engineer,
Anyway, how much of this highly limited data can they really sell? No email, no real news stories possible when you hear that QCOM went up or down 20 points. As soon as you have this little data, you need more.
I guess the web sites will at one point in a very near future add support for mini-browsers of handhelds. Hotmail handles email very well and it is browser based, no need for email client software.
Just compare these 2 web pages:
altavista.com
altavista.com
The first one is 3,106 bytes
The second one is 23,342 bytes for HTML
plus 17,858 for gif files = 40K
They pretty much do the same. More than half of the data of the first page (3K page) seems to be the list of languages you want to use and a bunch of links. It can get even more Spartan than this to fit on a display of a handset, Palm Pilot or pdQ. These devices are primarily text based, and the number of characters they can display is only somewhere between 100 and 500 bytes.
I question this whole mirage of 3G. To me it has too many contradictions. On one hand, people talk about the limited spectrum. But they advertise 3G class bit rates of 1 or 2 Mbs. A single user can clog the whole 1.25 MHz chunk of spectrum. The opportunity cost are the voice calls that can't be made. I think someone mentioned 30 to 60 simultaneous voice calls per 1.25 Mhz channel. Are the carriers going to charge $3 to $6 per minute and are users going to pay this much to watch Pamela Anderson movie on their notebooks?
If you use the technology for the wrong thing, you get the same problems as what you describe CDPD will face.
I don't know how much more efficient HDR will be compared to CDPD as far as how much bandwidth you can get from given spectrum. It's probably more. Do you know how much more?
Just for comparison, go to qualcomm.com The home page is 21K for HTML + 90K for graphics = 111K for a single page.
If you want to go from text based web browser at 500 bytes per page to 100K per page, you need 20x the bandwidth increase. Can HDR deliver 20x what CDPD can deliver per given spectrum? I don't think it will.
It seems to be that the industry is setting itself up to something they can't deliver, and in the process they are passing up opportunity to deliver product that is realistic and meaningful.
Joe |
