Interesting announcement from 3

Urban Weigl

Perhaps the broadband solution we've been waiting for? They already have almost 90% of the population covered:

http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/1116/3.html
Also see:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/16/3_internet_launch/
And finally:
http://xseries.three.com/

Finally using their network for more than just father ted clips I see...

cgarvey

No pricing info yet, but hopefully it'll at a little heat to that market anyway. I'm guessing Unlimited is far from it, and I wonder if the wall (of the walled garden) will be completely removed.

PixelTrawler

17.11.2006 - 3 Ireland said last night that it plans to offer 3.6MB per second mobile broadband services across 85pc of the country from the first quarter of next year. The company also said that it will be unveiling a range of new services specifically targeted at the Irish business sector.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7373

Blaster99

Let's hope it works better than Vodafone's 3G service. It makes Ripwave look good.

Solair

It's about time 3 Ireland started offering more services. They've a very limited product in the republic of ireland as it stands. It's no where near as good as their UK offering.

1) No "My 3"
2) No data service, until this launches!
3) No access via handset client to non-3 email.
4) No data access for Java applications e.g. if you install an email client / browser!

Supercell

As land line based broadband isn't coming to Annamoe this century I can only hope 3 expand their coverage to here too.

Unfortunately a network scan on my mobile only shows o2 and Vodafone

Good news.
Full three 3G coverage in this house,I'm hard set to find somewhere that it would drop a bar.

I presume Voda's service is by and large only 512 down for most and you get less than that by a long shot?

So then 3.6mb would or should be as good as maybe a 1.5 or 2mb landline based BB potentially?

watty

voda are starting their HS service shortly.

3.6Mbps is with wind behind mast and only one person on cell!

1huge1

well there walled garden did go down for a few days last week but it went back up
so maybe this is a sign of things to come
i'd very much like to get this product seeing as 3 offer 3G in my area vodafone don't and no broadband provider does

Blaster99

Anyone who thinks 3G broadband will compare with fixed line broadband is going to be very unsatisfied. I'm not really sure what's going on with Vodafone's product, but it's getting worse by the day. If the connection stays up for more than five minutes, it's a good day. I've heard a lot of complaints from UK users of the same service, so I suspect it's just a limitation of the technology. Wireless broadband tends to look good on paper but I've yet to experience an implementation that actually works.

watty

Different wireless systems are quite different. Also depend on quality of backhauld and not over selling a sector.

3G is definately not comparable to DSL, somewhere between Ripwave and Breeze. But there are Fixed Wireless products comparable to DSL.

Urban Weigl

O2 are claiming that their 3G broadband service will be faster than landline DSL in Ireland. That may just be a lot of hot air of course, and they are comparing the speed of DSL in Ireland as it stands today with their announced 14.4mbps service, which won't be available until some time in 2007!

thebman

The problem as I see it is that they are allowed announce the speeds at whatever they like.

Comreg should force them to advertise what the speeds are under stress not the theoretically possible but never achieved speeds that we see. There should also be a maximum contention ratio allowed by a wireless provider and they should have to refund consumers if they aren't able to provide a service for a certain period of time as the services need to be dependable.

As it is it seems that any cowboy can setup broadband company and sell it even if there solution is that they will go with a mule and a cart to town to get the information for you. Where the hell are the regulations?

watty

Is 14.4 available to a user, or the bandwidth for a whole sector? And if for a user how close to edge of cell, and how many concurrent users?

A Speed on it's own for a cellular+Wireless system is meaningless.

Urban Weigl

O2 is saying that 14.4 megabits will be available to the end user. The footprint should be the same as current 3G/HSDPA. That is of course the maximum speed under ideal conditions. Judging by the performance of 1.8 megabit HSDPA deployments, in particular some speed tests I have seen published, I would expect half that in the "real world", less in busy areas such as parts of Dublin, etc. Due to the limited bandwidth available that must be shared, you can bet on the fact that terms and conditions will be more restrictive than DSL or cable.

Personally, I don't see these services as replacing a traditional DSL connection in the home. Rather, I see them as augmenting that service by offering mobility. In the same way that mobiles have not meant that nobody has a landline anymore. People have both! I see history repeating itself in that respect.

jhegarty

Anyone have a clue how voda are going to price it ?

Urban Weigl

jhegarty wrote:

Anyone have a clue how voda are going to price it ?

Vodafone have already launched their service. In fact, I have been using it for the past couple of months! It goes by the name of Unlimited Data, and it will set you back €49 a month. The services we're waiting on are planned by 3 and O2.

Foxwood

brim4brim wrote:

There should also be a maximum contention ratio allowed by a wireless provider and they should have to refund consumers if they aren't able to provide a service for a certain period of time as the services need to be dependable.

It's a frigging mobile service - they can't guarantee that there won't be more people using a given mast at 12:30PM than there are at 2:45PM. What are they supposed to do? Put bouncers on street corners to prevent any additional users entering "busy" zones?

If you want fixed contention ratios, get a fixed service. If you want a mobile service deal with the fact that there will be times and places where coverage is less than optimal.

watty

Urban Weigl wrote:

Personally, I don't see these services as replacing a traditional DSL connection in the home. Rather, I see them as augmenting that service by offering mobility. In the same way that mobiles have not meant that nobody has a landline anymore. People have both! I see history repeating itself in that respect.

Except of course the mnumber of people with landlines has dramatically dropped to 69% since eircom privatised. With rising line rental and little improvement in service we can expect lower % next year.

For many people these services will be the only Internet available and for some that could get DSL, they will elect to have this instead if they need mobile rather than pay for two services.

Desktop WiFi Routers with 3G cards are obviously aimed at fixed use. I'm really looking forward with curiosity to what happens fo fixed line when Digiweb 4G service launchs next year and the these three 3G data services get off the ground.

Indeed if eircom do get the 4th 3G licence for Meteor can they avoid offering also a competitive flat rate 3G service, EVEN THOUGH they have never done this for fixed line? Will eircom realise they are "shooting themselves in the foot" in the long term by excessive line rental and lack of real flat rate dialup?

Anyone got a figure for REAL DSL % coverage (not the 85% rubbish) as % of premises and real 3G coverage(Not the "Nationwide" rubbish) as % of inhabited area?

ednwireland

i heard that any mobile operator cant sustain more than a few connections per mast on fixed broadband connection they ust dont have the bandwidth aybe i'm wrong but it looks to me like this technology isnt going anywhere

Urban Weigl

ednwireland, that's where HSDPA comes in. It will significantly increase the speed and capacity of 3G cells, and is therefore often referred to as 3.5G. You could say that it is to mobile operators what DSL was to fixed line operators. Comparatively it will still be more limited than DSL, so you may see more fluctuation in speed. So for instance, while you might get nearly the advertised speed of 14.4Mbps on a mostly empty cell, this will drop significantly when things become busy. In response, mobile operators will have more restrictive terms, as I already said, compared to fixed line broadband.

It certainly is a viable technology now that HSDPA is coming into the picture.

crawler

HSDPA is a good advancement to 3G and a midpoint on LTE (Long term evolution)

Currently CDMA (forget the names above - it's about since World War 2!) technologies will support about 7-15 concurrent active users per cell for data transfer depending on the configuration.

14.xMbps is the sector capacity on HSDPA in ideal lab conditions and does not take cell edge degradation, mobility etc into account...to getactually get 14Mbps you need to live IN the basestation, never ever move and say lots of prayers

Urban Weigl

So a typical mobile phone base station with 4 sectors will provide up to 57.6Mbps to a maximum of 60 active users? What I find a bit odd is how much O2 is pushing the fact that end-users will be able to get speeds of up to 14.4Mbps and how it will be faster than fixed line DSL, when it looks like it won't, at least not for those living at the edge or in a busy area. Are they so confident in this statement, or are they merely creating hype?

What I have noticed is that during typical internet usage, I don't use much bandwidth. It's basically 1-minute pauses between clicking on links, which than download in about a second, followed by another pause. Unless I am downloading a file, which is relatively seldom.

crawler

I (for many many reasons) cant and wouldnt comment for O2 but in general if you were a 3G operator it makes sense to have fewer premium type users than lots and lots of low end type users. Active users are not the number of subscribers - you need to do a usage model and profile traffic usage to calculate how many "happy" users on average you can have on a sector in total given that at any one time, only a limitied number can be active.

Lots of factors need to be considered - for example the number of actual cells you have as an operator - if this is a high number, the cell edge interference issue - power used per cell - supporting voice and data etc etc...You also have to remember that users can be in Sleep mode, Idle mode and active mode.

The other issue CDMA at 1.8/9Ghz faces is indoor coverage and mobility - 3G needs to establish a dial peer to work and a dropped session etc will also break coverage - there is also the issue of an incoming VOIP call, as the cell needs to put inactive UE's (User equipment) in sleep mode how does that work...

The last issue with CDMA is latency....and as it's based on "codes", latecncy gets worse the more users per sector...

Dont get me wrong 3G is good and compared to dial up - is wonderfully good but like any cellular technology there are limitations.

Good Qualcomm paper here (old but gives good info) - outlines all 15 codes being allocated to HSDAP and achieving 14.4Mbps in theory - also outlines more realisitc data rates.

http://www.umtschips.com/download_library/pdf/hsdpa_downlink_wp_12-04.pdf

Blaster99

Trust me on this, 3G is not good. Once I get an alternative set up I'm sending back this **** to Vodafone. HSDPA is perhaps better, but I'm not holding my breath.

Liam Byrne

I saw in the paper today that 3 were saying that the new service would be "3 times faster than your current broadband service".

Does that mean that Smart users who switch to 3 will get 18Mbps ?

1huge1

ednwireland wrote:

i heard that any mobile operator cant sustain more than a few connections per mast on fixed broadband connection they ust dont have the bandwidth aybe i'm wrong but it looks to me like this technology isnt going anywhere

not nesessarly vodafones product is suprisingly very impressive
off course i did only use it for 2 days but the only problem i did notice was it once or twice just lost the connection for no reason at all
no biggie

jesus_thats_gre

Regardless of what the operators say they can offer, a big factor is the backhaul that these operators throughout the country. Does anyone know what the operators use, i.e. do they have their own fibre network, lease it of Eircom etc etc?

watty

Given position of masts a lot of fixed wireless links are used also CIE/BT fibre, esb fibre etc. eircom is expensive.

They have to meet high QOS for phone traffic, so I imagine backhaul is not a limiting factor for data usage unless they break the laws of physics and get DSL speeds for multiple customers at the same time in the same sector.

watty

Liam Byrne wrote:

I saw in the paper today that 3 were saying that the new service would be "3 times faster than your current broadband service".

Does that mean that Smart users who switch to 3 will get 18Mbps ?

ROFL

On DSL each 3Mbps customer can get full speed or be contended. It makes no difference if one or 1000 such people online at same time on same exchange.

OK many DSL customers might be on a very basic 1Mbps package.

But with the HSDPA speeds quoted that is for an EMPTY cell, PEAK speed for one customer!

Average traffic on a loaded cell close to half that. If a videos and/or VOIP and /or downloads then you might get 150kbps if 10 people doing that on one cell.

If 15 people trying to use that cell you may not get connected at all.

Contention is much worse effect on 3G than the artificially created contention on DSL.

Tubbritt

Solair wrote:

It's about time 3 Ireland started offering more services. They've a very limited product in the republic of ireland as it stands. It's no where near as good as their UK offering.

1) No "My 3"
2) No data service, until this launches!
3) No access via handset client to non-3 email.
4) No data access for Java applications e.g. if you install an email client / browser!

5: If you buy a phone from anyone else other than them (Simm free), they will not tell you the MMS settings, or Service settings. You will be forced to leave their network to make use of your new simm free non “3” branded 3G phone, even if your still under contract with them.

They are only network provider in Ireland that does this. !!!

Regards.
James.

Capt'n Midnight

Longfield wrote:

As land line based broadband isn't coming to Annamoe this century I can only hope 3 expand their coverage to here too.

Unfortunately a network scan on my mobile only shows o2 and Vodafone

http://www.siteviewer.ie to see where the masts are. It may also be possible to use an external antenna to use a weaker signal.

Supercell

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

http://www.siteviewer.ie to see where the masts are. It may also be possible to use an external antenna to use a weaker signal.

Thanks!

There is a mast just before the bridge coming into the village looking on that site, presumably on top of the big hill.

I get nice strong reception to Vodafone but no 3G, all I can hope is that someone eventually adds 3G capability to the mast in the future sometime, its not far from here at all, so when it comes I'll get it no problem..maybe time to start emailing the local TD and the phone companies.