the proposal would be considered, however it now won't even be evaluated by the expert panel, which will make the recommendations to the Senator for Broadband and Communications. The government may now take steps to legislate so that Telstra can't build a network that competes with the NBN — leaving the incumbent to focus on wireless HSPA+ technology instead."
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Bring Lysol with me... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But it's in Australia... With the new netfilters the gov't is mandating, you won't be able to access porn. Hell, SlashDot will be filtered because it mentions porn.
Next stop for the Aussie net patrol...cutting all links with the rest of the world. Once they find out this 'web filter thingie' doesn't prevent people from accessing 'bad' things, the only other solution will be to prevent them from accessing anything that cannot have the Aussie legal system applied to it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Forget the porn filters, they are just another politicians wet dream...
And forget the glitzy hey look at us and our new tech marketing.
The real issue here is Tel$tra's obscene data pricing on their mobile networks - even on their fixed line ADSL.
While the majority of ISPs in Oz shape you once you exceed your download cap, Tel$tra are still charging 15c / MB for excess on ADSL.
You think that's bad. How about 15c / KB for excess on mobile data plans. There are plans that avoid that rate, but not the stock pla
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You say 15c/KB like it's a bad thing, yet here in the states we're being charged 20c (or is it 25c now?) for 140B of data if you want to send it to another phone.
Telcos are greedy. This is not news. And please let me assure you that America having "competition" in this arena doesn't make a damned bit of difference for pricing (if anything it's worse - they avoid the monopoly laws, but there are so few of them that collusion is trivially easy and always overlooked by the powers that be). So while Netflix
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>>>collusion is trivially easy and always overlooked by the powers that be
The powers that be did not overlook the collusion that happened between the Record Companies. The States' General Attorneys sued the companies for forming an illegal cartel and fined them accordingly (with refunds to customers who purchased CDs or cassettes). If the cellphone companies were colluding to pricefix their plans, I expect the States would drag them to court too.
The truth of the matter is that erecting antennas a
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Your provider should be able to disable texting. I don't agree with the pricing, but it does go over a different communication channel than data (with much more limited bandwidth), so comparing bits for bits is a little disingenuous.
That said, there's no reason texts can't go over normal data channels. And I sign into AIM on my phone, and just ignore the whole thing when I can.
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There are plenty of people here paying $130 / month for 3G mobile just to get a decent bandwidth / download connection coz they can't get ADSL. Telecoms / Internet pricing in this country sucks. All because of one dominant more or less monopoly Telco.
What monopoly [youtube.com]? The breakup worked.
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>>>we have 22 million people in a place the size of Europe or the continental USA.
I made that argument yesterday and I was told it's bogus... that sparse population is not an excuse for Australia to only have ~4 megabit/s average when places like Japan have 18 megabit/s. Well, I agree with you that comparing Australia to a tiny nation like Japan or Korea is stupid, but most slashdotters disagree. (shrug) Anyway quoting some statistics from memory, here is how Australia compares to other continen
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>>>With the new netfilters the gov't is mandating, you won't be able to access porn.
No but you'll be able to see that "Sorry Big Brother is watching. Access denied" popup in just 1/100th of a second instead of 1 second! :-) That's technological progress for you... now if we could just get some progress on the freedom front, we'd be all set. Approximately 250 years since the Americans and French wrote their respective Declarations of Human Rights, and yet we still don't have freedom of thought
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More to the point, because it's in Australia, transferring data at 21Mbps will cost about $500 per minute.
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Yeah, might be time to get the "new" iPhone. It's "3"g
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Ha! Funny. :-) Unfortunately Commodore 64s don't multitask so it would not be possible to download a porno photo & post to slashdot "at the same time". The C64 does one thing at a time. Shoulda used "Amiga" for your joke.
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And here's an image of Contiki multitasking on a C=64 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Contiki-C64.png [wikipedia.org]
Amazing. I thought the old Commie was too slow and too small to run multiple programs at the same time.
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seriously thats almost enough to stream HD porn.
HD porn, when TMI meets reality...
Too bad about the filter (Score:2, Insightful)
21Mbps will become 21Kbps once the government is done with it
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Won't somebody please think of the children?!
Contents of the call (Score:5, Insightful)
> Although data 'calls' on 21Mbps networks and equipment have been made
> in the labs and in demonstrations, Australia is the first place in the
> world where such a call has been made
Contents of the call:
"Hello. [Censored by Australian Internet Censorship Agency] home and then [Censored by Australian Internet Censorship Agency] and he said [Censored by Australian Internet Censorship Agency]. Thanks"
sPh
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[Censored by Australian Internet Censorship Agency]
Australian Communications and Media Authority [acma.gov.au]
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It makes compression very efficient when all you have to do is return "BLOCKED CONTENT" for any traffic outside .au
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I have one thing to say to that: [Censored by the Australian Internet Censorship Agency]
I mean, wouldn't you agree? (Sorry about this my Australian friends, but everyone ELSE reading this knows what it says. )
"Network", not "Call" (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's good to see this technology taking root out there, but don't forget about the engineers who made the tech happen in the first place! (In fact, given that Telestra's HSPA+ is not yet an active commercial network, I'm wondering what makes this trial so different from the dozens of "laboratory calls" made so far?)
Is it a breakthrough? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Standard lines in Japan are 100mbps up/down with 24 people sharing a head-end switch. That switch has 100mbps going back to the ISP. The price is about $20 for the fiber-optic line lease and $50 for the ISP service.
Typical rates are 20mbps down and 5mbps up [speedtest.net]. They are higher in the city, but I live out in the boondocks of Japan.
If you want, you can pay $75 per month and they will move you to a head-end switch with 12 users and 1gbps link back to the ISP. Then, you are almost guaranteed the full 100mbps s
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O_o
*scrabbles for passport*
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We're talking 21 Mbps downstream with far more mobility even than WLAN, once they get these networks operational. That's more bandwidth than I get from my cable internet connection on a device that can go anywhere the towers are without breaking connectivity (thanks to CDMA's no-drop handoff style).
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Okay, but if it's cellular, then it's 21mpbs *shared* with everyone else in your cell.
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You're sharing the backhaul from the tower to whatever it talks to, though.
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Is there any QoS in those switches? I mean, what happens to the other 20 people's VoIP connection or PDF download when four people are running bittorrent with 100 open connections each? 100 Mbps shared over 401 TCP connections is 250 kbps per connection.
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I have no idea how the back-end deals with throttling users.
frickin' telstra (Score:5, Informative)
Re:frickin' telstra (Score:5, Informative)
Before any mods mark this as a troll, let me point out that Tel$tra still charge $150/GB for excess downloads on their broadband plans [bigpond.com].
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Except for their "liberty" plans, which comprise 2/3rds of their available plans. Those plans that - being shaped without charge once reaching their limits - are the plan that any sane person would choose.
But I guess that wouldn't be *quite* as dramatic to say now, would it?
Having said that, I will wholeheartedly agree the 'entry level' plans are a nasty trap for inexperienced grandparents or something. 200MB download at 256kbps for $29.95 with a 15c/MB excess is not a plan that most internet users would pi
So, actual data rate is.... (Score:2)
... what, 750 kbps unless you're standing right next to a tower/
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It depends entirely on how many other people are using the cell at the same time. If you're the only one, and you have decent reception, you'll get pretty close to the full amount. Oh, you also need a device capable of that connection speed, which doesn't really exist quite yet (but will soon).
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Well, with Telstra's current HSPDA network, I can get consistent, sustained rates of 2-3Mbps with my phone (and laptop) to random sites on the internet. This is in a variety of places - some inner city, some where I can guarantee that I'm pretty much the only person in that cell using data.
Distance-wise, it doesn't really seem to matter much - I have been some 60km away from the only tower with a 6dBi broomstick antenna attached to my phone and still get the same speeds as if I was in town. At the very edge
Grandma! (Score:2)
So, when's this kind of crazy a55 speed going to make it's way down to the street? You know, when is grandma going to see wild speed when she's calling the grandkids? 1-2 years? More?
"2009" doesn't mean it makes it to grandma, at least in any affordable sense of the word. 1-2 years. Move along.
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Grandma doesn't need 21mbps, nor would she care to pay for it!
VOIP is measured in dozens of kilobits per second. I believe with modern algorithms, 40 is ok to make a signal and get an OK signal, and 100 kbps is plenty. This signal is two hundred times faster.
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It's supposed to be rolled out by the end of the year, so even if it is delayed, it'll be more like 1-2 months than 1-2 years. They're currently talking 42Mbps by 2010.
ha ha (Score:2)
No, i'm not kidding - i haven't checked the rates for a few months, but mobile data rates here are in that sort of ballpark...
Re: (Score:2)
15c per megabyte? More like 15 DOLLARS per megabyte at the rates AT&T charge (1 cent per KB)
I can't even imagine what Sprint would charge (Score:2)
$500/month? A thousand?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not everything will be blocked. Only the really dangerous stuff like cartoon porn!
Re:All networks are fast... (Score:5, Funny)
The australians have been angry ever since that Giant Boot joke, anything simpsons related is a testy subject with them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Parent post inaccurate.
Optus is not a model 3G network, nor has its GSM
network that preceded it ever been. Posts from current and former Optus employees like this one [whirlpool.net.au] exhibit this. Back when I was on them a few years back, GPRS latency was regularly in the 600-1000ms range with regular connection timeouts*. Switched to another network, and boom, down to 300ms. My understanding is Optus runs GSM calls at half-rate bandwidth as well.. Definitely noticeable if you answer if you answer an Optus GSM (not 3G) cal
Re:Single call on an unloaded network is meaningle (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, but the cable might reduce the mobility of your phone, not to mention the problems caused when you get on a train
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
HSPA bandwidth is shared with everyone else in your cell so of course you don't generally see top speed, especially not in a crowded city, but with this the total bandwidth shared is increased so you should see an increase in speed.