ITU decides

watty

LTE Advanced and the not yet deployed Wimax-2 802.11m are 4G.

Clearwire USA and Imagine WiMax in Ireland are officially only 3G.

via http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/21/itu-lays-down-law-wimax-2-lte-advanced-are-4g-everyone-else-i/

I'd say also that unless you have at least 6 x 20MHz Channels and ideally 9 x 20MHz channels you can't deliver 4G performance.

But it still won't be Broadband. http://www.techtir.ie/blog/watty/mobile-never-broadband

clohamon

watty wrote: »

I'd say also that unless you have at least 6 x 20MHz Channels and ideally 9 x 20MHz channels you can't deliver 4G performance.

Still think IoffL should make a technical presentation to Comreg to support administrative assignment of spectrum and request to appear before the Dail Committee on Communications Energy & Natural resources to make the same presentation in layman's terms.

watty

2004 the Government knew what to do.

There are knowlegeable people in Comreg. The Government wants to maximise Spectrum Revenue = Multiple Mobile, not one Operator. and Mobile never Fixed.

Also the Government won't spend money.

clohamon

watty wrote: »

2004 the Government knew what to do.

There are knowlegeable people in Comreg. The Government wants to maximise Spectrum Revenue = Multiple Mobile, not one Operator. and Mobile never Fixed.

Also the Government won't spend money.

I'm sure thats all true. But as a campaigning group you must still make the case in public no matter how slight the chances of success.

Comreg will be forced to publish your presentation and argue the details in public.

There are enough opposition members on the Dail committee to give your presentation a fair wind if its done in a politically neutral way with plenty of graphics for the less technically minded.

watty

Meerkats peering at pie charts...

Kittens cuddling barcharts.

Perhaps.

bealtine

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/4g-defined-wimax-and-lte-dont-qualify-683

If someone is trying to sell you 4G wireless these days, don't believe them.

The truth is, neither WiMax nor LTE (Long-Term Evolution) qualify as 4G (fourth-generation) technologies, according to the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). On Thursday, the group announced it had finished its assessment of submissions for the 4G standard, also called IMT-Advanced. Based on that group's decision, to really be selling 4G, carriers will have to get going with one of two future technologies, called LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced. The latter, also known as IEEE 802.16m, will form the basis of WiMax Release 2.


However, it appears that's not going to stop service providers from advertising current and upcoming services as 4G.

For WiMax operator Clearwire, the 4G label denotes an advancement beyond 3G networks, Clearwire spokesman Mike DiGioia said. "WiMax, and the LTE products that are coming out, are all sufficiently advanced past the 3G networks to indicate that they're moving forward," he said.

"The ITU's current technical definition in no way affects our plans to launch the world's first large-scale LTE network later this year. We're all about real people using actual products and services," Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson wrote in an e-mail message.

It's no small thing to get Clearwire and Verizon to agree on something. In fact, proponents of mobile WiMax and LTE have often clashed over the question of standards and the "4G" label. Some LTE proponents have said WiMax isn't the true successor to 3G, which like LTE came about with strong backing from established cellular operators. WiMax came from the data networking world, backed enthusiastically by Intel. Now, neither one of those systems will get to be officially called 4G.

However, it's worth noting that 4G qualification doesn't mean LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced products will interoperate. They simply both meet all the criteria the ITU-R set for 4G. For research purposes, the group set 4G targets of 100M bps (bits per second) downstream with high mobility and 1G bps for low mobility.

Though they aren't on sale yet, the two future technologies are on their way. IEEE 802.16m is expected to be ratified later this year, and the WiMax Forum plans to begin certifying products under its WiMax Release 2 specification in the fourth quarter of next year. Samsung has said its tests of pre-standard 802.16m equipment achieved a downstream speed of 330M bps. Though that was in a test setting with no other users competing for bandwidth, it still represents a big jump beyond today's WiMax, which typically gives individual users 3M bps to 6M bps, with bursts up to 10M bps, according to Clearwire. Verizon has demonstrated its LTE network at 5M bps to 12M bps in the real world.

WiMax and LTE do mark significant advances from 3G, because they use IP (Internet Protocol) from end to end and were designed from the beginning for data, said Tolaga Research analyst Phil Marshall. But to standards bodies, the mark of a new technology generation typically is an order-of-magnitude increase in performance like the one coming with IMT-Advanced, he said.

"There's more likely a fundamental step in the way in which technologies are used when you go through a ten-fold increase in performance," Marshall said.

Carriers probably won't deploy the next-generation technologies until 2014 or 2015, Marshall said. But that could be good timing, because it may take until then to shift voice calling over to data networks and update billing systems and other back-end infrastructure for the new technologies, he said.

PogMoThoin

bealtine wrote: »

However, it appears that's not going to stop service providers from advertising current and upcoming services as 4G.

Imagine already are, sign up for information on their webpage and this is the email You recieve

Hi X,

Thanks for reserving your place on our WiMax 4G Network. From Capital to Countryside, we are bringing WiMax to more areas every day. Now that you have reserved a place we'll keep you up to date on the roll out.

As soon as you can get WiMax, we will call you to let you know.
In the mean time, if you have any questions just call us on 1890 929 007. We are open Monday to Friday from 9am to 8.30pm.

Talk to you soon,
The WiMax Upgrade Team.

watty

Their system is a particularly bad example of WiMax
Imagine WiMax
1) No national licence, only circles
2) Mobile/Nomadic system has 1/8th capacity for same spectrum than superior Fixed WiMax
3) Unsuitable Frequency for Mobile/Nomadic, 3.6GHz
4) Insufficent spectrum to deliver low enough contention, congestion is high
5) Too high a Cap for their capacity results in poor performance

Fixed WiMax does deliver Broadband, but it's not 4G on the technicality that it's not Mobile. The 2G, 3G, 4G is only used to describe Mobile. Thus Imagine are advertising and rolling out Mobile / Nomadic product on the 3.6GHz, which is only suitable for Fixed use.