Nancy Gohring asks What’s Next For Mobile Data After 3G? in an article in Mobile Pipeline.
She reviews the broadband wireless contenders including WiMax, IP Wireless, EVDO, W-CDMA-based HSPDA and its follow-on, HSUPA (with greater upload speed).
The original promise of third generation wireless networks was lightening fast data throughput that would be available everywhere. 3G is here, though, and it’s not lightening fast, ubiquitous or affordable — yet.However, a number of new developments could fulfill the original promise of 3G over the next several years, even as 3G networks are starting to face competition from other wireless broadband technologies such as WiMAX. Each of these improvements and technologies presents different advantages for users and they all open the door to new types of mobile applications…
It’s a relevant question for T-Mobile.
EE Times says, “…T-Mobile’s dilemma is that the European version of CDMA (WCDMA, also called UMTS) requires 10 MHz (2 x 5 MHz) for the initial RF carrier. In order to deploy this, T-Mobile will either have to carve this spectrum out of its existing holdings, which are already taxed, or purchase additional spectrum at auction.”
Mobile Broadband Wireless
(Table courtesy of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore)
| Company | |||||
| System | iBurst | RadioRouter | IPWireless | Ripwave | WIMAX/Wibro |
Telecom Asia says Australia is a good case study of 3G competitors. In Sydney and other Australian cities, Arraycomm and Navini are going head-to-head with cellular operators for mobile, high-speed data.
Both Unwired and PBA offer data connections of around 1 Mbps, which not only beats out W-CDMA (100-200 kbps) from Vodafone and 3 Australia, and 1x EV-DO from Telstra, but also most DSL connections, which often run well under a megabit and sometimes as low as 256 kbps.Simpson agrees that wireless broadband speeds appeal to customers who might need to transfer PowerPoint files and other large files, but he warns that wireless broadband’s bigger issue isn’t throughput, but coverage. Unwired only has one network in Sydney, and PBA’s networks cover just five east coast cities. By contrast, Telstra’s EV-DO service, which offers data cards for laptop users, covers numerous CBDs and has a national cdma2000 1x network to fall back on most everywhere else. (Telstra says the service has been growing 50% per month since its launch in November 2004.)
Also, commercial equipment for mobile WiMAX is several years away, while Telstra is still expanding EV-DO coverage, and 3 and Vodafone will be able to upgrade to HSDPA as early as next year.
The major challenge for cellcos, Simpson says, is that they can’t offer those kinds of speeds to large numbers of users at once.
Related DailyWireless articles include; CDMA vs OFDM, UMTS TDD: The Other Broadband Standard, Siemens and Huawei developing TD-SCDMA, and Unwired in Maui.
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