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Networking Communications Cellphones

World's First 21Mbps EHSPA/HSPA+ Data "Call" 95

Posted by kdawson 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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World's First 21Mbps EHSPA/HSPA+ Data "Call" More

World's First 21Mbps EHSPA/HSPA+ Data "Call"

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  • ...for bathrooms everywhere I go. I mean 21Mbps? That's crazy! "More porn in more places."
    • If my wireless was as fast this, I would have had first post.

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by weirdo557 ( 959623 )
        if my wireless was as fast as this, i wouldn't be here.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by AmigaHeretic ( 991368 )
        What? I'm on my C64 with a 300bps modem downloading a 16 color porn GIF from a BBS at the same time as I posted that and I still beat you?

        Yeah, might be time to get the "new" iPhone. It's "3"g :-)



        /just kidding Apple fans don't punish me too bad!! :-)

        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
            If he's connected his C64 to the Internet, he is almost certainly running Contiki on it. Contiki can multitask using protothreads (stackless coroutines) and can handle multiple concurrent TCP connections (where multiple on a C64 is around 8). The newer versions also support IPv6, although since the v6 stack needs 2.5KB of RAM and around 11KB of code memory, you'd probably want to run it from ROM or upgrade to a C128.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by theaveng ( 1243528 )

              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.

              • P.S. This Contiki OS is pretty cool. I ought to dump Windows 98 off my old K6 laptop and use Coktiki instead. All I need is something to surf the web, run Utorrent, and play back videos.

                Why can't Microsoft produce an OS small and efficient as this one?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by davester666 ( 731373 )

      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)

        by BazilBBrush ( 1259370 )

        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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Firehed ( 942385 )

          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

          • Yeah, we pay pretty much the same rate for SMS here. I believe it is 25cents a message on most Aussie carriers.

          • >>>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

          • 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.

        • 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.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Starayo ( 989319 )
          As much as I hate telstra (WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND THOUSAND DYING STARS) I have to admit their outright refusal to participate in the filter testing was pretty cool...

          But yeah, they suckered my friend's technophobic mum into a broadband contract that cost her four times more than mine for about 1/100th of the usage.
        • Although I, like all good Australian's, hate Telstra, you're comment is incorrect on two issues, that I cannot let slide.

          1. Broadband in this country is not bad because of "no competition" - the monopoly Telco you speak of (Telstra). Broadband in Australia lags behind the World (actually, we do rank reasonably high) because the market allows it to. And the market allows it to because of two reasons. Firstly, we have 22 million people in a place the size of Europe or the continental USA. The distances are

          • >>>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

      • >>>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

      • 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.

        More to the point, because it's in Australia, transferring data at 21Mbps will cost about $500 per minute.

  • Single call on an unloaded network is meaningless (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In theory HSDPA, the predecessor of HSPA+, provides 14.4Mbit/s, not that far off the data rates being advertised here. In practise it is virtually unuseable [apcmag.com]. Call me when HSPA+ is working at those data rates with a full customer base, though I doubt you will be able to because the network will be gridlocked.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Swizec ( 978239 )
      Uhm ... not to be a killjoy or anything. But was that perhaps supposed to be MBps? Because we've had commercial 20/20 (Mbps) FTTH in Slovenia for a few years now and it does in fact work at those speeds in real-life examples.

      Hell, even the government owned telco began offering 20/20 this year, we've had up to 100/100 available from private companies since about 2005.

    • 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

  • All networks are fast... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...when only 1 user is on. Let's see some real world results. And since its coming from Australia, you won't be able to download anything as it will most likely be blocked.

  • Too bad about the filter (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    21Mbps will become 21Kbps once the government is done with it

  • Contents of the call (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Monday December 08, 2008 @07:51PM (#26041873)

    > 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

  • MFA to learn.

  • "Network", not "Call" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IorDMUX ( 870522 ) <mark,zimmerman3&gmail,com> on Monday December 08, 2008 @08:08PM (#26041999) Homepage
    Perhaps the title could more accurately read "World's First 21Mbps EHSPA/HSPA+ Data "Network"", as 21 Mbps HSPA+ calls (which, though the summary downplays them, are really big breakthroughs) are "old news" [qctconnect.com].

    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)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Monday December 08, 2008 @08:13PM (#26042061)
    I ask because I have heard of faster speeds than the 21Mbps somewhere in Japan or Korea. What is in this for me anyway? I am just an ordinary slashdotter.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 )

      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

      • O_o

        *scrabbles for passport*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by IorDMUX ( 870522 )
        But HSPA+ is cellular!

        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).

        • Okay, but if it's cellular, then it's 21mpbs *shared* with everyone else in your cell.

          • No it isn't. It's some number nshared with everyone else in the cell, where n is greater than 21Mb/s but likely less than 21Mb/s times the number of people who can use the cell at once. Exactly what value n has depends on the configuration of the cell (how many channels it supports, the signal strength, and so on).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Erich ( 151 )
            Incorrect. 21mbps for a user in a 5MHz band of spectrum. Multiple spectrum bands per cell, multiple reuse of the frequency bands per cell using directional antennas (eg, 120 degree partitioning). And reuse of the spectrum band for multiple users using code division.

            You're sharing the backhaul from the tower to whatever it talks to, though.

      • 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.

        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.

      • ...you aren't talking wireless, are you? Because this article is about wireless speeds, not wired.

  • frickin' telstra (Score:5, Informative)

    by lucas teh geek ( 714343 ) on Monday December 08, 2008 @08:47PM (#26042297)
    Telstra are renowned for rolling out awesome networks and coupling them with the worst plans known to man. tiny quotas, and huge excess charges. in this case excess is charged at $250 per gigabyte, which at that speed you can consume in just over 6 minutes.

    • Re:frickin' telstra (Score:5, Informative)

      by enoz ( 1181117 ) on Monday December 08, 2008 @09:22PM (#26042575)

      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].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ColaMan ( 37550 )

        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

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hsu ( 970167 )
        That's cheap! In ITU world, where wireless speed is measured by price/minute, or the speed of money flowing out of your account when downloading at full speed or infected by spam-spewing worm. For example, when I would be traveling in Australia, roaming on HSPA network capable of 21 Mbps, my network speed is calculated as follows: 21000000 bps / 8 * 60 = 150.20 Mbytes/minute and for the roaming price for me in Australia, that would make 150.20 Mbyte/minute * 9.80 euro/Mbyte = 1471.96 euro/minute. That wo

  • ... what, 750 kbps unless you're standing right next to a tower/

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by GenP ( 686381 )
      I'm not sure I'd want to be anywhere near a microwave transceiver that can even pretend to do 20MBps at 2-5 klicks.

    • 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).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ColaMan ( 37550 )

      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

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anpheus ( 908711 )

      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.

    • 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.

  • I think an excellent use of such amazing technology would be to revive the use of Morse code, so we can inquire about the weather in Cairo.

  • ha ha (Score:2)

    by smash ( 1351 )
    And let me guess, the bandwidth charges are still going to be 15c/megabyte, on top of your monthly subscription fee.

    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)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      15c per megabyte? More like 15 DOLLARS per megabyte at the rates AT&T charge (1 cent per KB)

  • Apparently the operator Tre provides 21 Mbit at Ericsson's headquarter in Stockholm. Not for commercial use yet though. (In swedish, sorry...) http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.198793/tres-rekordbredband--bara-pa-ericssons-kontor [www.idg.se]

  • New more speed just in time for the new more censored web.

  • ...the only page that'd load for them was Google's cover.

    Darn censors...

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