Linked by David Adams on Wed 25th Sep 2002 15:53 UTC
The information that I could find on the web about Sprint's new '3G' high-speed data service was a little short on solid information, so I spoke with Kevin Packingham, Senior Manager of Business Marketing for SprintPCS' new Vision service. I sought him out because Ubiquitous, affordable high speed wireless data services are something of a holy grail for tech-savvy road warriors like myself, so I received each morsel of information about Sprint's new service with great interest. Mr. Packingham spoke over the phone and he clarified many of the questions that I had about the new service.
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The ITU defined 3G as having a minimum speed of 144 kbps. In that regard, Sprint Vision (based on qualcomms CDMA 1xRTT) is in fact 3G, barely but it makes it.
Reports regarding both sprint and verizon's service (they use the same tech) are that any were from 56 K to 64 K is routinely achievable.
The W-CDMA networks that Ericsson and NOkia want to monopolize the "3G" term with will likely provide no better speeds than sprint vision, or at least not much. FOMA users in japan, also a W-CDMA network. are getting 64 kbps on average. problem there is first you build the network for coverage (larger cells) and then for capacity (smaller cells). Other problem is that that magical 2 Mbps is the total capacity of one 5 MHz channel. subtract overhead and you get 986 or so kbps per second. if you don't have another radio channel then no 2 mbps of useable data. It is also SHARED capacity to get the max you'll need to sit under the base station at 3 am on a tuesday morning when no one else is using it.
Moreover, 3G vs. not 3G will be determined by consumers based on applications and sprint PCS vision will run most, if not all, of the same apps as W-CDMA.
At the end of the day fighting over whether or not cdma2000 is real 3G vs W-CDMA UMTS is silly. THEY BOTH SUCK FOR DATA. BOTH ARE OPTIMIZED FOR VOICE. BOTH COST TOO MUCH AND DELIVER TOO LITTLE.
If you want to see something that will deliver the 3G experience then check out www.flarion.com or www.broadstorm.com. These are the real deal
Another interesting note. Check out this article
http://www.nordicwirelesswatch.com/wireless/story.html?story_id=222...
Sounds like nokia is pushing GPRS as 3G now as well.