Digiwebs New 4G Service

Altreab

Has anyone heard whats happening to the 4G rollout we heard so much about early in the year? Based on a 088 number If IRC. It was mentioned at the time that it would be happening during the summer time.
Anyone from Digiweb here to fill us in on the new service?

govinda

Something 088 launching Monday and being discussed here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=53622842

Sponge Bob

Not in the wesht its not

Altreab

Sponge Bob wrote:

Not in the wesht its not

ah FFS is it the usual "launching in Dublin Cork Waterford Limerick Galway" and "Nationwide coverage coming soon" ssssss white?

SkepticOne

From an email sent out:

Back in May, we announced details on our Mobile Broadband plans after being awarded the 088 mobile number. If you are in the Fingal County area and would like to get your hands on the hottest technology around, contact our Business team on 1800 94 1000 for pricing and plans - you won't be disappointed!

Fingal County area. Once again South Dublin left in the cold.

crawler

<- gagged (muffle muffle muffle!!)

Urban Weigl

crawler wrote:

<- gagged (muffle muffle muffle!!)

Let's face it, coverage is going to be pretty spotty.

I'm mean.

Blaster99

Now that eircom knows all the details, you may as well let us know too...

Altreab

i had a quick chat with digiweb sales today and the following sems to be the spec.

UPTO 5.3 Megs Download speeds.
1.3 Meg Upload
15 Gig a month bandwidth allowance. 5 cent a meg for excess
1 Year Contract
€99 activation fee
€29.95 a month plus excess fees (as mentioned above)
"Free" Wireless router included in the activation fee.

At the moment its on trial in Fingal and will be expanded to the usual urban areas during the year. No Dates could be given as to when exactly it would be in Galway city never mind Galway county.
I believe 400 people are doing the trial in Fingal at the moment.
Can anyone else confirm the above details?

Urban Weigl

088 phone service has been delayed until next year, due to mostly (Surprise! Surprise!) lack of feasible handsets... At least that is what someone, who shall remain nameless, told me.

I wonder how long it will take them to match O2, Vodafone and 3 in terms of mobile broadband coverage? Fingal is pretty pitiful, though obviously that is only the beginning, so it would be wrong to judge Digiweb on that.

Sponge Bob

Its the first live operation in the world on that spectrum and with that radio technology (flash ofdm) so no WONDER there is a handset problem.

Mindya Digiwebs 'other' licence for this tech is in Norway . The latter will take some rolling out Ireland has one mountain peak over 1000m while Norway has 200 or 300 peaks over 2000m .

cgarvey

Digiweb in "nothing to see here" shock... again.

damien

Currently putting something together a list of Irish Tech Vapourware. Should it make the list?

Sponge Bob

It could possibly make such a list which should also include

1. eircoms 3g network , hah ...they can't even get Fingal on test .
2. eircoms VDSL2+ in the 5 big cities ...poof .
3. eircoms 100 exchanges announced last year ( none live, not a single one )
4. eircoms 330 exchanges announced this year , completion 2011 or 2012 .
5. eircoms population 'coverage' for their 3.5ghz 'service'
6. all forms of licence enforcement by comreg, thats a very foul smelling vapour that one .
7. every announcement that Chorus EVER made about ANYTHING ( PVRs are only the most recent )
8. Cable TV in Castlebar which is live today according to the DCMNR and without even a Head End. ASTOUNDING laws of physics they have in Mayo 9 The Western Digital Corridor , actually a pothole ridden unlit boreen with a very fancy name .
10.The Armagh Monaghan Digital Corridor
11 Genesis Europe Ltd , why should Cork not have some of its very own vapour .
12.Tetra
13.Digital TV
14.Rural BPON GPON ...whoops I forgot my NDA on that one , MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmMmmmMMMM

And thats only off the top of my head.

Urban Weigl

Best. List. Of. Vapourware. Ever.

I was almost disconnected with my chair.

watty

Well the Digiweb mobile Broadband (which is not a phone based service like 3G) is running in Finglas. So it can't make it to the vapourware list.

Anyway, which do you want?
An expensive iPhoney handset or Mobile Internet for the Laptop / PDA /UMPC?

Can we add latency free Satellite services or does that not apply as the vendor has gone away?

When is Meteor launching 3G?

Urban Weigl

Digiweb have been talking about a "4G" network with nearly 100% coverage, in fact better coverage than standard 2G mobile phones currently have. They have also been talking about a 088 phone service.

Beyond a data-only trial in Fingal, neither of these exist at this point. Is that not the very definition of vapourware?

Edit: I will give you that at least there is a trial. Some of the other services on that list have not even reached that stage. I wish Digiweb put out a realistic timeline for when their service will actually be available, rather than saying "soon", etc, as they have in the past.

And never-mind the iPhone, the 088 phone service is not even available on a basic phone at this stage.

SkepticOne

I think proper vapourware would be services that have been announced for purely PR reasons but the company has no real intention of carrying out. Spongebob has mentioned some of these in this thread. Digiweb has also been guilty of these e.g. choice of ISPs over Digiweb's Metro service. Also there was supposed to be digital TV over the metro service. Do digiweb intend to deliver on these?

Sponge Bob

BT SDSL
Colt LLU
C&W LLU
Mary Harney , lots of vapour emissions .
Anything Mary Harney ever said about the e-Hub of Europe
A Single Warehouse in Dublin = Digital Hub ...surely thats vapour ???!!
Ice communications nationwide bb service by end 2007 , yeah.
Mary O Rourke and her 5mbit BB for all by end 2006 was it not ?????
Mary O Rourke on any subject more complex than dog racing.
02 and their 2g coverage map, trés vapourific that .
I also remember Digiweb promising a wholesale/oem version of Metro Sceptic One .

As far as I am concerned , any missed schedule or bs statement = vapour .

Thats why eircom , in announcing 100 exchanges where they had no money in November 2006, and in failing to deliver a single one 9 months later almost , are guilty as charged. I will withdraw that if all 100 are live by the end of October 2007 but I do not expect to be withdrawing anything .

Wcool

Altreab wrote:

UPTO 5.3 Megs Download speeds.
1.3 Meg Upload
15 Gig a month bandwidth allowance. 5 cent a meg for excess
1 Year Contract
€99 activation fee
€29.95 a month plus excess fees (as mentioned above)
"Free" Wireless router included in the activation fee.

I haven't seen anyone confirm these figures but if these are the right figures, I think it's a step back.

Right now, you get 3Mb download and 30Gb allowance for 30 euro with Digiweb.
It seems to me that for the same money you get half the allowance and because your download speed is faster, you will pass that limit faster...

Benefits, I guess, are mobility (or is it fixed wireless??) and higher upload speed (which is mostly useless as it will add towards your limit).

I just can't imagine that Digiweb is offering this? Seems not competitive at all.

cgarvey

Mobility / nomadic qualities + greater reach than traditional wireless methods. This product is not designed to replace your cable or DSL modem.

Wcool

Well, will you fork out another 30 euro on top of your regular broadband bill?

I guess businesses might or the hardcore gamer, provided ping times are low.
And maybe if they provide a killer mobile service (read very low rates).

It still seems expensive to me.

watty

cgarvey wrote:

Mobility / nomadic qualities + greater reach than traditional wireless methods. This product is not designed to replace your cable or DSL modem.

Absolutely agreed. But unlike WiFi (not really Mobile) or 3G (not true IP) it's a real mobile IP based Wireless WAN product. Handover between sectors/cells with no packet loss, just a peak in ping time (still less than regular 3G/HSDPA latency).

However if it's the only alternative to a phone line and dialup... For mix between good rural range /larger cells and good building penetration via windows and small urban cells, its a great frequency band too.

If you want higher speeds, huge cap, lower cost per MByte etc, and don't need mobile, then ADSL, Cable or Metro is obviously better. A lightly loaded cell will however be much more like basic ADSL experience. The latency makes 3G/HSDPA feel worse than ISDN and frankly a Satellite link I was testing was a nicer experience than HSDPA.

Marlow

Sponge Bob wrote:

Ice communications nationwide bb service by end 2007 , yeah.

That is definatly the type of vapourware, that can beat any of Eircoms statements or attempts. How would they get it right nationwide, if they don't get it right in their homeyard ?

Wcool wrote:

Right now, you get 3Mb download and 30Gb allowance for 30 euro with Digiweb.
It seems to me that for the same money you get half the allowance and because your download speed is faster, you will pass that limit faster...

They just make you hit the wall faster, can't you see the fun in that ? Backwards thinking accellerated

/Marlow

SkepticOne

What I'll be interested in is whether it can be used as a decent platform for VoIP. In Ireland there is a lack of alternatives to Eircom's line rental.

I'm not too bothered about download caps myself although I can see how many heavy users will hopefully be put off from getting the service.

Marlow

SkepticOne wrote:

What I'll be interested in is whether it can be used as a decent platform for VoIP. In Ireland there is a lack of alternatives to Eircom's line rental.

I'm not too bothered about download caps myself although I can see how many heavy users will hopefully be put off from getting the service.

You need good latency and a jitter-free connection for VoIP, usually less than 150-200ms to your VoIP is recommended. I don't see any mobile/nomadic wireless solution providing that for a good while. Even in fixed wireless it can be a b**ch, as you not even need clear LoS, but also a clear fresnel-zone to have solid, non-varying ping-times.

/Marlow

SkepticOne

Marlow wrote:

Even in fixed wireless it can be a b**ch, as you not even need clear LoS, but also a clear fresnel-zone to have solid, non-varying ping-times.

I have fixed wireless. VoIP works very well for me. We will need to wait and see what the story is with their mobile offering.

Marlow

SkepticOne wrote:

I have fixed wireless. VoIP works very well for me. We will need to wait and see what the story is with their mobile offering.

Don't get me wrong: Fixed wireless for VoIP is better than DSL, if you're not on a marginal link. I'm on fixed wireless, too and I would not want to swap it for DSL or cable any time, not that I've got the choice

The problem with nomadic/mobile is specificly, that it's often working of marginal signal rates and it's been optimized to do that, but the downside is that your latency goes up. VoIP will be messy, if so.

/Marlow

watty

3G/HSDPA 120ms to 350ms

Digiweb Flash-OFDM < 50ms maybe? I think you run out of sector capacity long before the latency is bad.

Jitter is a complex issue and affects fax on VOIP most of all. It depends on packet buffer size , dynamic vs static buffer and codec type as to if jitter is important for VOIP. Fax will only work on G.711 (T.38 is not really a codec, but a Tiff relay agent).

SkepticOne

watty wrote:

Fax will only work on G.711 (T.38 is not really a codec, but a Tiff relay agent).

Fax over a VoIP connection is a bad use of technology, imo. Fax, like an analogue dialup modem, itself is an attempt to get digital information over an analogue voice line.

The correct solution, imo, is a fax gateway or email with scanning if necessary. Much better use of resources.

watty

yep. I agree. Faxes are dying out anyway, modems such as Skybox, phonewatch etc still a problem, but not as fussy as fax. Older gateways quite logically used multipage tiff files (since that's what a fax is a stream version of), but people will insist in installing image viewers that only can see the 1st page in the TIFF.

So nowadays, probably PDF attachments are better from the gateway. The email TO the gateway can be more flexible.

Sometimes I have to use modem on my VOIP as I have no other way to access changing some info on a different ISP, due to IP based security instead of username & password. Update of FTP or Web content should not be locked into IP range of host ISP.