Ireland gets advanced 4G technology before anyone else, allegedly!

Sponge Bob

its Digiweb

http://www.digiweb.ie/media_article.asp?id=108

Dundalk, Ireland – 4th September 2006

Digiweb secures €20m to Drive Expansion

· Digiweb to extend successful Metro network nationally
· Ireland’s first 4G mobile broadband network to be deployed
· 100 new high tech jobs planned bringing firm to 220
· Follow-on funding available for further acquisitions

Digiweb Ltd confirms that it has today concluded a €20m funding round in conjunction with the Moritz Group, one of Ireland’s leading investment development firms active throughout Ireland and Central Europe.

Until now, Digiweb’s rapid expansion and construction of its national networks has been entirely self-financed through reinvestment of revenues and a business expansion programme. The company has built a reputation for delivering innovative and quality services nationwide that other providers have found difficult to match. Digiweb’s Metro service, launched just 12 months ago, has enjoyed phenomenal take-up amongst both business and home subscribers, uniquely offering a Broadband and Telephone bundle for less than €20 per month, less than the basic line rental fee consumers are being charged by other operators before broadband is added.

The new funds will extend Digiweb’s ongoing expansion of Metro throughout Ireland, will support the company’s further expansion into Europe, and will build Ireland’s first 4G mobile network, details of which are due to be announced soon.

“On foot of this investment we can aggressively address the question of broadband availability across the country, and will accelerate our plans to extend our market leading networks and services further across both Ireland and Europe”, stated Colm Piercy, Managing Director, “in addition to ongoing organic growth through our compelling service offering, we continue to evaluate opportunities for acquisition and entry to new International markets”

Hmm, yet even more metro deployments and the mysterious '4g' too !

Urban Weigl

4G blows WiMax out of the water. They recently did a demo of it in South Korea or some such place, and were able to sustain real world speeds of 1 gigabit while stationary, and 100 megabits in a vehicle moving at 60kmh.

Should be impressive stuff.

Altreab

Urban Weigl wrote:

4G blows WiMax out of the water. They recently did a demo of it in South Korea or some such place, and were able to sustain real world speeds of 1 gigabit while stationary, and 100 megabits in a vehicle moving at 60kmh.

Should be impressive stuff.

more info here http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=79960

smellslikeshoes

Looks like fun . Hopefully they gonna push ahead with it and not just saying it to make themselves sound forward thinking.

viking

...and will build Ireland’s first 4G mobile network, details of which are due to be announced soon.

I would have thought that Comreg is required to issue new licences for any new frequencies as they (eventually) did for 3G. Do Digiweb have advanced knowledge from Comreg that they will get one of these licences allowing them to be certain that their 4G investment will be worthwhile. I haven't heard anything from Comreg regarding an auction or "beauty parade" for these licences.

4G sounds cool though...

watty

Look on Comreg's site. You will see the licences are already awarded. In 2005.

The 4G system I've seen is same performance moving or stationary and a bit better than HSPDA for speed. Hugely better in terms of number of simultanous users than 3G.

Sponge Bob

I reckong its an option 2 4G not and option 1 4G or an O24G network to coin a phrase

From

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

fourth-generation, the successor wireless access technology to 3G. It describes two different, but overlapping ideas. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) official name for 4G is "3G and beyond".

1. 4G technology stands to be the future standard of wireless devices. The Japanese company NTT DoCoMo and Samsung is testing 4G communication at 100 Mbit/s while moving, and 1 Gbit/s while stationary. NTT DoCoMo plans on releasing the first commercial network in 2010 and Samsung plans on commercialising this service by 2010 at Jeju Island, South Korea. Despite the fact that current wireless devices seldom utilize full 3G capabilities, there is a basic attitude that if you provide the pipeline then services for it will follow.
2. Pervasive networks. An amorphous and presently entirely hypothetical concept where the user can be simultaneously connected to several wireless access technologies and can seamlessly move between them (See handover). These access technologies can be Wi-Fi, UMTS, EDGE or any other future access technology. Included in this concept is also smart-radio (also known as cognitive radio technology) to efficiently manage spectrum use and transmission power as well as the use of mesh routing protocols to create a pervasive network.

Quite an integration challenge , /me wonders what strange form of mutant rabbit will lep out of Digiwebs hat .

uncle_sam_ie

This will be great news for Dublin and Cork when it rolls out. God knows they're in a desperate need for it. :rolleyes:

Altreab

uncle_sam_ie wrote:

This will be great news for Dublin and Cork when it rolls out. God knows they're in a desperate need for it. :rolleyes:

and not just Dublin and Cork but the other rural areas of Waterford Limerick and Galway that are Just as desperate !!!

damien

This is all sounding like some razor ad. First there was 1g then the breakthrough came with 2g, then it evolved to 3g. Then they added a soapy strip and called it turbo. Now we have 4g.

Altreab

damien.m wrote:

This is all sounding like some razor ad. First there was 1g then the breakthrough came with 2g, then it evolved to 3g. Then they added a soapy strip and called it turbo. Now we have 4g.

Well they all were at the cutting edge in their time

cgarvey

damien.m wrote:

This is all sounding like some razor ad. First there was 1g then the breakthrough came with 2g, then it evolved to 3g. Then they added a soapy strip and called it turbo. Now we have 4g.

Except, the ads generally come when you can buy the damn razors. Digiweb are just playing the the media game. Or in other words, "Nothing to see here".

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

I reckong its an option 2 4G not and option 1 4G or an O24G network to coin a phrase

From

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G



Quite an integration challenge , /me wonders what strange form of mutant rabbit will lep out of Digiwebs hat .

Hmm.. It is a single system. But not as fast as (1).

Definately not (2).

Axl

cgarvey wrote:

Except, the ads generally come when you can buy the damn razors. Digiweb are just playing the the media game. Or in other words, "Nothing to see here".

Perhaps I misunderstood the press release, but it does not say that it is live yet (for 4G) - so how could there be razors yet anyways.

JohnC.

That's interesting. After all the hype about 3G and the race for licences, I'd not heard about 4G until now, even with the licences after being awarded already.

Sponge Bob

The was not awarded 'as 4g' , it was a tetra ish or pcn ish allocation way below most mobile frequencies.

The spectrum was unencumbered by a technology edict so if Digiweb can do 4g type services , either O14g OR O24g or hybrid O1+O2H4G (or is that H-O1+O24G) or even neither option 1 nor option 2 but something in the middle such as NO1N02BSITM4G or something a tad better even such as NO1N02BSITM4G+ or NO1N02BSITM4G++ then they are free to do so.

HTH

jwt

NSA and project Echelon must be having a field day with that lot

Nitrous monoxide, nitrous dioxide, boron, sulphur, titanium and a Heckler and Koch MG4 belt fed machine gun.



John

useruser

watty wrote:

Look on Comreg's site. You will see the licences are already awarded. In 2005.

The 4G system I've seen is same performance moving or stationary and a bit better than HSPDA for speed. Hugely better in terms of number of simultanous users than 3G.

What frequency is this allocation do you know? Any idea what equipment vendor?

Sponge Bob

jwt wrote:

NSA and project Echelon must be having a field day with that lot

The heavily flagged up report on the strange activities of a small isp in europe will no doubt make it onto McDowells desk this week.

Hope he is good at deconstructing and reconstructing acronyms

crawler

"Ted....Ted.....I am mightily confused" SB - you are indeed a force to be reckoned with and make my poor little head hurt at times

CG - not PR but give me a few (4-5) months to prove it, genuinely all we can say for now.

cgarvey

crawler wrote:

CG - not PR but give me a few (4-5) months to prove it, genuinely all we can say for now.

To prove what? The nationwide deployment 4G network, the proof of concept test results, the first public product offering, or that merely it's possible?

The Digiweb wideband license PR just short of a year ago says that nationwide rollout will start in 2006. Assuming that won't happen at this stage, will we at least know definite details like product offering/pricing, and initial locations (please, <voice character="Dewey" programme="Malcolm in the Middle">for the love of God</voice> don't let it be Dub/Cork/Lim/Galway and Drogheda) by then?

Until there are firm details, I'll retain my right to be skeptical!

crawler

Your right is acknowledged

useruser

crawler wrote:

Your right is acknowledged

Give us a clue. Will this be another piss-poor pre-Wimax "portable broadband" product ala RipWave and Clearwire? Or perhaps a piss-poor post-Wimax "portable broadband" product? Airspan?

Sparky

You can let me beta test it.

By god, I would have a use for it indefinitely.

bminish

Before we all get too carried away I did an analysis on this a while back in this very forum. A small chunk at 900 Mhz does not translate into broadband for the masses. It may well be a VoIP solution for the masses but it's not going to deliver broadband to many (any?) even if you do call it 4G

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50509032&postcount=21

.brendan

watty

What is your minimum speed and maximum ping for you to still call it broadband, Brendan?

bminish

watty wrote:

What is your minimum speed and maximum ping for you to still call it broadband, Brendan?

512Kbs or more
pings relatively stable and below 100 msec

But that's just me ;-)

.brendan

Laguna

I absolutely can't wait for this to be rolled out to such areas as Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, I mean they're sparse for choice when it comes to high speed internet access, whilst the rest of us living in rural Ireland, places such as Borris, County Carlow don't even have standard 512k broadband. So next year or whatever when Johnny Dubliner is downloading at speeds of 1GB p/s, the rest of us rural dwellers will still be sitting on our 28k dial up connections.. that's the way forward for this country in terms of technology, over indulge the few, starve the masses.

watty

I would regard > 200kbps down speed, >120 kbps upload and <50ms ping as broadband.

I've used 128k ISDN a lot in past for small offices and computer classes. The only issue was cost.


So by my metric Two way satellite might have > 2Mbps and Edge > 250kbps but both fail on ping times (>1600ms and > 150ms) so are only "Internet access".

Anyone know the OECD definition?

jwt

Definition of broadband is deliberately vague. Some argue its anything more than 128 with no concept of always on, others argue its 512 or more always on.

EU directives have been very careful NOT to actually define broadband. Same goes for functional internet access. In fact Ireland is one of the few countries that made a stab at defining functional internet access. Contrary to popular opinion Ofcom didn’t put a definition of functional internet access down in writing but the threat of them doing so was enough because UK telecoms companies know that if Ofcom says jump they had better jump.

I think we need a definition of functional broadband. And then watch as satellite broadband companies squirm through that.

John

watty

OECD *DOES* allow 250k wireless system in Czech republic to be counted as Broadband. OECD does *NOT* count two way satellite as Broadband.

Only Eircom and our government seem to have the broken concept of time limited broadband, since other places you can get unlimited flat rate dialup or ISDN, but I could be wrong.