Vodafone to introduce flat rate wireless broadband

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.

uncle_sam_ie

Urban Weigl wrote:

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.

So what speeds can we expect if has to falls back on GSM?

jesus_thats_gre

4/5 KB/sec on GPRS is about all you will get..

smellslikeshoes

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

4/5 KB/sec on GPRS is about all you will get..

If its unlimited, even at gprs It would still be better than dialup. Would all depend on the quality though.

uncle_sam_ie

Is there a USB datacard gizmo that will work for desktops and loptops without a 3G card slot. I can't find anywhere that sells this one http://www.dlink.com/press/pr/?prid=241

Sponge Bob

flamegrill wrote:

I did some testing of the 3G network last week, the results of which ......

You got 44k off a 384k nominal is that right .

How many bars of how many signal 2/5 or 3/5 ?????

How far from cell mast ???

jesus_thats_gre

uncle_sam_ie wrote:

Is there a USB datacard gizmo that will work for desktops and loptops without a 3G card slot. I can't find anywhere that sells this one http://www.dlink.com/press/pr/?prid=241

Linksys also offer one. I have it sitting on my desk as it happens

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=129557

http://vodafone.misco.co.uk/3G-UMTS-router/

uncle_sam_ie

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Linksys also offer one. I have it sitting on my desk as it happens

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=129557

http://vodafone.misco.co.uk/3G-UMTS-router/

Awesome!
Got those bookmarked,thanks.

flamegrill

Sponge Bob wrote:

You got 44k off a 384k nominal is that right .

How many bars of how many signal 2/5 or 3/5 ?????

How far from cell mast ???

I failed to mentioned it connected at 460kbit not 384kbit in my tests.

Paul

Cryos

Sponge Bob wrote:

You got 44k off a 384k nominal is that right .

How many bars of how many signal 2/5 or 3/5 ?????

How far from cell mast ???

Lo bob,

Tbh i use myne for VPN, if on the unlikely case that 3g isnt working (which it has only done it once in the year ive had it) you connect at 54.0kbps (well i did anyway).

To be honest its perfectly workable you get between 5 and 6k.

Im not sure where the Vodafone mast is in cabinteely but where i sit i get 1/2 bars and it connects at 3g no problem and gives me speeds of around 35-40k per second.

oscarBravo

Urban Weigl wrote:

"it will fall back to GSM, which has excellent coverage everywhere."

...except my house.