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2-Megabit Bandwidth for Your Cell Phone 114

Posted by Hemos from the watch-streaming-video-on-your-phone dept.
A reader wrote to us with the latest wireless advance from Qualcomm: 2.4 megabit bandwidth for cell phones. They call it high data rate and are hoping to compete with cable modems and other personal high-bandwidth subscription methods. Me, I just want to have a usable cell modem.
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2-Megabit Bandwidth for Your Cell Phone More

2-Megabit Bandwidth for Your Cell Phone

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  • I didn't see anything about Cell phones in that article. It looked like something that you would use at home if you can't get DSL or a Cable modem.

    However, I do think this is great. I can't get DSL or Cable where I live, and I know I would be interested in that kind of bandwidth.

    geach

  • ... you could use something like a Nokia 9000 with an MP3 streamer getting live MP3s from a server with this kind of bandwidth, and not have to worry about memory cards only storing an hour of music.

    -James
  • For telephones, 2.4mbit is way overkill, of course; it is clearly aimed at notebooks, laptops and PDA:s. There is a major problem not mentioned in the relase, however, and that is that the available bandwith at any one location is limited. In some areas with very few users you'll be able to use a lot of that speed, but in heavily populated areas (like in cities) the system will eather have to divide its bandwith to all that want it (giving you nowhere near that speed) or let users use it on a first come-first serve basis, meaning a lot of frustrated users not being able to connect at all.



  • The article actually says Megabit. This would actually equal something more along the lines of 200-300 kilobytes/sec. Either way, it's damn fast though.
  • I hope this is aimed towards cell modems instead because well surfing at that speed on a regular cellphone with that little screen would be just pure overkill. And that cost will be passed on to the consumers for such access and well I'd rather have that at home and cellphone blank out too much anyway for it to be a smooth connection.
  • I just got my new digital cable box from Time Warner, and although the 2mb cell phone is wireless Time Warner says that this new box will do 27mb/s. Now that's fast. I still wan't one though.
  • Same bonehead mistake we always see...

  • Does it really matter for the United States? (Score:3)

    by rahuljain ( 98091 ) on Tuesday November 09, 1999 @02:19AM (#1550012)
    I have heard that Nippen Telephone and Telegraph of Japan has gotten the contract for their "G3" technology to be deployed as the next standard in Europe. Their technology seems to have the exact same amount of wireless data capability. So what does this do for the U.S? We have always been one step behind the Europeans in cell phone technology because we failed to adopt the standard, instead creating our own version(s). For example, now we have CDMA, TDMA, Analog, and whatever nextel uses as the main forms of communication. Europe on the other hand has GSM, and only GSM. Hence making it easier for wireless giants to develop better phones for the network, since they are not stuck making several versions of one phone to work on all the different mediums. Regardless if qualcomm has the technology, we will end up having issues as the past has shown.
  • Does this run at 900Mhz or 2.4Ghz or something else? Now I think the portability of a mini browser would be very cool (i have the modem/browser for my pilot) but do we need the little radio transmitters in our face running all the time??? I know there are studies that refute the notion of cellular devices causing brain cancer... but who sponsored them? Seems like wired life is getting a bit out of control.
  • I want to hear the price point. What we need is affordable access. I'm already drooling over the possiblity of > 1MB internet access on my laptop anywhere in the city. I've been looking for apartments and I've had to make sure they were in a Shaw Cable area so that I could get their very nice 39.99 (canadian) very fast cable access :).
    ----------
  • There seems to be some confusion about this, i was confused at one point too. Emm, it turns out that if you read further into the technology they are deploying - it is going to be a add on to the existing CDMA technology. Kinda like a bolt on... It is 2.4 megabit "HDR", there is info about it on qualcomm's site: http://www.qualcomm.com/hdr/hdr99/whatis.html
  • A friend who works for a cell phone analysist firm used this yesterday while travelling down the interstate (soemone else driving :-)) and was pulling web pages on her laptop faster than her land line would at work. She even mentioned the 2 Mb figure (yes, bit, not byte).

  • Qualcomm's press selease [corporate-ir.net] says: "As a complementary solution to voice networks utilizing operator's existing cell sites, towers, antennas and network equipment, HDR technology allows operators to leverage their current infrastructure investment and cellular/Personal Communication Services (PCS) networks."
  • Well, the incentive for them to do it is alot of companies who dont pimp dsl or cable access (sprint pcs, nextel) will be offering it....so if they wana stay in the game they need to offer the access - this is a great way to do it. as for the stability of cell's i agree, it doesn't exist.
  • Here, in Israel, the main phone company, Bezek international, is airing a commercial about the future of communications. It has about as much substance as those blasted Intel PIII commercials.. but i did notice that they showed a cellular phone with a small (say 140*120) pixel video-phone.. on cellular.

    With compression technology what it is, and this new higher-bandwidth technology, wouldn't it be rather simple to have some sort of portable video conferencing device?

    --
  • Until the FCC steps in and declares standards for this industry, the US will be stuck with this. The FCC has been hesitant to declare a standard, and therefore encouraged the creation of incompatible technologies.

    The FCC should take notice that Europe is ahead of the US in this respect (and others, not flamebait) and declare standards.

    Out of curiosity, is Qualcomm's High Data Rate another incompatible technology, or does it fall under previously established category?

  • I doubt cell providers will use the unlicenced 2.4GHz band. Its a "free" band for consumers.

    The 2.4GHz band seems like its going to be mighty crowded. I have a 2.4GHz Zoomair network that runs at 100mW and a 2.4GHz camera from X10. The camera seems to run on a lot less power as it would work a block away through houses, it works only a few feet when the network is running.

    Oh, if you need ethernet for your laptop and get tired of breaking dongles, I'd strongly recommend getting one of these things.

  • What's the battery life? Is the frequency high enough that I will be able to take it on a plane? (doubtful) Does it use DHCP? Do I have to have a computer or can I browse e-mail striaght off my phone? How much does it cost? What's the range? Is it 2 mega-bit , or mega-byte?
  • Go to the damn store and buy one then. What's keeping you?

  • Nothing new (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The rest-of-the-world-standard (and from two days ago, the US too) of UMTS/IMT2000 which is due about 2002(rest of the world)/2004(US) has a data rate of 2Mbit/sec when stationary and about 1Mbit/sec when you're on the move. And it's not proprietary, unlike Qualcomm's. It's companies like Qualcomm making proprietary systems and not supporting open standards that's killing the US wireless industry and putting it years behind the rest of the world. Don't encourage them! In the mean-time, GPRS will be available on most GSM networks next year, offering 384Kbs packet data. Oh why can't the US sort out their cellular networks?!! PLEASE HELP US!

  • argh (Score:2)

    by Haven ( 34895 )
    I'm sure Hemos didn't read the article. The article says 2megabit and the headline says 2 megabyte.
    bits != bytes
  • The one thing I can tell you is that the GSM standard allows for great things here in Europe. Last summer I was in Romania with my Nokia 5110 (GSM 900 Mhz with a Belgian Proximus SIM card) and a laptop computer. I could connect at 9600 bps, which is damn slow but still enough to get your email in a remote village in the hills of Transylvania.
    It also seems to me that newer phones already have 14400 bps support. Well, of course it's not much better.
  • I'm sure they have thought of the bandwidth issue. Its not like AOL where you have to dial in. Once your cell phone is on your are connected. As slow as it may be you are connected.
  • Hey, you forget - surely the videophone is due for a mainstream resurface. Everyone could stream video of the side of their face when calling.
  • #ifdef RANT Yuck! I have a qualicomm phone. and if the best they can get on digital voice is the same quality as a crappily encoded mp3 (lots and lots of digital artifacts in the audio) and between 2 - 5 seconds of lag (I talk 3-5 seconds of nothing then you talk) I'm sorry but qualicomms "flagship" digital phone sucks to begin with, why dont they make the thing work right before they do something else.....

  • No DSL or cable in the area I live, the price I pay for seeing a corn field across the street.

    Even if this is shared bandwidth, the advantage of a rural neighborhood is that there are less people to share it with. In the city I'd price it a little over land line solutions so that it didn't become bogged down, but still make it affordable. In the country I'd just want it affordable.

    Unfortunatly digital cell phone isn't avaiable in all rural areas, in fact I have a couple friends who live where no analog cell phones can be had. Still, I'm close enough to the city and the freeway that I might get it.

  • Another *promise* from Qualcomm (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just a little background here. Back when Qualcomm introduced CDMA they informed all the infrastructure providers that CDMA technology was able to provide fourty (40) times the traffic capacity of a regualr IS-136 (TDAM or DAMPS) or GSM based system inside a cell. Fact was that the only place they were getting those results were in the lab.

    When actual rollout occured, it was shown that traffic handeling capacity increased only on average of 20-30%. Furthermore because CDMA uses live handovers (a mobile terminal in motion is in contact with two base stations at once) the battery use is excessive.

    Infrastructure providers were also pissed bacuase a CDMA base station usually runs anywhere from 50% to 200% more then a TDMA base station. COnsidering the fact that when an operator sets up a network, they buy several hundread to thousands of base stations. Sprint didnt beef their network up because of these costs and becuase of this, well just go talk to any Sprint PCS provider to see how bad the coverage is.

    Qualcomm is notorious for pulling ridiculous stunts in the telcomm industry. e.g. Dr. Irwin (is that name correct?) and his buds actually had the nerve to walk into the ITU-R back when the 3rd Gen cellular global standards were being hashed out and actually *demand* that they use IS-95 (narrowband CDMA) or Qualcomm would refuse any IP liscensing. ITU-R promptly smacked them down and told both Qualcomm and Ericsson that if they cant sort their IP problems out, any form of CDMA will be ruled out for 3G.

    Granted they make a good email client though :)
  • ... you only connect when you pick up (press yes) the phone. And at busy it does happen that all channels are occupied. In that case, you can only dial emergency number (112), as two channels are dedicated for this purpose.

    AFAIK, signalling (to manage movement from cell to cell, reception of SMS messages, attribution of channels etc) use a special out of band channel, independant of the main voice and data channels.

  • Yes, in short because there are GSM providers (I wish there were more!) in the US. I also like the "non-standard" system here.

    While I agree that GSM is better technology, I'd not buy a GSM phone right now (even tho I had one over the summer) because the coverage is too limited. Of course, 2 Mbit might change that, but... But back to the main point, I like the choice... it creates competition and allows providers to find niches. Here (in Pittsburgh) we have
    AMPS, served by BellAtlantic, which is good for the casual "emergency" and weekends and evenings user.
    TDMA 900, served by AT&T Wireless Services, which is good for business travelers who travel a lot, especially on the road, and don't want exorbiant analog roaming charges.
    CDMA 1900, served by Sprint PCS, which is good for a casual traveler who wants to pay less (than AT&T) but still wants roaming to all big cities without exorbiant roaming charges.
    GSM, served by Ariel, which is good for the European traveler, as well as a city-only casual user (per second rounding is nice...)

    Cmpanies don't necessarily put themselves in these niches (ie if I walk up to AT&T Wireless Services and tell them I'm looking for a cheap plan but I want cheap digital roaming, they won't point me towards Sprint PCS), but these are just the niches where they're the cheapest/best plan. If everything were one technology, there'd be no competition.

    Also, wireless giants are giants. If there's market, there are people to throw at phones, and there's enough competition that you really do want to innovate. Europe's innovating GSM for us, Sprint is innovating (kinda... wireless web) on CDMA 1900 for us, AT&T should be (I don't know what they're up to) innovating TDMA 900 (Motorola sure is...), and AMPSi s on it's way out. I think it's the best of both worlds: large companies pay for consumer's choice. I'm not saying our technology is better, it's not. It's just that we have more choice.
  • for those of you copy/pasting impaired...

    http://www.qualcomm.com/hdr/hdr99/wha tis.html [qualcomm.com]

  • 2MByte or 2MBit, either way mobile telephone bandwidth can only help the most bandwith-starved areas of the world- the rural ones.

    I live a bit out in the sticks as my wife points out [demon.co.uk] ( Cotswolds, UK [custodian.com] ). Whilst I'm only 500 metres from the telephone exchange, my 'phone line takes a 4 kilometre detour through three neighbouring villages before it gets there. Which means that ADSL [bt.com] and BT ISDN Highway [bt.com] are out of the question.

    I consider myself pretty lucky to get 49.3kbps from my telephone line. People in rural parts of America, Asia or Africa will be getting far less.

    Yet it is rural areas that need the Internet most. Why would townsfolk want cable TV, teleshopping, multi-user chatlines and home offices when the video shop, supermarket, pub and place of work are on their doorstep? These amenities are often not available to rural users where not only remote location, but sheer lack of numbers, make even subsidised facilities uneconomic.

    It is high-bandwidth wireless services like GPRS [gsmdata.com] that will lead the revolution, not cable.

    If the post office has to send written data nationwide, regardless of urban or rural boundaries, for the same price, why shouldn't telecoms operators be forced to send digital data nationwide, regardless of urban or rural boundaries, for the same price?

    --


  • Actually, Ericsson has showed an mp3 player that hooks up to the T-28. It plays tracks into the handsfree headphones, but automatically pauses when you get a call.

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • You'll never be able to use a wireless phone on a plane. Interference worries aside, you'd be broadcasting to umteen sites at once, due to the height.

    That's a really bad thing from the service provider's view point. Trust me, it'd hose things up pretty good.
  • ... And you heard regular cell phone usage caused cancer in lab mice!? Try hookin' one of these babies up!
  • Over here in Singapore, Nokia has been running ads too featuring a concept phone for video conferencing etc. (Nokia needs little introduction)
    My opinion is that Qualcomm's technology is unnneeded and would fragment the market: the next high bandwidth standard, G3 (AFAIK) is being implemented soon. Fragmentation of high bandwidth wireless protocols would only slow the adoption of such technology. Besides, Qualcomm should concentrate on selling their services: it's a waste of resources to push a competing standard.

    my 2 cents.
  • Disclaimer: I work for a GSM company in the US. Oh, and GSM rules.

    The whole G3 tech process is a mess. No one has decided squat yet, mainly because everyone has to agree. ;)

    If/when G3 gets worked out, and when equipment starts being produced, you can bet your ass that every digitial carrier in the US is going to change over. Perhaps slowly, but they will.

  • The technology is almost like having a radio, except you're getting data reception. We cruised down the highway in one of their vans, and got 1.8MB while driving down the 5 in La Jolla. The chip technology presented is fantastic, this is really going to kick ass when they get it rolled out...
  • here comes the breakthrough technology involving high information throughput to compensate the dissipation of information caused by memory loss.

  • The GSM standard doesn't prevent competition in the UK. There are four different nation providers over the two GSM bands (900 and 1800)

    They all offer a range of competive product from monthly line rental to pay-as-you-go.

    All with the same technology which has to bring prices down.

  • wow, I can't believe I'm reading this on /. This is one of the last bastions of libertarianism. Who woulda thought you could still read a poster advocating for government regulation?

    Remember the /. mantra - less government, less government, less government, less government, less government, less government. . . . . .
  • Yeah, I guess switching nodes every 10 minutes would completely screw things up.
  • Your right, it doesn't. I think people just 'assumed' wireless = cell, which is really not the case at all, but it could be.. ;-P
  • Using a cell (or mobile as we say in Europe) phone on a plane is not a matter of frequency, but a matter of how the network works.

    Basically, the network is composed by a set of cells that (ideally) cover the area where costumers are. Those cells are served by Base Stations. The Base Stations have antennas, and those antennas, being non ideal, have a certain directivity. As most users are on the ground, the antennas are designed to have their best response in the direction pointing from the Base Station to the ground (usually -3 to -10 degrees). On the other hand, the antennas have the worst directivity in the areas that there are less users (you don't want to waste your power). So antennas do not send almost any power towars the air (or the ground below for the same reason).

    That is mainly why you can't use a mobile phone in a (flying plane).

    As for the data rates, they are in MegaBITS per second (Mbps), not MegaBYTES per second. And those claims are just theoretical. All 3G (3rd generation) proposed architectures claim speeds up to 2Mbps when the user is still or walking at very low speed, and up to 384 Kbps at velocitis of up to 500 Km/h! (This is so that you could use your phone on a (future) high speed train to connect to the Internet).

    But those are theoretical fields, and (almost)everybody working in this field (as I do) believes that the real data rates will be of 384 Kbps when STILL and about 114 Kbps when going at high speed (but probably not that high!).

    About the frequency plan that somebody asked about I recomend to check the 3GPP and the IMT2000 sites, where you'll find tons of info about 3rd generation mobile phones. And by the way, Qualcomms proposal is only one among many others, although most of them are based on Wideband CDMA technology, and the only comercial(narrowband) CDMA network is Qualcomm's IS-95, which is mainly deploid in the US, Brazil and some oriental countries. Qualcomm's CDMA proposal is called (last time I checked!) cdma2000, although the extension of IS-95 is cdmaOne, and I don't know if the one they are talking about in this article is the first or the latter.

    I hope this clarified some of the issues raised here!

    Cheers!

    Angel
  • I think I heard that, let me call someone on my cellphone to find out
  • Using a cell (or mobile as we say in Europe) phone on a plane is not a matter of frequency, but a matter of how the network works.

    Basically, the network is composed by a set of cells that (ideally) cover the area where costumers are. Those cells are served by Base Stations. The Base Stations have antennas, and those antennas, being non ideal, have a certain directivity.

    As most users are on the ground, the antennas are designed to have their best response in the direction pointing from the Base Station to the ground (usually -3 to -10 degrees).

    On the other hand, the antennas have the worst directivity in the areas that there are less users (you don't want to waste your power). So antennas do not send almost any power towars the air (or the ground below for the same reason).

    That is mainly why you can't use a mobile phone in a (flying plane).

    As for the data rates, they are in MegaBITS per second (Mbps), not MegaBYTES per second. And those claims are just theoretical.

    All 3G (3rd generation) proposed architectures claim speeds up to 2Mbps when the user is still or walking at very low speed, and up to 384 Kbps at velocitis of up to 500 Km/h! (This is so that you could use your phone on a (future) high speed train to connect to the Internet).

    But those are theoretical fields, and (almost)everybody working in this field (as I do) believes that the real data rates will be of 384 Kbps when STILL and about 114 Kbps when going at high speed (but probably not that high!).

    About the frequency plan that somebody asked about I recomend to check the 3GPP [3gpp.org] and the IMT-2000 [imt-2000.org] sites, where you'll find tons of info about 3rd generation mobile phones.

    And, by the way, Qualcomms proposal is only one among many others, although most of them are based on Wideband CDMA technology, and the only comercial(narrowband) CDMA network is Qualcomm's IS-95, which is mainly deploid in the US, Brazil and some oriental countries. Qualcomm's CDMA proposal is called (last time I checked!) cdma2000, although the extension of IS-95 is cdmaOne, and I don't know if the one they are talking about in this article is the first or the latter.

    I hope this clarified some of the issues raised here!

    Cheers!

    Angel

  • There is one thing the article is very silent about: latency. Due to the way a cellular phone system works (all calls have to pass through your home server), wireless networks have high response times (or latency).

    Increasing the bandwidth doesn't change a lot about this. It means you have to implement larger windows (= the number of packages you sent before you wait for an acknowledgement) in order to take advantage of the higher data rates.

    A wireless network is not as reliable as cables, so most of the time, you have to resend some packages. And this resending is not efficient (you have to wait for an ACK basically after each package).

  • Um, I don't think you'll be holding a cellphone up to your head when using it as a modem. Unless of course the modem's being plugged into your head as a brain upgrade; most bullies I ever knew were as thick as pigshit.
  • The whole thing is a mess because back in 1995, when the new PCS licenses were auctioned, Sprint decided to go for CDMA.

    They were negotiating with TDMA/GSM suppliers when someone changed their mind to go for American technology.

    This was like a catalyst for all the other PCS operators who were basically waiting for Sprint to make up their mind. You have to understand that noone wanted to built an island surrounded by the big Sprint with no way to roam. These licenses are *expensive*.

    Had Sprint decided otherwise, the whole wireless world would be a different place. Not only would we have real, global roaming, but cheaper phones (more volumes), a bigger market for wireless data and, last but not least, easier agreements on a new G3 standard.

    While I'm all for competition and choices, having an own American standard on this is not in the interest of consumers.

  • As far as I knew, the local cable loop is 27 mb, but the ethernet connection from the cable modem is 10 mb. In the nine months I had RoadRunner, I never saw anything close to 10 mb, and dumped it last week in favor of ADSL because of the horrible (often 1500 ms+) latencies I was seeing on the cable modem.

    -jason
  • If everything were one technology, there'd be no competition.

    This is not true. There is competition all over Europe. I think there is at least two competing companies in every large country. In Sweden we have three, and they all use the same technology. This is also good for the customer in that it is easy to change provider. You have your phone and it can be used in any of the available systems.

    The Swedish companies also provide different call plans and different services. They have also competed on coverage, but I am not so sure that is important when you choose a provider any more simply because they all have good coverage now.


    Lars

    --
  • Those silly metric bits...

  • He's right. UMTS is just around the corner. Standards pretty much finalised, major cellphone manufacturers working hard on implementing them.

  • The reason (parially) the U.S. has so many various technologies is that we have served as a sort of test bed for new cell phone technologies. Cell phone technology, as a whole, has been around in the U.S. longer. People had cell phones that were opperating on scary old legacy analog systems and no one wanted to alienate anyone else (I know of one case where a state government stopped Motorola from giving customers new phones so that they could move from an older system that they had found a show stopper bug in to a newer system. The state has laws about giving away cell phones. So Motorola instead had to take the customers' phones [which were archaic] to the factories and modify them so that they would work on the new system). So the cell-site vendors, such as Motorola, Lucent, (who else makes cell site hardware?), bowed to the demands of their customers and created systems that were as backward compatible as possible, such as mixed cells that have both Analog and Digital.

    What hasn't helped matters is that major cell providers won't agree on what technologies they want to use. Some say CDMA, some TDMA, and some are still using, *gasp* HDII Analog.

    Now add in the fact that other countries have a much larger usage of cell phones than the US and you get a much larger need for mass standardization. Some countries have little infrastructure so far as telecommunications is concerned. This is when it makes the most sense to use cells and cell standards. If you can't drag in a land line to everyones, well, then drop in one micro-cell in the neighborhood (perhaps with a wireless link itself) and everyone can use their cell phones as if it were their home phone (which, for many people outside of the U.S. it is).

  • Actually, here in holland we have 5!
  • There is GSM and GSM... the US version of GSM (I am a happy customer of Powertel in the Southeast, which is a GSM carrier) is using the FCC-mandated PCS frequency (1900MHz). Although it's the same codec as Euro-GSM, I can't take my Nokia GSM phone to Europe and expect it to work, since in Europe we're (I am European too) using 900MHz (most common) or 1800Mhz (newer) GSM. I've heard of GSM phones that can do both 900 and 1800 MHz for pan-Euro travelers but not any that can do 900, 1800 and 1900 (anybody know of any? maybe the Ericsson i888?).

    IMHO, what would be really cool (but almost imposible) is to have all nations agree on one universal cellular service frequency band. That would at least take that barrier to compatibility away... not to mention killing off Iriduim, Globalstar and that pesky Teledesic ;-)...



    engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

  • Re:Where does it say Cell Phone? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article is referring to qualcomm's chip + cdma stack that implements IS-2000 standard. (IS-2000 is next generation CDMA... CDMA is a type of PCS.)

    FWIW, the first generation of qualcomm's chip you will only see something like 153.6kbs or maybe 384kbps data rates on the downlink, 14,4kpbs on the uplink. It remains to be seen what data rates you will see in the first generation chips from qualcomm's competitors. (I would expect at least some of the qualcomm alternatives will do 384kpbs in both directions and simultaneous voice and data.) The IS-2000 spec, however, provides for up to 2.1mbps in both directions. (this is not counting the FCH and DCCH physical channels which will do 14.4kbps each). --AC

  • Qualcomm has a press release [corporate-ir.net] about it that provides a little more background than ths little blurb. According o the press release, HDR does support mobile access.
  • I work for a PCS company that is planning for the deployment of the technology refered to in the qualcomm article. Every part of the network will be packet based and as such latency shuold be greatly reduced. Instead of having circut switched T1's going to all the cell sites we will now be running ATM over all of the T1's between the cell site and the switch. All data will be pulled off as it enters the switch and be piped directly to a router. Also the way I understand it now there will be a cable that you can run from your phone to a NIC so you can use your phone in a similar way that you use a DSL or cable modem now. I am yet to see any of this in action yet so I will withold my final opinon until our field trials are over.
  • I live in California (Orange County) and I have been very pleased with Sprint PCS. I haven't had a single dropped call in the 6 months I've been using them, and the calls are always clear. I was using Airtouch for 4 years before I started with Sprint and I was dropped daily no matter where I was and the signal always sucked.

    Sprint PCS doesn't have coverage all over the place, but they have it in San Francisco and in Maui, Hawaii... those are the only two places I go anyways - for business and vacation respectively. I have a dual-band phone so it really doesn't matter if I'm out of their coverage area (that's only happened a few times) since I can just use the service of a different [analog] provider when I'm out of their area.


    --SONET (a rat swimming in milk... wait, what was I just saying? )
  • I wandered around Qualcomm's web page for a while, and couldn't find the information I really wanted:

    How much does it cost?

    When can I get it?

    Even though I live in a residential area in the heart of Silicon Valley, there are no (zero) affordable options for high-speed always-on Internet connectivity where I live. xDSL? Forget it, I'm 21K feet from the CO. IDSL? Sorry, the cards aren't in your CO. Cable modem? No, not available. Tacky Cable (now ATT) hasn't expanded beyond the pilot project in Fremont for years.

    All I want is at least 128KB for not more than $100/month, a fixed IP address, and no mindless restrictions about my running a telnetd or sendmail on my home computer. I don't think I'm being too unreasonable. I'm willing to settle for a third the speed at twice the price of ADSL.

  • I'll have high-bandwidth cellular Internet before Qualcomm ships anything... and before 3G is implemented. So will everyone in Europe... Eastern Europe included. The governments here don't get in the way of innovation like the FCC does in the US.

    My laptop is connected right now at 9600 baud on a Nokia 5110... it plugs right into my serial port - no need for a PCMCIA card. (You don't need a MODEM when your phone's already DIGITAL.) I have an external antenna 'cause I'm in the STICKS. (Peace Corps will do that to you.) The connection is rock-solid. I've even sent mail from a moving train before. (Yes, I'm a geek.)

    Even though it's $.10/minute for Internet it beats the heck out of the Southwestern Bell mobile service I had in Kansas, and the SNET shit offered in Connecticut.

    Who would have thought that in a small Polish village where I have to wait a year for a stationary phone I can have technology I can't get in the states?

    Wake UP FCC. And the rest of you read the special on telecommunications in the Economist for October 11. It is fantastic reading for cell phone lovers. It explains why the US lags so far behind the rest of the world.

    (time to put more coal on the fire or I'll freeze tonight!)
  • Regular cell phone usage? Who exactly does a lab mouse call? And how often do they have to chat before they consider it a "regular" call?

  • This sounds interesting, but something that always has concerned me about wireless networking is the threat of security. A simple packet sniffer (i'd laugh if they call it a hacker's radio) could easily intercept data transmissions from anyone in the area. Wouldn't this give the FCC rights to snoop without a warrant? Sorry, but i'm still a fan of hard lines. The whole wireless networking thing kind of scares me...
  • Please,
    don't spread FUD around. You sound like Ericsson
    FUDers 5 years ago. CDMA (IS-95) *does* provide several times the capacity of GSM and order of magintude better capacity than analog (AMPS). Also the voice quality is better.
    This why CDMA has been chosen for the Third Generation of wireless standard (W-CDMA) and this is why Ericcson bought troubled Qualcomm Infrastructure division in the beginneing of this year.

    Unfortunately many big boys from Telecom Industries quickly learned from Microsoft how to use FUD to attack better technologies.
    Your post is a good example of it.

    --slonik
    PS: don't speek without data

  • Imagine the number of MP3s you could download from Carnegie-Mellon with this sucker!

    DoH!
  • Let us see here...
    There is some evidence that cellular phones may cause a number of maladies, including cancer, memory loss, a$$hole-ness and Republicanism...

    If my thinking is correct (yah, right), these puppies will probably turn you into a forgetful Newt Gingrich, [mojones.com] except more cancerous.

    So there!
    110100100



    "Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,
  • See, the problem is the FCC did make a declaration. They said that they want a free enterprise in the united states. They want alot of companies with different technologies. They wont allow more than a certain number of licenses for a medium in an area. In some cities there may be one provider for CDMA, another for TDMA, and one using analog only. This is because the FCC wont allow for them both to be on the same technology. Otherwise, a majority would use only CDMA as it is arguably the best. I dont agree with the FCC, they are stupid for doing this - this is why we cant have a standard. On a lighter note, HDD is a "add-on" for CDMA, so companies with CDMA may chose to use this. rahul
  • Wow. It does sound impressive... Video Cell Phones. I'd love to see this technology come to life, but I was wondering... how would you have to use it? It would have to be used in a different fashion than today's phones. Perhaps it would have to be held in front of you for its minicam to get your picture, and for you to see whatever the other cam is feeding you.


    Now a scary tought: picture all those damn fools driving around in their cars while hooked to their current phones. Just imagine the mess if they didn't have to just listen but to watch at them! Here at Monterrey it's forbidden to drive while talkin by cellphone, and I've never seen anybody (including myself) discouraged by such regulation...

  • >>>wow, I can't believe I'm reading this on /. This is one of the last bastions of libertarianism. Who woulda thought you could still read a poster advocating for government regulation?

    Actually, I don't think he was so much advocating government regulation, just pointing out the importance of having a standard.

    Standards are good, government regulation is bad. When it happens to be the government that is in charge of setting the standard, then it gets hard to decide which way is better.
  • Didn't some scientist come out with evidence saying that cell phones can cause long term memory loss?

    Yeah, but you don't hold the cell modem to the side of your head. r^(-1/2) makes all the difference.

  • Is ISDN still ridiculously overpriced in your area? Here it went to $25/mo for 128k unmetered which was most certainly a step in the right direction from the telco. I suspect this wireless service (if implemented) will cost an arm and a leg. I'm sure they will bill by the minute like always.

    I definitely agree with you on the fixed IP and the stupid restrictions. That's why I won't ever have cable or support any ISP who doesn't act decently. You're not being unreasonable. It's not unreasonable to use the bandwidth you purchase per month, and it's not unreasonable to do with it whatever the hell you damn well please.
  • Since when can the government not monitor landlines? The idea of security on landlines is an illusion. If you need good security I'd use IPSec over it. They'll be able to capture all the data they want but what good would it do them... unless of course they can break the encryption.
  • Wireless phones will surpass wired ones at 2005. Now 2,4Mbps from your wireless phone.

    Who will use a wired phone in 2010?
  • "regular cell phone usage caused cancer in lab mice"

    I'm not suprised, I probably wouldn't feel well if I used a cell phone LARGER THEN MY OWN BODY.

    I wonder what happens when they use mouse sized cell phones?

    Bob.

    :-)
  • > A simple packet sniffer (i'd laugh if they call
    > it a hacker's radio) could easily intercept data
    > transmissions from anyone in the area.

    Well, GSM is encrypted in the air with the A5
    algorithm, and while A5 is not a particularly hard
    nut to crack, it is almost certainly out the reach
    of the hobbyist interceptor.

    If you're government or intelligence services then
    cracking an intercepted transmission would almost
    certainly be quite feasable in realtime, but why
    bother when you can just tell the network operator
    to tape record all the traffic for you in the clear.
  • If this is what I think, it multiplexes multiple CDMA channels to get a 2.4Mbit aggregate bandwidth. Pretty cool, but not real close to actual introduction, I bet.
  • Actually it's 2.4 megabits/s...which is more like 300kbps.

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