I think that this will shed some light on the speed of Docomo's network....unfortunately, I have never seen anything like it for the 1x roll-out.
appelsiini.net
Subject: FOMA Data Card impression
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 16:40:10 +0900
From: Hideyo Imazu
We got a PC Card 3G service terminal which works only for data
communication, not for voice communication.
I tried it on my Win2000 laptop.
>From PC's point of view, it looks exactly as a PC Card modem.
You can even issue AT commands from a terminal program to the card.
Once you install the device driver (drivers for Win98/Me/2000 bundled),
you can configure dial-up network connection using the 3G "modem".
There are two modes the card works in -- circuit switched mode at
64kbps and packet switched mode presumably at 384kbps. Which mode to
use is determined by phone number -- if the phone number to dial is an
ordinary phone number consisted only of numbers, it works in circuit
switched mode. You can connect to ISDN dial-up numbers. I confirmed
that the Equant number 03-5323-7038 worked and my personal ISP account
worked as well.
If the phone number to dial starts with *, then it works in packet
switched mode. Currently only NTT DoCoMo's "Mopera" Internet access
service provides a service for 3G packet. The phone number is
"*99***1#".
In both cases, there is nothing special from PC's point of view -- the
3G card looks like a modem.
Probably due the trial nature of the service, the radio signal is
barely ok at places within 5 meters from window as long as IT occupying
area on the 8th floor goes. You can get the signal most strongly at the
south edge.
The 3G modem is bundled with an external antenna. Because of the high
frequency (2G or so, I think), you cannot expect strong signal reaching
inside buildings. At my desk, I sometimes loose signal even though I
have the external antenna attached. On the south edge and area within 3
meters from the edge, you can get reliable connection w/o external
antenna.
With the 64kbps circuit switched mode, it's almost like 64kbps ISDN
connection. The only difference is longer round trip time. When I
connected to Equant, round trip time between my PC and Tokyo UNIX boxes
was 430ms or so. I don't remember round trip time over real ISDN lines,
but it should not longer than 200ms.
I tried downloading 1M byte or so file over with the packet switched
mode, which resulted in 13k byte per second. It's not bad even though
way below 384kbps DoCoMo's 3G packet presumably capable of.
According to the trial service document I got, connection charge is 26
yen per 30 seconds w/ circuit switched and 0.05 yen per 128 bytes w/
packet switched. To transfer a 1M byte data, it costs 130 yen over
circuit switched and 410 yen over packet switched. Even though packet
switched is almost 2 times faster than circuit switched, packet
switched is about 3 times more expensive than circuit switched for a
same amount of data transferred.
Regards,
Hideyo Imazu. |
