50Mbps Possible on mobile boradband

bigredshark

bigredshark

bigredshark

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Thought I'd throw this out to the forum as it might not get noticed otherwise. Ericsson (who for the unaware are a huge provider of the techy base station components of mobile networks) just demo'd a 56Mbps HSPA solution.

This is up from a maximum 21Mbps at present and they say they'll be good to deploy and support 42Mbps solutions from the years end. Essentially they're using a variation of the MIMO technology home routers have had for a while.

So, if you could genuinely get 20mbps+ from mobile broadband at a decent price would you scrap home broadband?

Of course there are big obstacles - notably the networks backhaul isn't up to it right now...
 
Doubt I would go for it, unless the pings for games was good. Think I've read somewhere that for that kind of thing, at least with the 8mb dongle variety, it's not great.
 
The next generation of mobile broadband promises around 30ms latency so its more than adequate for gaming, currently latency is around 120ms which is fine for browsing/emails/IM but not gaming or other latency sensitive applications.

IMO the current mobile broadband is only really good as a secondary/backup connection.
 
In my opinion, mobile broadband is likely to take over from ADSL as the major method of connecting to the internet, it's just a question of when, but it is probably only a few years off. Most people aren't online gamers, they just want a decent speed for web access and online video. In a good 3G signal area, mobile broadband can already deliver that, although national coverage is still a major issue.

The other major factor that mobile broadband has going for it is simplicity of installation. There's no faffing around waiting for your line to be enabled, no messing around with routers. It's just a SIM based technology and there's no reason why it can't be as simple as mobile phone use. In a few years time most laptops will come ready installed with a mobile broadband SIM card.

Rgds
 
You're still going to need a router with a wireless internet connection: it's unlikely PS3s and the like are going to take a SIM card anytime soon, and most people won't want to pay for each device they want to connect.

It'll be interesting to see how close to the 50Mbps it gets in real use on a real network, considering how poorly 3/3.5G performs.
 
tolien said:
You're still going to need a router with a wireless internet connection: it's unlikely PS3s and the like are going to take a SIM card anytime soon, and most people won't want to pay for each device they want to connect.
Click to expand...

Sure, and mobile broadband routers are already on the market for the power users. However, the point I'm making is, local network performance notwithstanding, it is a lot simpler to get online with mobile broadband. It is already a very easy process with a USB dongle, and that will only get easier with "ready to go" mobile broadband laptops.

Rgds
 
Good to see some opinions. Personally I would probably do without home broadband if I could get the bandwidth the same on mobile broadband. Whether you need routers for it to become widespread is a good question too. Personally I don't like laptops with built in 3G, I'd prefer an 'unlimited' data SIM in my phone and a bluetooth dial up, works with any laptop, no swapping SIMs etc...

But I think mobile broadband is probably the future. Not least because I can use it anywhere...imagine being able to take your ADSL with you on the train, for a coffee etc...
 
I wasn't disagreeing that you get some device and off you go, but it's not any simpler beyond that. Routers are hardly "power user" devices any more...
 
Surely the amount of frequency space available will restrict bandwidth significantly? I can't see this working if they start offering 50mb to everyone? Unless my physics has deluded me.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Is this part of the UTMS8 trials? Either way a wired connection is always going to be better, lower latency, less packet loss etc.
Click to expand...

Technically better maybe, but ethernet over fibre is always going to be better than DSL and nobody is paying £10k a year for a home connection. The advantages will likely outweigh the downsides for your average user fairly soon.
 
Wherever I have been with my O2 dongle, the best I have achieved even with a perfectt signal is 1mbs despite it saying 7.2mb connection speed.

It will be a while before I consider it thats for sure.
 
For home use you could simply get a router that allows you to use a 3g modem in the back. The only ones i know that allow this are the draytek ones.

And if your on the move, you could simply remove it.

Only downside i can see as with the current gen is you will never get the signal everywhere. So unless you live in the city i would stick with a wired connection.
 
I saw a tech demo of HSPA+ and LTE (two quite different technologies) whilst I was at the GSMA congress in Barcelona a few weeks ago.

Low latency and high speeds were certainly possibly in *lab* conditions but the real world things will probably vary.

Areas where this has the real potential to take off in my mind are in rural/suburban areas that will not be covered by the new generation of high-speed DSL or cable services.
 
I' have four friends who have mobile bb with diff providers in diff areas and not one of them get the advertised speeds and all them at least have a couple issues once a month where the signal is either degraded, the service is unusable , software based issues etc.

I don't understand how if they cannot make 3g work how to they hope to make a 40mbps+ service work? The mobile broadband backbone certainly cannot handle this at the moment.

Also what about complications with companys like paypal that require a phone line as part of the verification process? Or requiring a phone line for certain sky services etc.

Surely some communication providers/isps would juse wipe out line rental as part of there "plan", or seriously reduce to near cost price £5<

Also a lot of "mobile" type plans, i've seen come with 3/4G of data allowance... This may of changed since I looked... In the age we're in now with multiple pcs/laptops in the house hold, phones wirelessly, xbox360, ps3's etc More & more internet based devices...
 
Firstly HSPA+ and LTE are quite different technologies from what is loosely termed '3G' - you can consider LTE at least more like '4G' as the way the network is going to be designed and run is quite radically different from how things are now.

Yes you probably never will get advertised speeds, I get 4-5Mbit/sec most of the time off my Vodafone dongle in cities, maybe 2-3Mbit/sec in rural areas with a decent signal.

The same is true of ADSL *and* cable services, with DSL the speed depends on the quality and length of the line, with Cable they have network contention issues.

There are a lot of other benefits to the new technologies here other than just raw speeds, significantly lower latency being one of the key ones and I believe that LTE is being designed as an end-to-end IP network. So there are some obvious advantages there in terms of service delivery and what you can use the connection for.
 
to add to wil post,
You then also have WiMax which again on top of that is another technology. I find it unlikely that HSPA+ can do that speed of 50Mbps in a real world enviroment. This test was more than likely 1 cpe to 1 bts i.e only one customer per 'sector' on top of that you would also be limited with distance. I have tested and used 1GBs Wireless links but these have only been usable in a peer - peer setup going across the road.

A well setup wireless WiMax 802.16e or LTE (taking into consideration the air interface as well as the backbone infrastructer (which would have to be fibre) would be better in a real world enviroment than adsl or any copper based network as not only is the technology limited with regards to speed, but also the technology itself (especially for gaming)
 
radderfire said:
Sure, and mobile broadband routers are already on the market for the power users. However, the point I'm making is, local network performance notwithstanding, it is a lot simpler to get online with mobile broadband. It is already a very easy process with a USB dongle, and that will only get easier with "ready to go" mobile broadband laptops.

Rgds
Click to expand...

Well it *can* be simple given testbed conditions. I bought an 02 PAYG dongle pretty much for the hell of it last week. I installed it on my laptop i use for work and the installer wouldn't run because my home directory and some other things point to network locations on the company domain. To install properly it needed a local account.
Also the software it did install is a piece of crap in all fairness. It steals control of wifi adapters and by default halts any other wifi apps. It also messed with the windows routing table. i couldn't have the dongle in at work and connect to other subnets on the LAN. This is because as default windows installs a default route out of the LAN card. The 02 adaptor installs it's own default route with metric 1 and bumps the others up to metric 20 thus only the WIFI adapter becomes a feasible gateway. So the only way round it was to add static routes to all the LAN subnets to avoid using default routes. When used to manage the wifi the feature set is minimial in every sense. I run WPA-PSK personal AES at home, hardly obscure and it couldn't connect to it.
Coverage isn't great either. The Adapter supports 3G/HSDPA my phone shows full 3G signal and the aapter reports very good signal strength yet speed tests show 0.3mbit up and down. which is poooooor when the adapter is capable of up to 3.6mbit. Why this is i don't know because it reports approximately 0 info about the connection stats. Not even if it's boggo 3G or HSDPA it's connected to.

This is one product but i've seen similar issues with other providers.

In summary, there's great potential in mobile broadband and i'm sure the technology is looking snazzy but the implementation both in terms of coverage consitency and products is WAY WAY behind the technology. Still very much an infant technology in the consumer sense.
 
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