4G+ 300mb uncongested

wrt40

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132931-ee-promises-super-fast-4g-that-will-make-your-fibre-broadband-look-like-dial-up

Does this spell the end of wired broadband? I know Google are rolling out 1gb fibre broadband in the US, but when are we ever going to see that in Ireland. And with 4G+ allowing multiple 4K movie streams with space to spare, surely the days of wired broadband are numbered? Of course it all depends on data caps I suppose!

ED E

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

No wireless solution can compete. Fibre has infinite spectrum(just add more glass), radio will always congest.

boardzz

wrt40 wrote: »

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132931-ee-promises-super-fast-4g-that-will-make-your-fibre-broadband-look-like-dial-up

I know Google are rolling out 1gb fibre broadband in the US, but when are we ever going to see that in Ireland.

August.

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/eircom-to-launch-new-pure-broadband-with-speeds-of-up-to-1000mbs-31027344.html

wrt40

boardzz wrote: »

August.

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/eircom-to-launch-new-pure-broadband-with-speeds-of-up-to-1000mbs-31027344.html

Well you see, competition is good FTTH though, I won't hold my breath waiting.

wrt40

ED E wrote: »

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

Shared medium.

No wireless solution can compete. Fibre has infinite spectrum(just add more glass), radio will always congest.

But the point is it's uncongested.

my3cents

wrt40 wrote: »

But the point is it's uncongested.

If you promote it then it won't be.

boardzz

wrt40 wrote: »

Well you see, competition is good FTTH though, I won't hold my breath waiting.

Eircom and ESB/Vodafone are both bringing FTTH this year.

wrt40

my3cents wrote: »

If you promote it then it won't be.

?? I'm obviously missing something, does uncongested mean something other than it's obvious definition?

wrt40

boardzz wrote: »

Eircom and ESB/Vodafone are both bringing FTTH this year.

As great as that sounds, I'm still very sceptical. It's more likely to be a similar situation to UPC, with many homes unable to get it. But all the competition is definitely a good sign, it might push things along.

bk

ArsTechnica had a better article on the same "trial"

It should be noted that only one person was connected to the base station at a time and i tactually gave speeds of 400+mb/s

However that isn't a real world trial at all. In the real world, that base station will be shared by 100+ other concurrent users and thus the speed will likely drop to below 10mb/s per user.

That is why "mobile midband" will never compete with a weird broadband connection, in particular a FTTH or DOCSIS cable one.

However it was still a very interesting trial as it was primarily demonstrating frequency band aggregation, a very useful feature of advanced 4G, plus it showed the great improvements in latency with 4G over 3G.

4G is welcome and useful, it means that as more and more people buy smartphones and tablets and use them heavily, they will likely see "decent" speeds of about 5 to 15mb/s, rather then seeing speeds drop to below 1mb/s is we stuck to just 3G and congestion increased.

So 4G is very useful for what it is designed for, mobile broadband, but don't mistake it for a replacement for a quality wired broadband connection.

wrt40

bk wrote: »

ArsTechnica had a better article on the same "trial"

It should be noted that only one person was connected to the base station at a time and i tactually gave speeds of 400+mb/s

However that isn't a real world trial at all. In the real world, that base station will be shared by 100+ other concurrent users and thus the speed will likely drop to below 10mb/s per user.

That is why "mobile midband" will never compete with a weird broadband connection, in particular a FTTH or DOCSIS cable one.

However it was still a very interesting trial as it was primarily demonstrating frequency band aggregation, a very useful feature of advanced 4G, plus it showed the great improvements in latency with 4G over 3G.

4G is welcome and useful, it means that as more and more people buy smartphones and tablets and use them heavily, they will likely see "decent" speeds of about 5 to 15mb/s, rather then seeing speeds drop to below 1mb/s is we stuck to just 3G and congestion increased.

So 4G is very useful for what it is designed for, mobile broadband, but don't mistake it for a replacement for a quality wired broadband connection.

OK so they say it will be uncongested but not uncongested at 300mb. Article was a bit misleading.

my3cents

wrt40 wrote: »

?? I'm obviously missing something, does uncongested mean something other than it's obvious definition?

I'm just a cynic I see Unlimted Broadband as having limits so I see uncongested as meaning not as congested.

bk

wrt40 wrote: »

?? I'm obviously missing something, does uncongested mean something other than it's obvious definition?

It is only uncongested in this particular article and trial, because they are only allowing one demonstration handset to connect to it at a time.

In the real world,you will have 100's of smartphone, tablets and 4g modem/dongles connecting to it at the same time and sharing that bandwidth.

This is down purely to the laws of physics. Their is only a very small, limited amount of suitable radio bandwidth available and thus it most be shared by a large amounts of people. 4G/5G, etc. don't magically change that.

guil

wrt40 wrote: »

I think the point is they have found a way to change that. Granted maybe not at 300mb but I think the point is there will be a minimum speed on offer similar to what you get with uncongested broadband. I do see your point that it's likely to be a lot lower than 300mb.

No broadband is offered at a minimum speed. It's all upto.

boardzz

Unlike previous mobile phone technologies, like 3G for example, which see a slow down of the service the more people use them, EE claims that with the 4G+ service it is building, users won't see any drop off the more people around them are also using it. That's going to be extremely handy for commuters who regularly see poor performance on a packed train over an empty one on the way to and from work.

They specifically mention it will not congest in the way mobile coverage currently does.

bk

This is what the article says:

Unlike previous mobile phone technologies, like 3G for example, which see a slow down of the service the more people use them, EE claims that with the 4G+ service it is building, users won't see any drop off the more people around them are also using it.

Either the journalist was misinformed or misunderstood or what EE is saying, is that they will sell and guarantee a speed of something like 10mb/s per user. It is physically impossible for them to guarantee 300mb/s per user.

Either way, very bad reporting.

It simply not possible by the laws of physics. This isn't Star Trek, you simply can't overcome the limited amount of radio bandwidth they have licensed.

ArsTechnica were at the same trial and reported even higher speeds:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/hands-on-with-the-fastest-lte-network-in-europe-400mbps-down-45mbps-up/


Fortunately the ArsTechnica journalists are more technically adapt and more accurately reported on the trial:

With wireless networks, the bottleneck is rarely the base station's backplane or the backhaul connection to the carrier's core network. With tri-band Category 9 LTE, those 400 megabits are split across every user who is currently sharing the same air interface—i.e. every device currently connected to that base station. If 100 users are concurrently connected to the same cell (which would be unusually high), they would still get a respectable 4Mbps down.

So no, you won't be getting 300 to 400mb/s from this. Expect more like 4 to 20mb/s, once everyone switched over the 4G phones.

ElNino

boardzz wrote: »

They specifically mention it will not congest in the way mobile coverage currently does.

Actually the ars technica article specifically states that it will congest in the same way as 3G technology but that there will be more bandwith to share around

With wireless networks, the bottleneck is rarely the base station's backplane or the backhaul connection to the carrier's core network. With tri-band Category 9 LTE, those 400 megabits are split across every user who is currently sharing the same air interface—i.e. every device currently connected to that base station. If 100 users are concurrently connected to the same cell (which would be unusually high), they would still get a respectable 4Mbps down. That's why current 3G and 4G deployments can feel very slow; you're probably sharing a fairly small amount of bandwidth with dozens of other people..

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/hands-on-with-the-fastest-lte-network-in-europe-400mbps-down-45mbps-up/

wrt40

Is that not the same way wired uncongested broadband works? They cannot increase the radio bandwidth but they can improve the compression technology, effective the same as adding new wires. Wired broadband limits increase all the time without having to add more wires.

bk

wrt40 wrote: »

Is that not the same way wired uncongested broadband works? They cannot increase the radio bandwidth but they can improve the compression technology, effective the same as adding new wires. Wired broadband limits increase all the time without having to add more wires.

No, it is way more complicated then that.

Sure, they benefit from improvements in compression technology, but the real big improvements we have seen with wired broadband is from big leaps in the available radio bandwidth.

From UPC has replaced most of their old crap quality 500MHz cables with new high quality 1000+MHz cables.

Then they moved from DOCSIS 2.0 to DOCSIS 3.0, DC2.0 allowed you to only use one 8MHz channel for the broadband (the rest used for TV, etc.). DC3.0 gives them a minimum of 4 x 8MHz channels and can go up to any amount you want. UPC seem to be using 8 x 8MHz channels to allow them to deliver the 240Mb/s

For Eircom they have gone from using:
- ADSL: 1.1Mhz
- ADSL2+: 2.2MHz
- VDSL2: 17Mhz *

* It can do up to 30MHz, but Eircom seem to be using 17MHz

As you see, most of Eircoms speed gains have come from using increased radio frequency also.

FTTH is much the same, though it is light, rather then radio waves, different frequencies but same principal.

BTW 17MHz might not sound much, but the thing to remember is that each VDSL user gets their own full 17MHz of bandwidth, as it isn't shared. On the other hand, most 4G mobile frequencies are divided up into 5 to 20MHz bands. That 20MHz band is then shared by all your neighbours connecting to the same local mast on the same network.

Well then you might ask, why don't they simply get more radio frequency?

Oh they would love to, but our radio waves are full of all sorts of different services and interference using up the available radio bandwidth. Wifi, bluetooth, FM/DAB/MW radio, digital TV services, satellite TV, GPS, military and civilian radar.

Then you have the problem that all the mobile carriers want the lower radio frequencies (e.g. 900MHz) as these tend to travel further and penetrate walls better. But these lower frequencies, being so attractive, are also being used by all the above services, so it doesn't leave much space for mobile companies to buy and they normally have to pay hundreds of millions for even just 20MHz!

Wired broadband doesn't suffer from these issues as the cables are normally shielded (more so for coax cable then phone lines) and thus they can use nearly all of the bandwidth available on the cable.

LTE Cat 9 is impressive, as it allows you to use licensed frequency from differnt frequencies and combine them for higher speeds, for instacne from the Ars Technica article:

Category 9 allows for carrier aggregation. In this case, EE uses three different carriers—a 20MHz block at 1800MHz, 20MHz at 2.6GHz, and a further 15MHz band elsewhere at 2.6GHz—working in perfect harmony to achieve max throughput.

So that is an impressive 45MHz of combined bandwidth. But do remember that this is then shared with all your neighbours and probably everyone else with a few km's connected to the same cell site.

As more and more people move to 4G smartphones and use services like Netflix, youtube, etc. the more your shared speed will drop.

As I said 4G is good news for mobile broadband, but it is no replacement for a quality wired broadband connection.

the world wonders

wrt40 wrote: »

They cannot increase the radio bandwidth but they can improve the compression technology

Adding compression does very little when most of your bandwidth demands come from content that is already heavily compressed such as Netflix/Youtube/Spotify.