To: DaveMG who wrote (140 ) 7/17/1999 8:38:00 AM From: DaveMG Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 426
*CDG conference continued* Next question; how will there be enough bandwidth? Craig - services delivered on a best-effort basis. Voice has no delay. Might have half second delays or two second delays for data. That allows for more efficient queuing of the packets. Need to get them in the right order. 2Mb tomorrow is vastly cheaper tomorrow than the next 80 seconds. Need to ask customers how quickly they need the data - give discounts for delays!!! [Ed: The exclamation marks are mine. The percipient among you will have realized that about right there my ears perked up no end. Yes, he was talking about variable pricing to get subscribers to use the network at the best time, boost capacity by spreading the load, improve services and make more money]. Irwin said need to share wideband carrier, voice and data. Can't optimize both. Not much experience yet so need to learn on this. HDR is the initial effort. Operators need to work out how to do this, ie balance voice and data. [Ed; seems this is quite a tricky thing to get right and is vital to make the networks optimal]. Then they gave a poll result. How much will be data by 2003? The viewers said 47% or something like that. I voted but had no idea, so that shows you what the viewers know and what the poll was worth. Next question. Is this 3G a technology looking for a market? Craig said they have to get the costs down. There is demand. They need to get away from minute pricing. They will bill by data transferred. [Ed: More pricing stuff and it seems they are right on track to price it correctly to maximize utility and profit]. Lucent said 14.4 is much too slow though it built the internet. The speed people will demand is uncertain - how much will they pay for? The pipes and access are limiting now. The technology is behind demand at present. [Ed; I agree with that, I want fibre and will pay heaps. Also WWeb and Eudoracoin but they didn't answer that question]. Lucent continued that they have no idea on the full demands people will make. Internet is a big one, but the technology is holding things back. Irwin said, most mobile users mostly will use voice, but it will be a computer. Mostly little data in mobile, but some applications will be wanting more data. For example maps. Maybe at an airport. Spectrum is limited, but low cost basestations as people move out of wirelne will expand the use of spectrum quite economically. Next question. Re Operator's Harmonisation Group, how much interoperability will there be between the two systems? Craig was optimistic that the technology will be a global standard. The internet is a good example of a common standard. There are few others. He gave a few such as electricity [different voltages] and most things are different standards. [Ed: He really wants a global standard so I guess the hagfish crowd will be having to justify any weird parameters in the VW40 specs with something better than 'We thought that this would mess you up, annoy you and make your life more difficult and cost you money for no reason other than it might protect our market a bit'] Dave [Lucent] said about 70% of subscribers were represented and 80% of manufacturers. Commonality across modes is being driven. Maybe across bands too. Good progress was made on harmonisation. Irwin, leaning again towards the camera and speaking with emphasis said he is skeptical on some of these things requiring many groups to work together. Some resistance is still in the harmonisation process. Standards are NOT complete. Testing continues, lessons are being learned. There is room to bring things together. Going to 3.84 chip rate for example, which was a good move [Ed: by the VW40 crowd]. Also, code division pilot, to bring together. Modes will be different, but a lot easier to get devices which will cover it. Perry said standardisation bodies now have to integrate a single standard with multiple modes. Then, they picked your correspondent's question [actually Clark's - they ignored mine about Eudoracoin, cdma2000 in space and something else]. It was how much extra cost is there in producing a multimode ASIC and handset? Irwin answered. [Ed: and this was a VERY weird feeling, having just asked a question, to have Irwin looking down the camera straight at me, answering the thing, with Perry La Forge having just used my name and recognized it from 'the internet', at 6am in the morning having been awake since 4.30am, while I'm at the puter, which is normally a dark-cave and private experience. It made me realize how powerful this WWeb stuff will be when it is in full bloom. Imagine you will be able to chat with your buddies, Mum, girlfriend or, yes, he'll be there too, BOSS! wherever you are. It will feel VERY immediate. It will sell billions. It is NOT a technology looking for a market.] Anyway, Irwin said that the chip will pick up the mode internally, going through the architecture and they can support these multimodes in a reasonable cost. Chip cost is relatively small. Quite a bit of software behind the ASIC to go with one mode or another. Not much percentage difference in cost. Dave added a bit more... And that, folks, was that... In summary, here comes cdma2000, slowly but relentlessly, Edge is Toast, p-----g is going to move front and centre and it will be time dependent and subscriber need dependent, 3G is heading for fairly good convergence sufficient to work on a single ASIC with some software backup. Globalstar Constellation2 will be mostly voice only, with Teledesic being the data route for Globalstar subscribers [I reckon since 144 Kbps is too slow].