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Sprint Testing 2.4Mbs Wireless Cellphone 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yum-yum-gimme-some dept.
stuccoguy writes: "In a press release on Tuesday Sprint and Lucent announced the successfull testing of a 2.4Mbs wireless internet connection and plans to ship the technology by 2002. ZDNet speculates that this technology will change everything. Sprint will answer questions about the technology on a webcast this Friday."
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Sprint Testing 2.4mbs Wirless Cellphone More

Sprint Testing 2.4mbs Wirless Cellphone

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  • Reality of 2.4mbs on wireless (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Having worked on WAP and wireless data, having faster data rates will significantly improve wireless services. For example, right now WAP developers have to divide the data into decks, because of the 14,4 data rate limitation. The newer CDMA chipsets use RISC processors, so memory is less of an issue than the older X86 chipset. Unless some one wants to download an entire novel, memory shouldn't be an issue.

    The potential power of combining wearable PC with 2.4mbs wireless has huge potentials. Once you get affordable stylish HUD for wearables, we will see the next generation of internet applications. Even though you can buy wearables today from xbernaut and other companies, it has to be stylish for commercial acceptance.

  • Re:Other limitations overshadow this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Two things? For all you geeks on /., you all surely missed the obvious application.. high bandwidth to areas that otherwise can't get high bandwidth.

    For me, this application is perfect - I can get cellphone service where I live, but I can't get DSL or cable modem access (wrong equipment in the telco box, no infrastructure at all from the cable company).

    And it sure beats that $1000/month tag for mid-speed bidirectional satellite.

  • I was afraid of that, so I didn't mention the possibility.
  • Naah. I have a SprintPCS StarTAC as well, and the coverage is awful. I just wish it worked better indoors..
  • You have your math wrong. 1 byte usually equals 8 bits. 2.4 Mbit/s = 300 KBytes/s, equivalent to a 2x CDROM.
  • if you take your phone into a SprintPCS Store, they can update the ROM to take advantage of new frequecies. That should improve your service.
  • 1) You mean like the sprint broadband service they've already announced?

    2)Are you claiming that there aren't going to be distance limitations? Currently the aforementioned broadband service is going to be relying on a transmitter on the sears tower to serve Chicago, but that "only" has a 35 mile radius. Impressiove, but not "no matter how far".

  • Sprint's coverage in Chicago is pretty awful too. Not so much weak signals, but not being able to get calls even when I have a *strong* signal. Instead, the caller gets my voice mail, and I wait up to half an hour for the voice mail to finally get through to me that I have a message. When you're trying to meet someone at the el and the two of you have which stop confused, this can be a very bad thing.

    I wouldn't trust their networking services even with a solid guarantee of service

  • 2.4 MegaBITS is about 24 MegaBYTES (modulo whatever redundancy checking they have, but that's typical for networking). That's STILL a hell of a lot better than my 684 MegaBITS DSL at home, where I routinely stream audio feeds and occasionally stream video as well. I.E. It sure DOES seem like a broadband replacement.

    If only they can provide it reliably.....

  • You're right, I was moving the decimal in the wrong direction; however the fact remains that most DSL broadband is 4 times slower than that (at 600Kbits vs 2.4 Mbits). It's still broadband, and it's still capable of streaming.

  • It was far worse than that. His phone couldn't even lock onto a digital signal and just sat in analog roam mode. Mine was hooked, happy, and receiving calls. We tried starting them cold (off and back on) as well as lettting them sit. His handsest was just plain foobar.

  • I use mine for well over 2K minutes a month and I know lots of people that use more. I hardly even use a land line any more for voice. Use the T1 at home for net stuff so no PSTN line there. The cell is less expensive for ld.

  • Scientific American discussed [sciam.com] this last October.

    The Third-Generation Partnership Project [3gpp.org] is the group developing the standard.

  • If they are testing it and it is working properly, they must be buying the service from AT&T. How come they get to beta-test and I don't? 8^( They probably got a free phone with a contract, too...

    God help anyone who thinks it will work if Sprint developed it... (for less than a premium fee, of course)...

    YMMV...

    Jethro
  • 2.4mbps (throughput), not 2.4ghz (frequency)
  • Columbus Ohio is terrible as well with Sprint PCS (when using different friend's phones). I was lucky enough to choose Verizon. Sooo much better.
  • Yes, there are limitations that overshadow some advantages, but honestly, there are some advantages that CLEARLY out weigh ALL the disadvantages.

    You're at the office, no TV, VCR, DVD, etc available, and you need some quickie stress relief, what better than being able to watch video on your cell phone? I would love to have that kind of speed to watch streaming por...I mean media....yeah, streaming media at my household computer...

    Now how do you decide? Do you plug 'er in and watch, or do you turn 'er on vibrate and keep 'er hidden?

    Technology these days, giving you the answers, but creating more questions...

    Blake
  • This is true. In NYC, it's long been AT&T that blows chunks, while I occasionally receive calls IN THE SUBWAY with Sprint. Naturally, they break up half the time, and the rest are "I'm in the subway, I'll call you back", but that's what AT&T gets on the street in many neighborhoods.

    I hadn't realized there was so much discrepancy nationwide. It's probably much like bus or air routes; lots of tactical decisions about where to spend and where to battle...

    Oh, and I'd rather blow a goat than use Verizon if I can help it. The only thing they've been good for in the last 10 years is merging and changing all the logos on phone booths (nynex->bell atlantic->verizon: no wonder my bills are so high). Oh, that and screwing up any DSL circuit if the customer is not theirs, and 50% of the time if it is.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • I am in San Francisco bay area. I own a Qualcomm (those cheap / slim phones). Totally awesome! I got the phone for less than $40 from circuit city. It has better reception than those $299 (with one year contract) starTacs!!

    Sprint's coverage isn't as ubiquitiuos (Sp) as oxygen. But it works for me.

    I also like the no contract service (month to month). I guess only sprint bets its business on service rather than locking people in for ONE year minimum. You hear me AT&T?

    back to lunch.

    LinuxLover
  • This sounds like 2.4 Mega BITS, which I don't think mean streaming AV for many. Also doesn't seem like a braodband replacement.
  • Actually, it's more comparable to 802.11 (3mbps, real throughput of ~2mbps) which does work well up to 80mph (yes, i tried it..) and allows up to 64 access points per airspace, easily supporting around 64 clients per access point (4096 total per airspace) yes, the bandwidth is shared, but that's due to physics, the FCC, and big companies.

    Unless these phones come with ethernet jacks for my laptop, or a connection for my HandSpring Visor, I'll be sticking with my Nokia 6120 that has been faithful for 3 years now.

  • hm. wonder what this is going to do to my cordless @ home, or my bluetooth connection or anything else that runs up there....
  • heh. i'm rather anti-corporate (note the .sig), but this spawned an idea: get work to pay for it...

  • Come on. It's going to probably be pricy (or more expensive then one without that kind of bandwidth), and the real users ARE going to be people who jack it into things (mostly because nobodys going to spend a whole lot more for bandwith unless they have a laptop). While, right now, we're not accustomed to jacking our cell phones into things, this will probably change that.

    Just imagine, you want to surf the web while riding the bus? no problem. Tired of crappy low-quality radio broadcasts? Just plug your cell-phone into your car stereo via the firewire or usb jack and connect to shoutcast. Have one of those minivans with a TV? Stream your Divx rip of "the matrix" from home.

    While you are correct about short battery life being annoying, I think that it's not going to be as big of a problem as you think. Streaming an mp3 to your car stereo takes a big hunk of the processing out of your cell-phone, but there is still a medium ammount of processing going on. But things like firewire let you draw power while jacked in.

    This is really some neato stuff

  • On our 802.11b network, I can be at any marina in our service area (we provide marine wireless access) and my ping times to our router are usually 2-3 ms, and that's going through 3 wireless hops first. That's pretty good in the latency department.
  • I've used the Kyocera SmartPhone (formerly made by Qualcomm til they sold their handset division) for a couple days this week and I have to say that the form factor is just the coolest thing. Some background: I own a Handspring Visor, my company gave me a laptop, a Palm V w/ Omnisky service and a Sprint PCS phone, and most of my coworkers use RIM's. The Smartphone points the way to a device that will subsume all of these, and negate the need for a laptop for probably 90 percent of what I do when I'm mobile -- I mean really mobile, not just moving to another desk. Think how many times you choose not to bring your laptop because it is a pain in the ass to haul around.

    I think the "smaller is better" mantra that cell phones have followed WILL be reversed when you see how much easier an interface like the PalmOS is to use than a damn touchtone keypad. Here's a link [kyocera.com] with a picture.

    --

  • If there is a way to put a desktop node on the PC, then the headaches of DSL and cable are gone. Personally, I think this will keep the cable and DLS companies from jacking up prices to monopoly status, if this is nipping at their heels.
  • here it is for the lazy: fucksprint [fucksprint.com]

    Now if anyone can explain this my curiosity will be satisfied for the day:

    Domain Name: FUCKSPRINT.COM
    Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
    Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
    Referral URL: www.corenic.net
    Name Server: NS2.ICSNET.NET
    Name Server: PHALSE.2600.COM
    Updated Date: 26-sep-1999

    >>> Last update of whois database: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 08:39:18 EDT

  • We have already seen that there is great demand for broadband- so much that it outstrips the providers' ability to keep up with demand. Add to that the amazing hassles of getting DSL. This would allow us to take our personal connection (or work connection if you're lucky enough to have a boss subsidize it) to the office, even the park. I'm not saying I would surf the web everywhere I go, but it should be nice to not have to spend the whole day at a desk. And the deployment areas could be much wider than DSL. I can't wait.
  • The difference is that I have yet to find a good radio station, however there are good radio stations on the net. I can also stream my own radio station, pr I can grab some new tunes on the road when I want to listen to something different.

    I agree for the most part it is a waste, but until regular radio stations will play what I want to hear on demand, then it just isn't going to cut it. Also there are millions of other uses for that connection that doesn't involve radio/video and that is where the power lies (but being able to grab mp3s on demand is an added bonus). We must look to the future and see the possibilites of what may come of wireless broadband and not what we have at the present time.
  • 64k isn't fast enough to stream my mp3's to my car. It definitly isn't fast enough to stream video. What if say I wanted to stream live video out from my travels? (I've already done this with a remote control car and a wireless video camera, next step is to hook the controller up to the computer) Well 64k would do a low quality stream, but not while playing my mp3s ;)

    What would be ideal is that each speed category had it's own price range, so your 64kb would cost less than my 2.4Mb while still giving me the option of the greater speed and still giving you a better price that fits your needs.

    Broadband wireless internet will open up so many possabilities that we just don't have right now. I will go back to my car example. The internet and the car make the perfect combonation! I don't think that anyone should be surfing the web while driving, but who says the internet is the web (well many people do, but not I). Obviously streaming radio would be great in the car, other very useful features would be weather and road conditions. The possibilities are endless when the connection is there, and I for one hope this is the start of what will bring us wireless net access everywhere (and I do mean everywhere, I want my connection out in the middle of nowhere, not in some city where I can just take the bus or walk and hence there is no need for the connection in my car)!
  • the chipset tends to put a lot more limits on speed (clockspeed) and less on memory (RAM/ROM). True, a chipset limits max memory, but rarely is this the bottleneck. For instance, the new Palm chipset can now address 16MB vs. the original 8mb of addressable space.
  • 11 Mbs for 2.4 Ghz wireless lan. About 150ft range at under 1 watt of power. The system I set up for my school (Airport) allows soft hand offs just like cellular service and covers 4 city blocks with just seven units. The system allows a theoretical limit of 105 connected users but we have had many more than that because not all connected users are always using their max bandwidth. I belive with a little more power the cells could be enlarged but not the max user limit. Latency is terrible. 11 Mbs is I belive even higher than the MAX for adsl let alone the speed you acctually get to connect at.
  • are you trying to tell me that DSL is 2.4 megabytes per second? no way. you must be smoking the crack. try 200kilobytes/sec max.

    At least, so far. I doubt anyone's going to hit 2.4MB/sec on it, ever, but one may be able to exceed 2Mb/sec eventually. It'll certainly require some additional infrastructure of some sort, though.


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • Are their actually 2.4 million bits in the entire state of Kansas? They must have used some corn to make up the diff. :-)

  • Wow! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    new tech from Sprint! Great!

    Now, if only they could stop screwing up every every possible thing having to do with the regular old long distance service. btw, try typing fucksprint.com into your browser, it's amusing.
  • That was my first response to this, too. If you look at Sprint's coverage areas, they tend to be just along major highways. Maybe it's just me, but the thought of people on the road enjoying streaming video makes me twitchy.
  • CDMA is the radio interface, and in this case stands for Code Division Multiple Access - nothing to do with Ethernet's CDMA. The rest of the 3G radio access networks (i.e. the radio bits and everything that networks the base stations to the core) aren't based on Ethernet either - typically it's ATM, Frame Relay or IP.

    The interesting part is that 3G infrastructure (at least the variant to be used almost everywhere but US/Canada) allows you to request a certain bandwidth, latency, jitter (latency variation), etc. Subject to your ability to pay, you then get the QoS you need, right the way through the radio access part and onto whatever IP network you want to get to.

    There are many problems with 3G, including who's going to invest in the massive upgrades required (the entire network changes, radio and core), who's going to use it, what the killer application will be, and whether it will be too expensive for consumers (particularly in Europe, where the UK and other governments have managed to obtain ludicrously high license fees for 3G spectrum). But it's an interesting technology, and the bandwidth will only be oversold if that's the QoS level that people want. I suspect Sprint et al will sell a mixture of high QoS (for voice, video, and business users who need a VPN back to base) and medium/low QoS (for web surfing and general content/transactions).

    3G has some other cool features - e.g. you can have connections to 2 or more base stations simultaneously, which makes your connection more resilient to obstacles and interference, as well as making it very easy to hand off from one cell to another. You should also be able to roam anywhere in the world with a 3G phone (particularly if US networks adopt UMTS, the global 3G standard, but multimode phones may help there even if not), and you can even switch to a different provider in the course of a single session.

    Unfortunately there is not much digestible information on the Web, and the whole area is buried in acronyms...
  • You are right, of course - 3GPP2 is a CDMA-oriented 3G standards development project, mainly focused on the US and some other CDMA markets. So this version of CDMA is a standard, although not exactly a global one.

    3GPP, a similar effort that predates 3GPP2, is defining a version of 3G called UMTS that is more GSM-oriented (though using CDMA, upgrades from GSM networks will be easier) - this is what will be used in Europe, most of Asia, and by AT&T in the US. Depending on how the standards wars pan out, you may still be able to use a UMTS phone anywhere, but it will take a long time for either 3G standard to get very broad coverage - so multimode phones (e.g. current CDMA and cdma2000/3GPP2, or GSM and UMTS) will be important for a long time.

    As for HSCSD - this is an upgrade to GSM that simply bundles 2 or more GSM calls together for increased bandwidth (up to 28.8 Kbps I think). It's somewhat of a dead end, and not implemented by many telcos - the packet-oriented standards, such as GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, and 3GPP2's work, are much more interesting, as they turn the phone into an always-on device that can dump IP packets into the network whenever it wants.

    IPv6 will also help, though not mandatory for any of these standards yet, by giving your phone a static IP address - run a web server on your phone (if you can afford the air time...)
  • Ricochet is not the only game in town, and is proprietary as far as I can tell. For people who travel a lot, it's more useful to have wide coverage from pretty much every cellular provider, around the world - 3G promises to provide this, and in the interim there's GPRS, a 2.5G technology based on the world-wide GSM standard, and already deployed in early stages in various countries.

    As for per-minute billing - there's no technical or business reason why 3G will work like this for data. Providers will be able to bill flat rate, or a fixed fee for certain amount of data transfer, or whatever. 3G data and GPRS are packet based standards, not circuit based like current cell phones.
  • 3G providers will probably charge by amount of data transferred, but hopefully will bundle a large amount of data transfer per month for a reasonable fee. Also, content providers such as e-commerce sites, banks, media sites, and so on, may be able to subsidise costs out of their transaction/subscription fees - e.g. if watching videos over 3G turns into a real market, i.e. pay per view, it would make sense to bundle the 3G communications cost into the video fee.

    We all want 24/7 unlimited flat rate bandwidth, but someone has to pay for the roll-out of 3G or whatever wireless data system actually wins. If you mainly do interactive stuff rather than multimedia, the per-month flat fee would probably cover all your usage. For low cost multimedia you may need to wait for 4G...
  • 3G will be way too expensive to use as a fixed wireless connection - there's a lot of complexity in managing mobile users, so why pay for that when you can just use broadband fixed wireless.

    Have a look at LMDS, MMDS and VOFDM, not to mention wireless optics - these are all designed to connect a fixed site to a network, and can give broadband connections without the costs of 3G.
  • The 2.4 Mbps figure only applies to static users of 3G wireless - typically within a building (called a picocell). Users who moving about get much less - 384 Kbps when walking or 128 Kbps when in a moving car.

    Also, the number of users in a given cell, or that part of the network, will affect things - generally, though, once you have a session at X Kbps, you keep it even if other users try to connect - a bit like dialling into a modem pool, though in some circumstances a higher priority user could cause you to be kicked off.
  • Useful mapping - there really needs to be a site that explains all this stuff.

    BTW W-CDMA is the (main) air interface for UMTS, just as cdma2000 is the air interface for the 3GPP2's 3G standards. UMTS covers the whole network, including air interface, radio access and core network.

    One interesting ray of hope in this standards mess is that AT&T recently decided to go for UMTS in the US, and Qualcomm is making dual-mode (cdma2000 and W-CDMA) chipsets, so it may be possible to have a single 3G phone that can roam anywhere in the world... Either UMTS will take off in the US (unlikely) or dual-mode phones will let you use any 3G network world wide. Currently, the US and Japan have mainlynon-GSM phone standards, so global roaming is not quite there.
  • Sprint is one of the cheapest providers out there! Sorry dude, but cell phones don't come for free. With Sprint, you can get 2000 minutes a month for $75. Last I checked, that's $0.0375 a minute, much less than long distance, or even local calling charges. The $10/month lets you use any of your minutes to use the wireless web, or any of their proprietary services. That's actually pretty damn cheap.

    OK, how many people here actually talk on their phone for 2000 minutes a month? An hour a day every day isn't typical usage for voice, and that barely scrapes by at 1860 minutes (max).

    On the other hand, for Internet access, 2000 minutes (33 hours 20 minutes) is about two weeks worth of 'net usage for me (assuming I'm running IRC :)). If I keep my 'net usage to a minimum and have high speed access, 2000 minutes per month might actually meet my needs for wireless Internet, both for business and recreation. Not bad for $75.

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • Most likely, this will be a charge-by-bandwidth deal. not what i'm looking for. I want my wireless connection to be dedicated, meaning my PDA is always connected to my home computer, even using my home computer's hard drives for storage. I want to be able to stream my mp3s without loss and talk into my PDA (as if it were a cellphone) to a friend (on another PDA or some other internet phone) at the same time. ...and this wouldn't financially be possible without an unlimited plan.
    So, basically, you want your cake, and eat it at the same time...

    Who do you think you are? A big croporation???

    --

  • Already my employeer will allow me to work from out of the office provided the work gets done. The ability to have a legitimate network connection speed on my laptop from the beach will make my life very sweet, if it is affordable.

    Right now the web-access charges for cell-devices are so high that they are impractical for any real uses. Even reading /. costs too much! :) Hopefully along with this impressive technology will come an affordable price-point that will make laptops and other devices truly usable from the road instead of merely portable to the nearest hard-line.

  • Probably blockage from buildings. The digital signal doesn't carry nearly as far as analog, and can get blocked a lot easier. Only solution is more antennas.

    My only experience in NYC was a couple of years ago and with a different handset (Qualcom). The only long converstation I had on the phone worked just fine. Then again, I was right next to Central Park, so there was a lot of open space for the signal to carry.

    I'd keep on Sprint's @ss to get some more antennas up in your area.

  • It's possible you have a bad handset. I've used Sprint for years (since the Sprint Spectrum system started in DC) and have been very happy with it. I'm using a Samsung flip phone and get good coverage most places I travel to. However, someone I work with has the exact same phone and thought the coverage was bad. I put my phone right next to his and got a good signal. It turned out he had a bad handset.

    About the only thing that will make me get rid of my current handset is when ones with Bluetooth [matlock.com] capability finally hit the street at a reasonable price.

  • Wrong nothing. Wireless connections are retarded for non-mobile applications. I want a fiber line to my house rather than having a very interference prone antenna. Besides my media coming down a pipe with only practically limited bandwidth (I could feasibly have several terabits of bandwidth on a single piece of fiber) it is also alot harder for my signal to be intercepted. Not so with wireless.
  • Fuck streaming mp3s to your car or watching video. There are much more practical fucking ways to get video and broadcast radio into your car without trying to use a cellular network. If you want digital audio in your car look to satillite radio or digital terrestrial broadcast. For video, well stop picking at straws. A 2.4Mbps wireless connection per user is a waste of bandwidth. How would "streaming radio" be any fucking different than the analog radio you've got in your car right now? The wireless medium is a shitty one that is way overburdened as it is.
  • A cellular network is inefficient for the sort of thing you're talking about dude. There's little power to wasting two and a half megabits on a single user. You're missing my point. Cellular radio is BAD FOR HIGH BANDWIDTH CONNECTIONS. The point of splitting regions into cells is to get the most usage out of the available bandwidth. Giving people several megabits worth on a single connection is a complete waste. Stop trying to sound like some fucking dot com visionary talking about "wireless broadband", thats just stupid buzz words. There's a handful of wireless applications that require 2.4 megabits to work properly. Human voices can fit in a relatively small amount of space as can music. Text data requires even less space (think about how much information a single kilobyte actually is). You want video in your car? Fuck that. You're a bad enough driver as it is.
  • Yes...

    There's another mistake that the computer-savvy tend to make when talking about digital transmission as well: In telecom, you always refer to bits/second. A T1? Fiber? They transmit a bit at a time, so speaking in any other terms is irrelevant. (Except when dealing with frames/second or cells/second, but that's more protocol-specific).

    Also, in telecom, a Kbit = 1000 bits (not 1024), and a Mbit = 1000000 bits (not 1024*1024). A gigabit is 1000000000 bits.

    Speaking in bytes is a handy conversion to put some perspective on it, but not the appropriate term to describe the medium.

    Also..... I don't know what a Kbs is.... it should be Kbps (Kilobits per second). or Kb/s.

  • You miss an important (and true, IME) possibility: StarTAC handsets have lousy reception. There are *many* places that my wife's old StarTAC didn't work (we're both on Sprint) that my Sanyo 4000 did, and there are more places that her new Samsung handset works where my Sanyo doesn't. All handsets are not created equal.
  • Cell phones are not the answer here. Who likes surfing the net on a pathetic little cell phone screen with three to five lines of text?

    PDAs, particularly WinCE machines, already operate with 32 to 64MB of memory. They're just awfully expensive -- which is exactly what we're seeing as the trend for upcoming Phone/PDA devices (re: Hitachi's PalmOS PDA/Phone).

    However, I have to concur, the trick will be battery life. Not only are you driving a cell phone but now a larger LCD screen and, quite possibly, color and backlit.
  • I wonder what volume of broadband calls the cell airwaves can actually handle? How many of these 2.4Mb connections can be going all at once? The image presented of teenagers listening to streaming MP3s on their cellphones while hanging out at the mall sounds neat, but I bet (no data to back up this assumption, mind you) that there won't be enough bandwidth available for that sort of thing.

    So, the only way for them to market this thing is to make it really expensive, and target enterprise customers.

    But here's the thing: Cell companies don't seem to have a frickin' clue how to sell to enterprises. Most of their marketing is geared toward consumers; most business users buy consumer plans and bill them to the company.

    Case in point is WAP/HDML. The potential enterprise uses of this technology are endless. The cell companies however insist that when you turn on an HDML/WAP phone, you see their portal, complete with Yahoo! sports scores and horoscopes and such. Enterprise customers don't want that, they just want it to go straight to a page of their own design. But, for whatever reason, the carriers just won't do that.

    So, I just have to wonder if this technology will ever pan out. It would certainly be cool, but I'm not holding my breath.

    Bruce.

  • Lucent is the largest supplier of CDMA equipment to Verizon, as well. Sprint is just more agressive on the 3G stuff than Verizon is. Give it a bit of time.

    Charles Hill
    Core Network Engineer
    Lucent Technologies

    [For the lawyers: No, nothing proprietary is contained in this post. It is all public knowledge.]
    --
    Charles E. Hill
  • Scene in a mid-size corporate IT department - door opens to the server room. On top of the Cisco router hardware and Sun Enterprise webserver sits the customers broadband CPE...

    a steel gray Motorola StarTac.

    With one of those awful Nokias with the 'leopard skin' snap-on case as a backup connection.

    Cisco and Sun will need to sell 'coordinating' faceplates so their equipment stays fashionable.
  • Generally, the higher the bandwidth, the smaller the cell. More towers have to be put up, and each tower is more expensive. So coverage is likely to be worse, especially in the beginning.
    --
  • As their PCS Phones. I have a PCS Startac and coverage is complete CRAP. Even in the middle of a major city (philadelphia) nearly half the places I go the signal is weak to nonexistant. I would much rather see verizon rolling out this technology, it might have some decent coverage and be better supported.
  • I have a friend with a samsung handset from sprint as well and he gets spotty coverage in the same places I get the spotty coverage. If we BOTH got defective phones, I'd be surprised
  • Console game companies have made it very clear that the reason they are so slow to get into online gaming is the pitiful state of slow, high-latency modem based services. High speed wirless changes that. Sony is already building a wireless online network for Playstation 2 games in Japan. This sort of thing could also be easily adopted in most of Europe, Asia, and North America's metropoli and their outlying suburbs, just all cell phones were.

    The devices can also be used to stream out live feeds of video (In a few years, all wireless phones will likely be video phones, British firm Pedagogue will lead they way.) to wireless devices, as well as live music. Imagine setting up your own streaming audio server at home, and listening to all of your MP3s from anywhere in the world, with a device half the size of current MP3 players.
  • so long as one user uses it. the air aint infinite, so what happens when you try to squeeze more then one user in there? oh wait i already know, because i cant get a signal in the middle of goddamed Boston!
  • Take a look at Sprint's footprint (and read the mail from their dissatisfied customers in +20 POP cities). Realize the physics behind this, along with the fact that, without a tremendous build-out of infrastructure (and concommitant burn of non-existent capital), it's impossible for this to scale to anything like a profitable subscriber model.

    Especially since by then, long distance and wired (and short-range high-bandwidth wireless) will be flat-rate or free in precisely the markets these folks are targetting (++10POP w/ high-use/low-churn subscriber bases) and you'll see the best thing AT&T for its shareholders was to spin off Lucent.

    Another thing, anyone else notice that Sprint's default in even home-market is AMPS/Analog and not digital, and the signal still sucks?

    So you are tooling along, using your XP laptop the only way you can use it and your connection returns to analog, you go to ~~9.6Kbps and you get the blue, pink or taupe screen of death (whatever that month's flavor is).
  • You need 2.4mbs to co-ordinate a schedule?!?

    Oh, I forgot, you use Outlook CE.
  • Most likely, this will be a charge-by-bandwidth deal. not what i'm looking for. I want my wireless connection to be dedicated, meaning my PDA is always connected to my home computer, even using my home computer's hard drives for storage. I want to be able to stream my mp3s without loss and talk into my PDA (as if it were a cellphone) to a friend (on another PDA or some other internet phone) at the same time. ...and this wouldn't financially be possible without an unlimited plan. I hope Sprint makes one available at a reasonable rate (I'd pay up to $85 to connect my PDA and my home computer at that speed 24-7).

  • For one thing, digital wireless communication devices are not considered "cellular."

    1P: Well, dem whole monkey twice the pudding octopi for ... tango man.
    Salesman: I sense a little ... confusion.
    1P: Yeah, very blender shoes cellular, scooter my daisyheads.
    Salesman: You said ... cellular.
    1P: Tiddly-day.
    Salesman: Those cellular plans, they can really confuse you. (Hands 1P a communicator.) Here, the new Sprint PCS Free & Clear plan lets you choose one free option: long distance, nights and weekends, or wireless web.
    1P: And all the calls are clear.
    Salesman: Well said.
    Announcer: Choose one free option. Introducing the new Sprint PCS Free & Clear plan.
    (Read More... [everything2.com])
    But what are the commercials for this new product going to be like?
  • Sprint is one of the companies that (1) refuses to support IRDA-capable phones (I guess my phone is supposed to replace my Palm, not work with it!), (2) refuses to support global wireless standards (what do all them fureners with their fancy Gee Ess Emm know?), (3) was stupid enough to get exclusive rights to the SCH-3500 (I guess nobody else wanted it) (4) keeps putting out all those X-Files commercials that remind us that PCS is better than analog (well duh!).

    I'll look elsewhere for my technological progress, thank you very much!

    __

  • Figure out a way to improve the inherent latency in wireless....

  • Check out this article in ComputerWorld [computerworld.com].

    Typical speeds for 3G devices will be more like one-third of this advertised maximum or less.

    Most users will experience something like 600Kpbs (because the spectrum is shared among many users).

    Not that 600Kbps wouldn't be an improvement, but 2.4Mpbs it isn't.

  • Actually, AFAIK, you really can't compared 802.11b or Bluetooth with what Sprint is doing. 802.11b is meant for relatively fixed wireless, ie, not driving around in a car, etc, etc. Basically, it's wireless ethernet. What we're talking about here is CDMA, or what is often referred to as "3G" wireless, ie, the next evolution in cellphone technology. You're right, though, this achievement is not really groundbreaking, though, since other companies like Nortel have already fired up prototype CDMA networks and performed CDMA calls.
  • If this is going to be used for cell phones, what's the point?

    People with no vision always ask "what's the point?" about EVERY new technology. Computers at home: What's the point? Internet Appliances: What's the point? Cell phone technology at twice the speed of cable/dsl modems: What's the point?

    There are several flaws that need to be worked out of cell phones before we need faster connections.

    The real use of this technology is probably not going to be watching streaming movies on your cell phone! It'll be mainly people roaming with their laptops, PDA's, tablet PC's, and internet appliances. They'll probably have video cellphones as well. Sanyo's already released the "first" cell phone with a color LCD screen (8-bit now).

    Everyone makes a big deal about cell phones and tv

    They do? Where exactly are some examples of this? You're the first person I've seen to think that "watching TV on my cellphone" is going to be a big feature of high-speed cellphone technology.

    Lets assume that everyone really likes this streaming video and so how many people are going to be using one cell tower?

    So Sprint will more cell towers in crowded areas! What's the problem?

    Switching from cell tower to cell tower
    would have to have lots of error checking when streaming a video.

    Someone who doesn't understand the technology ought not complain about the technical things like this. Perhaps this is a problem that is already solved?

    What happens when i drive through a tunnel or something how will the error checking correct for that?

    How does your computer's TCP/IP stack handle error checking when you are watching a streaming video, and you pull the ethernet out the back end? Mine stalls until I plug it back in. Dontcha think they just might be able to do the same kinds of things with this tech?

    Lets say that we hook this magical cell phone up to a laptop we will still have problems

    We will?

    Before they installed cable they had to upgrade all the cables.

    Ok... ? What's your point? I'm pretty sure Sprint realizes they are going to have to do some major upgrades in order to have a 3G network...

    You sure are pessimistic and whiney...

    While 2.4mbs seems great in theory, just rember communism works in theory too

    Ahhh... this is the real clinker.

    No, communism doesn't even work in theory. Communism provides no incentive for anyone to work hard and achieve goals. Communism basically rewards the person that does the least amount of work. Capitalism, on the other hand, works in both theory and practice, because the basic premise is that you are rewarded for working hard and achieving goals, and punished otherwise.

    Guess you need to pick a new analogy.
  • btw, try typing fucksprint.com into your browser, it's amusing.

    No, what will be amusing is the scene that ensues tommorrow morning when the Sprint network sysadmins get into work and wonder why fucksprint.com got more accesses than sprintpcs.com.
  • So the phone can download a lot of data really fast. Where's it going to put it? In its few megabytes of memory?

    Please think outside the box. What this means is anyone that works from home in the computer industry will be able to roam the world, in search of peace, love, and hot sex.
  • So the phone has to use the data immediately, as streaming A/V. So you can watch TV...

    So now, instead of dealing with idiots talking on their phones during rush hour I have to deal with idiots watching Boot Camp on their phones during rush hour.


    -------

  • True, cell phones are good for calling your friends, making appointments, receiving important calls, and checking your stock quotes if it's web enabled.
    But to have streaming video???
    What exactly is the point of that? Cell phones have been increasingly becoming smaller - Now you need to make them bigger to fit everything. Take the resolution on your computer right now and shrink it so as small as it will go. Tell me, is that what you actually want to see on your phone?
    I mean if you want to have all the bells and whistles of a laptop computer then get a laptop computer and give us 2.4 wireless access to the internet at a reasonable price.
    That's where the real future is.

    Linuxrunner
  • Sprint is one of the cheapest providers out there! Sorry dude, but cell phones don't come for free. With Sprint, you can get 2000 minutes a month for $75. Last I checked, that's $0.0375 a minute, much less than long distance, or even local calling charges. The $10/month lets you use any of your minutes to use the wireless web, or any of their proprietary services. That's actually pretty damn cheap.

  • This is basically the implementation of the IS-856 standard that was ratified by the 3gPP2 recently. The system works over a bandwidth of 1.25 MHz (exactly the same as IS-95 CDMA) and delivers a peak of 2.4 Mbits/sec. It is important to note that this 2.4 Mbits/sec is shared among all the "currently connected" subscribers in that "sector". So expect lower speeds per consumer during peak hours.

    The technology was developed by the folks at Qualcomm corp. They are the same chaps who invented CDMA (or at least, commercialized it). I think all the big national wireless providers have committed to deploying IS-856 by late 2002. Anyway sprint is surely not the only one. Besides Lucent, I all the big equipment vendors must be working on building IS-856 systems (Eg. Ericcson, Nortel, Nokia, Samsung etc).

    Magnus.
  • I worked in the cellphone industry with wireless data 3 years ago, for a service provider. Back then, the critical numbers on the "voice side" were:

    10 Mhz total bandwidth cap, per FCC

    100-500 sectors per metro area * 5-20 radios per sector = ~4000 radios per metro area

    19 kHz per radio (analog, dedicated one radio per phone conversation)

    typical "frequency reuse" yield: 10-to-1

    average usage per radio per day: 3 hrs

    $0.10 cents per minute average charge => 0.10x60x3x4000 = $72000 gross revenue per day per metro area

    Actually I'm not sure that revenue figure looks right; I was on the engineering side so I didn't pay much attention to the financials.

    Anyways, we had a wireless data network which used some of of the capacity of the voice network for data. It was totally hopeless. We could provide 14.2kbps service, but because of the financial reality of the company, we had to charge somewhere close to $0.10 per minute to justify the borrowed capacity.

    10 cents a minute for a lousy 14.4 connection is ridiculous. That means for a lousy 1MB porn MPEG you'll have to wait 10 minutes and pay over a dollar. Way too pricey for almost anyone except those who REALLY NEEDED mobile data access and were willing to pay through the nose for it! We kept wanting to price it lower, since it cost us very little to maintain, but the thing was that for every single kilohertz we gave to a "data" customer, well there was a "voice" customer perfectly willing to pay 10 cents a minute for that same bandwidth.

    A ten-minute 20khz cellphone call is worth a dollar to many people. A one-megabyte ten-minute data transmission is worth a dollar to only a very few people.

    We tried to move to a packet-switched service "CDPD" which would frequency-hop to avoid actually using up any voice-side dollars. But that was quite expensive in terms of equipment. And even as we approached viability for CDPD, the voice side switched from analog to CDMA digital, which makes more efficient use of the voice-side bandwidth, squeezing the opportunity cost of providing data service up even higher.

    The numbers today are not that different. "PCS" bandwidth has allowed carriers to increase their total bandwidth by about 4x. (note: the fact that this bandwidth is in the Ghz part of the spectrum is of fairly immaterial). Conversations are now compressed and consume about 4x less bandwidth. Prices have probably dropped about 2x-4x from where they were at 3 yrs ago. BUT it's still true that a voice transmission is "worth" more per kHz than a data transmission, to most people.

    I think high-speed mobile data access is a great idea. Kudos to the Sprint team for demonstrating such a high bandwidth connection on a cellphone. But the MONEY AIN'T THERE. No cellphone service provider in their right mind is going to stream 300kbit video to one person when they could be streaming 3kbit voice to 100 people.

    At some point, total network bandwidth will become so huge that it swallows up the entire voice market. After all there are only 6 billion of us on the planet, so there are only 3 billion cell phone calls to be served :-).

    Once there's room left over from that market, we'll start seeing wireless data prices that are "worth it" to many people. I'd give it about 10 more years though. You'll know it's coming when everybody you know has a cellphone and considers it "real cheap". It will happen in Europe and Asia before it happens here in the States, thanks to the vast sluggish power of the cell phone industry here.

    ---

    One thing that could make wireless data cheaper than voice faster is its non-realtime nature. Typical data can survive latency much better than typical voice. Networks which are build from the ground up to take advantage of this fact (large buffers throughout the topology?) may become more practical sooner. But the cellphone industry won't be providing these. Some other industry will.

  • WRONG!

    A 2.4mbps wireless pipe replaces your need for cable modem, DSL, etc., etc. and increases your max BW by a minimum of 2x. Sprint already sells SpeedChoice--er, Sprint Broadband Direct, but only in a couple of markets. If they can put this new thing on all their poles, it's fucking brilliant.

    Until you read further down the article and see them promising just 140kbps per channel. Which you can already get out of Ricochet. That should be the sticking point. Not the fact that your Palm saturates at 100kbps (I'm making that up). Increased bandwidth can always be rerouted to something in your home.

    It's just too bad Napster didn't live to see it.

    --Blair
  • Read the article to the bottom. You're half right. They're flogging "10x better than 14.4"...

    --Blair
    "9.6kb! 128x better than 75 baud!"
  • schedual -> schedule
    cheep -> cheap
    peek -> peak

  • Re:Other limitations overshadow this (Score:3)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:11PM (#295400)

    Ahh, but this is about two things: PDAs and laptops.

    PDA users will use it for meetings, instead of asking you if you are free for a lunch meeting friday I have my PDA find a time where we are both free to schedual a meeting, and when it says the first lunch where we are both free is a week from tuesday, we know we are both free, and if we accept it, then it is known that we will both be there.

    Laptop users will use it for everything, more or less. Just today managers were asking why I wanted an ethernet interface for my laptop. (802.11 is the rule here, but not for customer sites) Give me a good cell phone connection and I will almost never need a wired connection. Of course all this assumes the cost is cheep enough, but I think sprint can come up with a good model if they try. (I suggest, $20 for a gigabyte of data transfered in peek times. You may use this suggestion without royalties to me)

    Of course it wil be used once in a while on your cell phone, but not often as the screen is too small. Target at folks with only a cell phone and it will flop. Target PDAs and laptops and it will take off.

  • Interesting. (Score:3)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:40AM (#295401)
    This sounds like a cool application, but not a ground-breaking one. It's like 802.11b without an access point, and hopefully it'll be more robust as well.

    But... ho hum, I'm sure we'll have a whole different set of wireless protocols in two years. If Bluetooth survives, it'll be faster, and 802.11b will have to do something (better) to deal with interference from other concurrent wireless protocols.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • GSM works fine (Score:3)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @04:49AM (#295402)
    For some reason, the US has incredibly fragmented cellular standards - AMPS, D-AMPS, TDMA, CDMA and even GSM. I think it's the last major country to still be using analogue phones at all. This, along with the size of the US, is probably why there are still problems with coverage, because no one network operator can afford to cover the whole US, and the standards are too diverse to allow seamless roaming between networks.

    The rest of the world (with a few exceptions) has standardised on GSM, and voice coverage and quality is generally excellent - the term 'cell phone quality' is meaningless in GSM countries because the voice quality is just as good as a fixed line. I use my phone in various European countries with no problems.

    3G is going to take enormous investments, but the GSM world is going GPRS anyway, which gives you always-on packet mode at rates of 20 to 100 Kbps depending on user density in cells, and is a much simpler upgrade. So even if we are using GPRS for a few years before 3G, there will be packet mode services available to GSM phones. (GSM does exist in the US, e.g. Voicestream, but it's very patchy because it's in competition with so many other standards.)

  • ...at high cost to the user (Score:3)

    by decaym ( 12155 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:37AM (#295403) Homepage

    I fear the only thing this will really change is how fast Sprint can drain your wallet. Sprint already charges $10/month for their "wireless web" access. They'll probably charge even more (on top of airtime) for access to high-speed data.

    I have Sprint PCS, and I love it, but all the tack on charges for new services makes them less than appealing. Only a miniscule percentage of people will ever use these facilities because of the cost.

    My dream is still to see my cell phone act as a wide area gateway for my PDA and laptop using Bluetooth [matlock.com] short range wireless tech. However, if it costs $1/minute, it won't be worth it.

  • Eating cookie dough (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @01:47PM (#295404)
    Every time someone announces a new higher speed for mobile devices I just sit back and sigh. Wireless devices don't really NEED a 2.4Mb wireless pipe hooked onto them. I'd easily go for less bandwidth at a much lower cost. I'm paying 35$ a month for my cell phone with internet capabilities. Instead of offering me a 2.4Mbps pipe how about offering a cheaper pipe at around say 64Kbps and then let me hook any wireless device I want up to the channel. I could use my phone or maybe plug in an adapter for use with my laptop. Stop promising some technology will "change everything" because everything changes regardless of what one company does. Its such a misnomer. Just give me a little bit of wireless bandwidth either for talking or hopping on the internet when I'm not at home.

  • Collision (Score:3)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:06PM (#295405)
    So Sprint will advertise 2.4Mb connection speeds, and then oversell it. The end result will be a 9.6Kb connection, IF you're lucky. Remember that collisions and retransmits are really costly.

  • 2.4 Mbs?? (Score:3)

    by Dwonis ( 52652 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @08:03PM (#295406)
    *Sigh*

    What exactly is a megabit-second? I've heard of megabits *per* second (Mbps; Mb/s), but never a megabit-second.

    mb (millibits)
    Mb (megabits)
    mB (millibytes)
    MB (megabytes)
    mbps (millibits per second)
    mBps (millibytes per second)
    Mbps (megabits per second)
    MBps (megabytes per second)

    There is no such thing as 10MB ethernet, or 2.4 Mbs wireless ethernet. It could be a typo, but somehow I doubt it.
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

  • For what? (Score:3)

    by rkent ( 73434 ) <rkent@post.ha r v a r d . edu> on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:55AM (#295407)
    Whoo hoo! 120 FPS on my crappy 200x100 cellphone screen! Quake Arena Mobile, here I come...

  • This isn't the problem (Score:3)

    by Teflon Coating ( 177969 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:55AM (#295408)
    If this is going to be used for cell phones, what's the point? There are several flaws that need to be worked out of cell phones before we need faster connections. Screens need to be improved if you want to use all this bandwith. While phones are getting smaller now if we want to accomodate better screens we'll have to go with bigger cell phones. There is no way that i could watch a football game or whatever on my nokia 8290, the screen is just too small. And besides if you want to watch tv so badly why don't you just get a freakin portable tv? Everyone makes a big deal about cell phones and tv but the technology already exists if you're that addicted to tv. Next problem is if the bandwith is really there. Lets assume that everyone really likes this streaming video and so how many people are going to be using one cell tower? Data transmission would be a pain because you would have to have better data checking than in TCP/IP. Switching from cell tower to cell tower would have to have lots of error checking when streaming a video. What happens when i drive through a tunnel or something how will the error checking correct for that?The webcast presenting this technology will probably just have them dircetly connected to one cell tower, all by themselves. Lets say that we hook this magical cell phone up to a laptop we will still have problems. Before they installed cable they had to upgrade all the cables. Lines that connect from the central office to cell towers just aren't capable of squezing all this bandwith through. While 2.4mbs seems great in theory, just rember communism works in theory too.

  • Have I seen this before? (Score:3)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:32PM (#295409)
    Discover Magazine this month had an article entitled "Radio Flyer [discover.com]" about an inventor of a possibly similar technology. Does anyone know if this is related?

  • Ooh, a wireless cellphone (Score:3)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:33AM (#295410) Homepage
    will wonders never cease

    better change the headline.
  • Sprint uses a proprietary CDMA network. This will just be an addition to that. GSM (Global System for Mobile) is a much more capable and proven network, and its member companies are already working on their own technologies, like GPRS (General Packet Radio System) and HSCSD (High Speed Circuit-Switch Data), among other 3G technologies. GSM is not run by a single corporation, and instead it is an alliance of companies with a well defined specification. I hate to rant like this, but honestly, if it's not going to be part of GSM (the clear *standard*) then this is fairly meaningless news.
  • Just chiming in from Gainesville, Florida. Valleys on hilly roads and any type of overhead foliage/roof/etc totally destroys my "all-digital nationwide PCS signal built from the ground up".

  • Don't forget about voice (Score:3)

    by ThirdOfFive ( 313093 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:24PM (#295413)

    Since these phones are capable of transmitting such a high data rate, part of this data could be used for high quality voice conversations. "Modern" phones (cellular or wired) filter out anything above about three or four kHz. This results in the caracteristic "telephone sound" you hear when someone calls in to a radio station. ALL phone conversations sound like that, but we're so used to hearing it that we don't notice it.

    This phone could solve these problems. IIRC, real time CD-quality audio requires 0.7 Mbps. This would leave plenty of bandwidth left over for viewing (say) a shared presentation on a laptop plugged into the dataport on the phone.

    The downside to this is that, if you're calling a regular cell phone or wired phone, you'll still have to put up with a low quality connection. However, if enough people start using the high quality voice feature (assuming Sprint offers this), it could be an incentive for other companies to start offering high quality audio connections.

  • Re:Other limitations overshadow this (Score:4)

    by mkozlows ( 21830 ) <mlk@klio.org> on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:10PM (#295414) Homepage
    Forget the phone. Imagine instead a router, like the DSL routers that a lot of people have already -- except instead of plugging into a DSL line, it has a cell receiver that can receive and transmit data wicked fast no matter how far you are from the CO.

    This is still in the tech-demo phase, but if they roll it out, and it works, it'll be very tempting tech.

  • Other limitations overshadow this (Score:4)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:46AM (#295415) Homepage
    So the phone can download a lot of data really fast. Where's it going to put it? In its few megabytes of memory?

    99% of the market isn't going to have it attached to a laptop. So the phone has to use the data immediately, as streaming A/V. So you can watch TV on your phone or listen to streamed MP3's. Cell phone battery life is already terrible, now we're going to want to use them at least as much as we use a radio or TV?

    My prediction: short battery life is going to become increasingly annoying.
    --

  • Thank God! (Score:4)

    by Horizon_99 ( 58767 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:38AM (#295416)
    I was really getting tired of lugging around all those cellphone wires!

  • your unit is showing (Score:5)

    by wickline ( 93513 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @12:14PM (#295417)
    Taco says 2.4Mbs

    ZDNet says 4.2 MB per second

    press release says 2.4 mbps

    Now the press release is not that interesting because 2.4 milli bits per second is only one bit every 417 seconds

    CmdrTaco's rendition is plausible and interesting

    ZDNet is smoking crack if they think they can beat DSL with their cell phone.

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