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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (11380)	6/6/2001 2:34:19 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196694

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.