Using a 3G phone to gain Broadband access to the net?

uncle_sam_ie

I was listening to a Podcast a few weeks ago about this dude in the US that was using a 3G type phone to gain access to the net on his laptop via bluetooth. He says he is getting DSL speeds. Wow, is this possible? I don't live in a broadband area, so I'm hoping that it is. I've never had an interest in broadband on my phone, so I've never really looked into it. What's the deal with 3G. Is it covered every where in Ireland? Now, I have heard you only get limited internet with 3G phones, but I've also heard that Nokia phones use open source and can be hacked to get the full internet access. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks, Andrew

fractal

I've used 3G on my laptop through a Nokia 6630 connected via the USB cable... (Not bluetooth) and gotten up to about 50KBp/s... Close enought to broadband sppeds for my liking! Costs a bomb though..

Coverage.. So far as I know all major citires are covered and a few select places though from looking at my phone time to time when i've been around the country 3G coverage seems to be far from complete.

beller b

Charges are unbeliveable..€60 on a vodafone bill recently for about 20mb downloaded

zuma

beller b wrote:

Charges are unbeliveable..€60 on a vodafone bill recently for about 20mb downloaded

Those prices are insane....then again thats what you get when companies have no wish to compete with each other and decide to setup a cosy cartel!!!

Cryos

zuma wrote:

Those prices are insane....then again thats what you get when companies have no wish to compete with each other and decide to setup a cosy cartel!!!

true but id say as more people use the service they will bring up the tarriff caps and down the prices..

Urban Weigl

Blitz wrote:

true but id say as more people use the service they will bring up the tarriff caps and down the prices..

Or quite the opposite: they might lower prices and increase caps to attract more customers, after they realise that very few people are willing to pay the current prices.

Cryos

Urban Weigl wrote:

Or quite the opposite: they might lower prices and increase caps to attract more customers, after they realise that very few people are willing to pay the current prices.

Well id disagree entirely with that, the main reason why the prices as they are today is the obsorbanent amount of money the operators have spent getting the 3g licences and expanding their network.

When they have their coverage established and have a regular small customer base for the product they will increase caps and lower the price, as they have always done.

Urban Weigl

Blitz wrote:

When they have their coverage established and have a regular small customer base for the product they will increase caps and lower the price, as they have always done.

I think you may have misunderstood what I said. Yes, it is likely they will increase caps and lower prices, but they will do it to attract customers who are not willing to pay current prices, and/or to counter competition (if there is any). They will always charge as much as they can, and only lower prices for the above reasons. That's how capitalism works. They'd be stupid to lower prices if their customers were willing to pay more, and shareholders would not be very happy at all.

Sponge Bob

Blitz wrote:

Well id disagree entirely with that, the main reason why the prices as they are today is the obsorbanent amount of money the operators have spent getting the 3g licences and expanding their network.

Funny how the best packages are where they spent the most to get the licences in 2000 , Germany for example.

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/June2005/1605.htm

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Domestic Tariff
Vodafone's domestic, flat rate data tariffs offer unlimited usage* for just euro 50-euro 99 per month. Business customers will now have the flexibility to work whenever, and wherever, rather than worrying about data usage levels. Vodafone has already successfully launched the new bundles in a number of its European markets (Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden) and following positive customer feedback, is now rolling out the unlimited data pricing model across the rest of Europe. The new Vodafone Mobile Connect domestic data usage bundles is available from June in Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Spain followed by the United Kingdom in July."

I am unaware whether it has launched yet , although I accept its imminent, and will no doubt be around €99 for what the Germans get for €50 .

Then there is the roaming Variant, not for us

[/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Vodafone Mobile Connect Monthly Travel Tariff will be made available to Vodafone customers in Greece, Italy and Portugal in June, followed closely by Germany and the UK in July. The tariff will also be made available to Vodafone customers in Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden in due course.[/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

I would dearly love to be corrected (yo JTG) on any of the above. Were Voda Ireland to launch unlimited 3g data at €50-€60 a month and also allow its customers to buy into reasonable roaming charges for its Irish 3G data customers I would be amazed .

Pleasantly and exuberantly amazed



[/font]

jesus_thats_gre

The license fees paid here are nothing compared to what was pain in the UK and Germany..

Sponge Bob

Exactly JTG (wow that was fast head ) . Therefore we should have the all u can eat data tariff at half what the Germans get, €25 a month I make that .

When is it launching and why would we pay more than the Germans ?

secret_squirrel

afaik some of the reason that they are not pushing 3G mobile data very hard both here and in the UK is because of capacity issues. They simply cant support large volumes of frequently used data. (They mostly being vodafone).

jesus_thats_gre

Sponge Bob wrote:

Exactly JTG (wow that was fast head ) . Therefore we should have the all u can eat data tariff at half what the Germans get, €25 a month I make that .

When is it launching and why would we pay more than the Germans ?

You could also argue that operators in Ireland cannot avail of the same economies of scale as UK or German based operators, thus balancing out the costs

jesus_thats_gre

It is becoming more and more apparent that more 3G Base Stations are required to cover an area than what was required for GSM.. The Base Stations are designed to shrink the size of the "Cell" as traffic increases.. As it is only early days yet, if alot of people used 3G as much as is theoretically possible, the amount of Base Stations would have to dramatically increase in the same geographical area that previously only required 1 GSM Base Station.. Considering they are about 75k a go there is some constraints on the roll out.

You will probably find that as 3G coverage becomes more consistent throughtout the country that they will start doubling up on capacity in certain areas and this is when the data aspects of 3G will be pushed alot more..

Just making assumptions though..

Sponge Bob

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

You could also argue that operators in Ireland cannot avail of the same economies of scale as UK or German based operators, thus balancing out the costs

I could argue that the ARPU shows we are being gouged at every opportunity JTG

Where is this all you can eat 3G data at up to 384k tariff that was supposed to launch on Voda Ireland in June. ?

What is the tariff ???. Is it the same as Germany €50.99 a month

Is it (will it be) speed restricted to 144k .....in Ireland until 2007 ?

If higher than Germany, why ? Voda has very easy coverage targets in Ireland and paid feck all for the licence so far...unlike (€6Bn was it) in Germany . The coverage targets in Germany are more onerous and they have a proper regulator who will take no crap from Voda.

Ta

jesus_thats_gre

Sponge Bob I was winding you up... But to attempt to answer what you said..


The ARPU figures in this country do not reflect over-charging, they reflect considerably higher usage by Irish people..


I wasn't aware of an all you can eat 3G tariff being launched so cannot answer that one. It would be a great thing to introduce though..

Vodafone Germany and Vodafone Ireland operate under the one brand, this is about as far as it had gone as of yet... The markets in Ireland and Germany are also very different.


I am not aware of any restriction of data rates. I consistently transfer data at over 30KB/sec...


The license fee paid by Vodafone Germany may suggest some reasons as to why they are pricing so aggresively. 6 billion is an massive amount of money to invest and it would be a disaster for the investment to be considered a failure.. Considering there is also competing 3G networks who also cannot allow 3G to fail due to the massive investments made may also contribute to something happening earlier in Germany or a company being more aggressive in Germany than they are here..

I am not justifying it, just exploring some reasons as to why something may happen in Germany before it happens here.

clearz

Dont you think that the mobile phone companys need to keep the price per MB high for 3G in order to stop ppl using VoIP software on their smart phones? But maybe this is where is will eventually go anyway.

IMO 3G is a complete farce. The idea seemed good at the time when the current mobile market was growing exponentially and the operators had so much money they did not know what to do with it. But now the speed it offers leaves a lot to be desired and this will be even more so by the time it hits mass market. Also newer and cheaper technologys such as WiFi and WiMax are becomming a serrious competitor to 3G. With WiFi networks popping up accross citys and in transport services like trains and airplanes and WiMax offering distances of upto 30Miles, could 3G get flushed down the toilet along with the 088 network?

jesus_thats_gre

Well 3G will get flushed down the toilet eventually.. When 4th generation networks start surfacing.. :-/

Wimax was surrounded by alot of publicity but looks like portable WiMax devices will not be available for another 2 or 3 years yet.. At that stage, UMTS will have been updated to something like HSDPA? to become 3.5G (some are saying 3.9G though ).. These networks will be rushed out pretty quickly I suspect and will offer megabit speeds.. WiMax has plenty of limitations as well..


3G as a whole is not a farce.. GSM and GPRS needed to evolve as faster data speeds were needed by users. There was and still is demand for this. So it is naive to say it is a complete farce. Looking back however, it is obvious that some were over zealous when bidding for the licenses and alot of facts became edadurated..

Blaster99

As for pricing, if people are happy to spend 10c on a 165 character message then it's not surprising the MNO think they can take the piss in general.

An interesting thing is that the 3G folks don't seem to be pushing data at all. It's all video calls or their walled garden subscription content like goal replays. I went and looked briefly at three.co.uk to see what kind of data services they offer to get an idea of what will be available in Ireland, but I couldn't find anything about it. Not exactly the right forum I realise, but does anyone know what 2G provider 3 will piggy-back on Ireland?

secret_squirrel

Personally I could never see that 3G had any more attractions than highspeed data. The rest is just marking gimmicks.

jesus_thats_gre

Blaster99 wrote:

but does anyone know what 2G provider 3 will piggy-back on Ireland?

Vodafone


AFAIK, 3 don't offer data services in the UK in the same fashion that Vodafone would...

Sponge Bob

Where is our c.€50 a month package that was announced ?

uncle_sam_ie

Sponge Bob wrote:

Where is our c.€50 a month package that was announced ?

Those Vodafone Datacards will only work with laptops. I'm on a G4 iMac. Will that monthly price include 3G phones?

Urban Weigl

The 3G phones are likely going to be heavily subsidised, so if anything it's going to cost less than the PC card.

ednwireland

"3G written off as a 'disappointment'
Experts predict it is already time for 3.5G and 4G"

http://mail.vnunet.com/cgi-bin1/flo/y/egos0CB1re0MHB0Cgsa0EY

funny how no-one mentions the price !

pollyantic

If this were available for less than €50 inc Vat i know a lot of people who would jump at it.
Its just a disgraceful price now though

secret_squirrel

That article seems to confirm what I had heard - 3G just doesnt have the capacity to provide large numbers of data connections - hence the high price to stop the network being saturated.

jesus_thats_gre

secret_squirrel wrote:

That article seems to confirm what I had heard - 3G just doesnt have the capacity to provide large numbers of data connections - hence the high price to stop the network being saturated.

As it stands, its seems yes.. But if they reduce the size of the cells by increasing the number is Base Stations serving geographical areas, then the faster rates are achievable.. The reducing of the cell size reduces the amount of users connected to it, thus preventing congestion problems..

This is done automatically at the moment whereby a Base Station will dynamically reduce or elarge the sized of a all depending on how congested it is..

The knockon effect of this is that during period of high congestion, people who are normally in 3G coverage are left without 3G coverage after the cell shrinks..

To prevent this occurring, extra Base Stations are required to serve an area in order to maintain the high data speeds without congestion becoming an issue..

Effectively, parallel cells should resize in tandem. As one shrinks, a less congested cell nearby should grow in size to cover the area once covered by the congested cell.

damien

Seems Vodafone Germany gives you 30megs for a tenner now but they are starting to block VOIP: http://vowe.net/archives/006041.html

Also here: http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2494

Meanwhile Vodafone UK is blocking the Skype website (by accident I'm sure)

http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_1229.html

Any Vodafone Irish users experiencing the same?

Cryos

damien.m wrote:

Seems Vodafone Germany gives you 30megs for a tenner now but they are starting to block VOIP: http://vowe.net/archives/006041.html

Also here: http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2494

Meanwhile Vodafone UK is blocking the Skype website (by accident I'm sure)

http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_1229.html

Any Vodafone Irish users experiencing the same?

Dont think any of us are rich enough to find out....