Vodafone to introduce flat rate wireless broadband

uncle_sam_ie

I can't believe you guy's didn't spot this one today. It's happening tomorow.

http://www.yourtechstuff.com/techwire/2006/06/vodafone_to_int.html

jwt

We have known about it for some time but unfortunately I at least am bound by a NDA so can't comment

Joh

The Real B-man

Interesting great for people on the move

Sponge Bob

seems that what JTG hinted a while back is coming to pass. I am therefore officially impressed with Voda ( as I promised )and may be very impressed if the CAP / FUP is in any way sensible. Thats 5Gb and maybe a greater offpeak limit .

Of course it will mainly affect IBB and Clearwire as yiz can see from the coverage map linked below. It will ONLY be available in the RED bits



More red bits there Voda ......and thanks for listening

uncle_sam_ie

Sponge Bob wrote:

seems that what JTG hinted a while back is coming to pass. I am therefore officially impressed with Voda ( as I promised )and may be very impressed if the CAP / FUP is in any way sensible. Thats 5Gb and maybe a greater offpeak limit .

Of course it will mainly affect IBB and Clearwire as yiz can see from the coverage map linked below. It will ONLY be available in the RED bits



More red bits there Voda ......and thanks for listening

Would it cost them a lot to spread the red a bit.

Sponge Bob

they are still building , unlike O2 and especially 3 who stopped building ages ago but if they cannot finish the green bit first then there is no chance they will ever finish the red bit .

Then again they should be a USO carrier as should O2 .

jwt

FWIW

Clonard is in an orange bit and I can make and receive video calls over 3g

this has only happened in the past few months.

So I believe that the 3g area is spread out a bit more than that map.

On that map Clonard is out along the N4 (green road due west ) from dublin just before it splits to N6 and N4




John

P.S. on other maps it is also west of dublin on the N4

Urban Weigl

This may not be true, but when I talked to Voda about 3G a few months ago, they told me my local town of Ballyhaunis, County Mayo is "on the list" (though the rep I was talking to couldn't give me a date, which is suspicious), as it were, to get 3G-enabled.

Looking at their plans, they want to get 80% of the population covered by the end of the year. While that's not everybody, it's Not Bad At All. Especially if they keep up the work.

Ronan|Raven

Good news, it will be nice to hopefully have an alternate source of connection to choose from when I return.

cormie

€50 per month is good for business folk but if they want to hit the home user, they'd want to lower it a bit I think.


Very off topic: Is this type of service available in Spain does anyone know? I'm going there for 2 months or more and it would be handy if there was a similar option in Spain.

Urban Weigl

cormie, presumably Vodafone in Spain will launch a similar service. However, forget it, because the problem is that you usually have to sign a 12 month (sometimes up to 24 months) contract. Edit: I see they offer 3-month contract option in Germany, but only if you pay for the equipment, which is not cheap (299 euros).

Don't forget the €50 might include a home phone service. Vodafone already offer that in Germany, see here:
http://www.vodafone.de/privat/tarife_und_vertraege/76792.html

Basically it's a box with a 3G card in it, which does wifi, print server, has a phone jack to plug in your existing phone. It's essentially a complete replacement for your landline. They're advertising broadband speeds of up to 1.8 MBit.

jesus_thats_gre

They currently offer a service to business where they bascially connect their phone network into fixed GSM phone modules. Mobile calls made on the telephone system are automatically routed through this unit to save money.

smellslikeshoes

50 euros might seem like a lot to someone who already has bb but if they spread out those red bits a little more to where people cant get dsl or other wireless bb this product could be what ireland sorely needs.

jesus_thats_gre

While it is pretty easy to criticise 3G as a service offering in general because of the lack of coverage, I think we should all remember how long it took for the green bits on that map to fill up..

cormie

12/24 month contract is a bit of a paint. Could you use the same equipment from Ireland in Spain I wonder? I never even knew Vodafone were in more countries than Ireland/UK so that's good news:)

I suppose a question to ask is will other mobile providers get their act together and start to offer the same service which will bring down the price?

1.8MBIT is more than enough for me, 500kbps would even do fine, always on BB is all I need.

What am I looking at in the map exactly? What is the green/orange/red? Is it the concentration of signal power or do different colour represent different phone companies?

JMcL

smellslikeshoes wrote:

50 euros might seem like a lot to someone who already has bb but if they spread out those red bits a little more to where people cant get dsl or other wireless bb this product could be what ireland sorely needs.

Factor in the fact that DSL needs monthly line rental gouging added on to it, the price looks a bit more reasonable.

Also, if it works reliably, it would be a viable alternative to those in apartment blocks/estates who can't erect an antenna, or who don't want to play ball with either the incumbent monopoly or whichever alternative monopoly has been foisted on them for that matter (so to speak).

John

jwt

looks like loads of improvements have been going on.


http://www.vodafone.ie/sme/coverage/improve/index.jsp

Selecting greater Leinster, Clonard and Kinnegad are listed, so that map is out of date.

So Kinnegad will now have ADSL, Wireless and 3g/HSPDA! Will wonders never cease! I might have to retire if this keeps going on

2 months ago

However, Handley said that ‘‘within a short time’’, speeds on the Vodafone product would be increased to over 10Mbs, far above most conventional broadband speeds.

Be very interested to see if that gets mentioned.

John

Sponge Bob

jwt wrote:

Selecting greater Leinster, Clonard and Kinnegad are listed, so that map is out of date.

Listed but not mapped. Little Red blobettes required , wonder if them two will join up ?

So Kinnegad will now have ADSL, Wireless and 3g/HSPDA! Will wonders never cease! I might have to retire if this keeps going on

. The problems of success eh .

Vodafone will not be in a mad hurry to up the speeds to 10Mbits given their cell backhaul situation in some areas. 3-5 Mbits will be the next increment.

I am still impressed though JTG, and any chance you can PM me the package details ????

cormie

or post them here? Or pm me too:D

cormie

Any updates on this? It was supposed to be announced today right?

jwt

The only person I know that quoted today was Adrian Wreckler.

Everybody else is quoting imminent, soon, this month, next few days etc

From last Friday it was in the next 10 days (working days I assume) according to a Vodafone person.


John

JimmySmith

i dont think they are going to announce this today at all. Its getting a bit late now.

HelterSkelter

http://www.unison.ie/breakingnews/index.php3?ca=35&si=93380

Vodafone has announced plans to introduce a fixed rate for internet access on mobile phones and laptops.

Under the system, users will be charged a monthly fee of €50 that will allow them to access the web as often as they like via their mobile phones.

At the moment, costs are levied based on the amount of information downloaded, which makes it difficult for customers to know how much they will be charged.

Sponge Bob

Phasing . Hope its not phased out slowly from Sandyford or Dundalk.

This article form March (UK)

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0,39020348,39256673,00.htm

Vodafone has yet to commit to a UK-wide deployment but recent comments from Arun Sarin, the company's chief executive suggest the operator is already looking towards the next generation of 'wireless broadband' technologies such as WiMax.

and

The operator said that after trialling the technology around the Newbury, where Vodafone is based, it will start piloting the service with 100 business users in Greater London

Rather unambitious . Even more so when compared to BT , see here . But that was March. Lets see what happens in the UK .

Urban Weigl

If you don't want to spend 5 minutes registering for a unison account, here's the full article:

Vodafone has announced plans to introduce a fixed rate for internet access on mobile phones and laptops.
Under the system, users will be charged a monthly fee of €50 that will allow them to access the web as often as they like via their mobile phones.

At the moment, costs are levied based on the amount of information downloaded, which makes it difficult for customers to know how much they will be charged.

Doesn't really contain any new information...

Sponge Bob

Full Press Release Here

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single6595

Ireland’s largest mobile operator Vodafone has revealed plans to launch a flat-rate 3G mobile internet service on its network for €49 a month. By the end of the year existing 3G services will be boosted to 1.2MB per second by HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) and Vodafone has confirmed that the flat rate will apply to this service

No bananas for 6 months and no pricing change until then either. No pilot scheme neither.

And that €49 + VAT = €60 for residential customers.

jwt

Vodafone Unlimited Data

All together now......

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Pretty light on details, no caps, hardware cost, coverage, what happens when you fall back to 3g or gprs, minimum contracts etc

John

JimmySmith

It seems to me that they have really announced nothing at all.
Unless the announce the price AND conditions (CAP etc) its just PR rubbish.
Come on BT and 3. You have the technology too.

Urban Weigl

JimmySmith wrote:

Come on BT and 3. You have the technology too.

BT spun off their mobile business, o2, a while ago. It is currently owned by Telefonica.

JimmySmith

CAP is 5GB per month.

JimmySmith

Urban Weigl wrote:

BT spun off their mobile business, o2, a while ago. It is currently owned by Telefonica.

Sorry O2. I still call vodafone Eircell too on occasion

bkehoe

Sponge Bob wrote:

they are still building , unlike O2 and especially 3 who stopped building ages ago but if they cannot finish the green bit first then there is no chance they will ever finish the red bit .

Then again they should be a USO carrier as should O2 .

You are mistaken here. Esat BT have been expanding Three's network at an extremely fast rate. They are co-locating on towers all over the country for their 3g network. They have easily got by far the biggest 3g network in the country at this stage. Sites where, for example, O2/Meteor have only recently added GSM coverage have been used by 3. It's become pretty rare that my 3 phone doesnt have 3g coverage as I travel around the country in the last few months. Just a pity they don't offer data services.

flamegrill

SB from the fluff I got from vodafone it is 49 euro per month inc vat ... will double check next week though.

Packages will be available from 1st of July.

Paul

अधिनायक

Does this mean you could make unlimited free calls from a VOIP-enabled handset?

Blaster99

Vodafone blocks VoIP in other markets where this service is available.

m_stan

when you say "wireless broadband", what do you mean - 3G / WiMax / something else ? And do you mean for business or consumers or both ?

AFAIK they already provide flat rate 3G data tarrifs for businesses. Pretty sure we get it for 45/49 Euro per month on the new 3G Blackberries.

Sponge Bob

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9711799.html

This leaves Ireland as the only market where the Spanish-owned mobile phone company does not have a broadband product -- though this could be about to change.

and

It is understood that O2 Ireland is not, as yet, interested in acquiring a small fixed broadband provider in Ireland as it has done in Britain, but will instead introduce a mobile broadband package based on High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) technology. The company said it will be ready to make an announcement "over the coming months".

Definitely a maybe that.

Maxwell

At €50 a month - seems good!


A really stupid question, but could this not prove a solution to someone who can't get any broadband in their area. If you can get full coverage on a mobile - can you then not use this facilty?

Or is it just for 3G?

Sponge Bob

You were told so in the 4th post in this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=51544595&postcount=4

crawler

Someone please ask the HSDPA & Latency question...PLEASE

Urban Weigl

crawler wrote:

Someone please ask the HSDPA & Latency question...PLEASE

"Lucent, for instance, showed video clips in both R99 and HSDPA. While the images transmitted over R99 were a bit fuzzy, those over HSDPA were DVD-quality, with latency speeds of just over 70 milliseconds."

So I take it that assuming decent coverage, it should be ~100 milliseconds in the real world? Not quite as good as xDSL, but close enough. Good enough for gaming.

Sponge Bob

crawler wrote:

Someone please ask the HSDPA & Latency question...PLEASE

Dear Crawler.

What is the basic latency like on HSDPA BEFORE traffic prioritisation and shaping measures are applied to the datastream.

At given distances from the cellsite, say a macro cell in this case (up to c.5km radius for 3G IIRC ) how does the HSPDA encoding scheme work at handling latency , again before any processing is done behind the cell .

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Dear Crawler.

What is the basic latency like on HSDPA BEFORE traffic prioritisation and shaping measures are applied to the datastream.

At given distances from the cellsite, say a macro cell in this case (up to c.5km radius for 3G IIRC ) how does the HSPDA encoding scheme work at handling latency , again before any processing is done behind the cell .

SB - you already know how much latency there is on HSDPA...

Anyway - ANY broadband is good for people who cant get it so I view the whole thing as a good thing....interesting price point too.

Wonder what the lids in O2 will come up with now....

All good...

Maxwell

Sponge Bob wrote:

You were told so in the 4th post in this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=51544595&postcount=4

Thanks and sorry.

But I used to use their GPRS card in a country area and received decent speeds and I was hoping this card would at least provide speeds of 512k and provide an option for the country masses of people who can't get either.

Back to dreaming of living in fecking South Korea then......

watty

Next best thing. North Korea.

28k for GPRS. Though I used to get 28k on ordinary GSM by having a twice as expensive "2 slots" call. Regular GSM is 14K

EDGE on GSM (no one doing it here yet?) is up to 350k.

3G without HSDPA is 350K max. Insane claims are being made for HSDPA, but it is likely to give up to 1.5Mbps

If you made VOIP look like something else by merging it with another stream before transmission you suffer two problems:
1) The extra bandwidth needed to "hide" the traffic profile even in a VPN is significant.

2) The latency increases.

If I do an encrypted rush hour traffic report encrypted each day, a good analyst would tell from other factors that maybe it is a rush hour report without breaking the code. If I hide that report in a larger /longer encrypted report, that runs all day then the rush hour report existance is harder to infer.

In WW2 code breakers could deduce from source and time of transmissions what kind of report it was , without decryption at all, so you don't need to decrypt VPN traffic to know if it is email (small challange / response and large asymetric traffic), video (continous one way traffic), voice (similar size packets similar quality each way in a charactristic burst) etc.

Of course if you slip the real data into a continious psuedo random stream then the bandwidth goes up and it looks nothing like anything except two way video, so they start adding latency to it out of principle and then it is no use for voice. But VPNs don't do that anyway as it would hurt your cap

If you really want to break unbreakable codes .. well unless you use a truly random large one time pad, it can be done. IF you know what the message is about and have a clear text version. This was real flaw of wartime enigma. The Germans used it for a costal weather report. The British sent a trawler to monitor the weather at same place and then they could do a brute force code attack. The computer was for trying all the possible enigma till they got a part of the suspected plain text (weather). Then that code could be used to decode all the other messages that day.

Patrickof

The coverage map for vodafone is a bit awkward to fathom (I'm on the edge of a red bit).

Am I right in assuming that if I can get Mobile TV on the mobile then I should be also able to receive this flat rate 3G data when its launched? If so, it'll be the only broadband option I have. It actually sounds good if the cap if in around the 5GB mark.

Sponge Bob

If you can get lossless mobile TV that is a good indicator , yes. Over to Watty

Blaster99

I tried Voda's mobile TV streaming service the other day in Dublin and it required rebuffering about every 30 seconds. Not exactly impressive. I would quietly wonder if there's enough bandwidth available for this type of stuff on Voda's network. I have watched the odd World Cup report on 3's portal and I've never experienced this problem so I think 3G is fundamentally capable of a good video streaming experience. Whether it scales is another story.

Urban Weigl

Just talked to Voda. I was told several times that it was "unlimited data", "full flat rate", "no limit on usage", etc. I guess we shall see. The price I was given was €49 a month including VAT. A 3G card will be about 90 to 150 euros, I'm guessing depending on the contract (she said something about either a 12 month or an 18 month contract). The service will be stand alone, e.g. it isn't tied into switching to Voda for your voice calls.

Launching on the 2nd of July.

Edit: When no 3G coverage is available, "it will fall back to GSM, which has excellent coverage everywhere." Don't know if that will include EDGE eventually, or GPRS only.

flamegrill

I did some testing of the 3G network last week, the results of which are available here:

http://monster.blacknight.ie/~paul/voda3g.txt

Most of the time, that machine is on

Paul

Cryos

flamegrill wrote:

I did some testing of the 3G network last week, the results of which are available here:

http://monster.blacknight.ie/~paul/voda3g.txt

Most of the time, that machine is on

Paul

I get my HPVodafone Datacard upgraded soon, stats are simular to the above.