Looking into the future

Party AnimalParty Animal Posts: 1,372
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Lets jump forward a couple of years when the whole country has got 4G on there mobile phones (or 98%) as it probably will be

and going even more into science fiction the prices for the 4G are reasonable

will that mean the end to having home Broadband ISP's

I only have my landline because I have got to have it for the broadband and need some light at the end of the tunnel

how do you think it will pan out

Comments

  • Hugh_Hugh_ Posts: 951
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    I think in a few years we will see TV's with LTE 4G built in, just stick a sim card into your telly. Access all the ondemand content ect.

    I still think we will all have/want a fixed home BB service but the difference in cost and quality of service between fixed BB and 4G/Mobile BB will be less and less...
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 8
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    I think the reality of it is that a similar thing will happen as did with 3G uptake, the original adaptors got the speeds expected, and then the later adaptors came along, and everyone got slower speeds.
    Home broadband has an average contention ratio of 20:1 on copper, meaning that at any one time, you could be sharing the data tunnel to the exchange with 20 other people, so the reality of the situation is that if every one of those 20 went online to stream video, you would get a real world speed of a 20th of that pipe. This was due to the limitations of the copper, but now that we have the Fibre, it is a different story, or at least the figures do not look so bad. At the moment, I believe the contention ratio is 1:1, such that you get your own dedicated space in the fibre back to the exchange, a more guaranteed speed if you will. This is all to do with multiplexing the light streams down the glass fibre, and the fact that you could have thousands of these, each carrying hundreds (if not in the future with new vector multiplexing techniques, thousands) of people's data at very high data rates, where the limitation has yet to be reached.

    We now come to 3G (HSDPA, HSUPA) data connections. To keep with the same principles as above, you could be sharing your connection with hundreds of people, such that the contention ratio could be as bad as 2000:1, but the real word differs from this as this is based on the maximum a cell site can handle. You therefore are sharing the data rate between alot more people, so the only way you can get the full speed is to be in a good signal path with a good signal to noise ratio to the tower, and for you to be the only one on it. Due to the equipment and technology, you still have a much bigger latency using a 3G, so that if you were having a live stream sent to your phone, you may notice delays and missing packets. The Skype calls you make may contain hundreds of packets a minute that fail to be received, but you would not notice this as these packets are kept small. Unlike a file transfer, the voice over IP lost packets are not resent, as humans can not pick up these missing packets. However for file transfers, and other times you need a 1-for-1 copy of the original, the latency and mobile phone signal would mean transfer rates are slower that the same 'speed' of a home broadband connection. Also, every time the mobile signal strength changes, the modulation and even technology (3G > EDGE) method changes, so there is packet loss when it changes back and forth.

    4G on the other hand has much more advanced technology to deal with all this, and so holds up better, and the speeds will stay higher, but you will never be able to escape the latency, or the speeds jumping around.

    In my opinion, and that is only in my opinion, 4G can never replace home internet for people that have good reliable speeds at present with their ADSL connections. It will fulfil the need in the areas that cannot be covered by land based internet communication methods; it would just not be as good as it would be if they had the same 'speed' over copper or fibre.
  • John_PatrickJohn_Patrick Posts: 924
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    There are still millions of people out there content with their GSM only phones. Dont think that LTE will make too much an effect on that just yet.
  • whoever,heywhoever,hey Posts: 30,992
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    LTE adds nothing to my already fantastic experience with three.

    I can stream HD video already. What more am i going to need exactly? Torrents?
  • DevonBlokeDevonBloke Posts: 6,835
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    In 2000 3G was a solution for a problem that didn't exist.
    13 years later we are on the cusp of seeing the 3G networks collapsing under the strain.
    LTE will be the solution. In 2 years time the clever networks will have fibered all their cells so providing unlimited future proofed backhaul. There will be many more LTE handset out there thereby load balancing the data across both 3G and LTE.
  • clonmultclonmult Posts: 3,366
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    DevonBloke wrote: »
    In 2000 3G was a solution for a problem that didn't exist.
    13 years later we are on the cusp of seeing the 3G networks collapsing under the strain.
    LTE will be the solution. In 2 years time the clever networks will have fibered all their cells so providing unlimited future proofed backhaul. There will be many more LTE handset out there thereby load balancing the data across both 3G and LTE.

    Nope.

    Why are the networks having problems with the 3G traffic? Down to the performance of the underlying infrastructure - which is the same on LTE as it is on 3G (ie. they all connect to the same series of pipes/tubes/fibers/whatevers).

    EE have built a new set of masts using new technology, but those masts are not going to be connected to a totally new backbone - building that would be ridiculously expensive.
  • DevonBlokeDevonBloke Posts: 6,835
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    clonmult wrote: »
    Nope.

    Why are the networks having problems with the 3G traffic? Down to the performance of the underlying infrastructure - which is the same on LTE as it is on 3G (ie. they all connect to the same series of pipes/tubes/fibers/whatevers).

    EE have built a new set of masts using new technology, but those masts are not going to be connected to a totally new backbone - building that would be ridiculously expensive.

    Sorry, you're wrong. It is a fact that EE (and probably most other networks) are right now digging fibre to nearly every mast. Apparently currently 1Gbps minimum but easily scalable to 10 or 100Gbps.
    3Gs problem is the technology itself. A single mast can't handle that many handsets before everything starts to crawl. So even if the backhaul is there, in a densely populated area the technology can't cope. The mast itself becomes the bottleneck.
    If that mast now has LTE as well the strain on the 3G side will be reduced.
    Also EE are mostly using existing masts not building new ones just for LTE (although I'm sure there will be plenty of new ones).
    So EE are effectively building a new backbone and it is costing a ridiculous amount of money (about 1.5 Billion).
    The ridiculous bit is people moaning about the extra £5 per month for an LTE contract. They have to get the money from somewhere.
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