SPCS announces EV-DO release

Paul Miner wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 04:25:40 GMT, "John Richards"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Yep. I stayed at a Comfort Suites hotel recently, and the whole
>> chain has free WiFi in all rooms. Even if you're not a payin guest,
>> you can go sit in the lobby and use their WiFi.
>
> Perhaps slightly OT for this group, but how did they provide WiFi in
> each room? The reason I ask is that I recently spent a night at a Days
> Inn where they initially claimed that every room had WiFi available. I
> couldn't get squat so I called the Front Desk and the guy said he had
> a Linksys WRT-54G down in the lobby. Hmmm, I thought, that means there
> are about 40 walls to pass through, so no wonder I didn't see any
> signal up in my room at the far end of the building. I'm just curious
> how they get a usable signal into each room at Comfort Suites.

There were no visible devices, but I assume that they had WAPs
(wireless access points) acting as repeaters at various locations.
I was on the third floor, at the end of a wing that was farthest away
from the lobby, yet the signal strength picked up by my laptop's
PC Card (PCMCIA) adapter was fair to good.

--
John Richards

---

› See More: SPCS announces EV-DO release

I don't know the local cost of roadrunner, but my dsl is around $50, so
how is evdo 3 times the cost? Besides that it is apples to oranges.
dsl does not get me data on my phone.


Joseph Huber wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 21:34:50 -0700, "Mij Adyaw" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Sprint EVDO is not anymore expensive than Verizon EVDO. It is $80.00 per
>>month. I will be upgrading the wireless card in my laptop next week to
>>support EVDO. I do not know what you guys are bellyaching about.
>
>
> Sprint's EV-DO may not be more expensive than Verizion's, but they are
> both significantly more expensive than competing high-speed internet
> technology such as DSL and cable. EV-DO costs twice as much per month
> as my cable internet connection, three times as much as DSL would
> cost me, is 3-5 times slower than my cable interent, and initially, at
> least for Sprint, is going to very limited geographically as to where
> I could actually use it.
>
> Given that WiFi is available for a few bucks in most airports, many
> reasonably priced hotels have some type of high-speed Internet access,
> and the fact that right now, there's a better chance of me, as a
> business traveler, not being able to use EV-DO at any given location
> than being able to use it, how does one justify paying $80/month for
> this service? It makes no economic sense.
>
> Joe Huber
> [email protected]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:44:23 GMT, Paul Miner wrote:
>>I expected the VX8000 to be way faster. But it wasn't.
>Your "testing" was flawed, which led to your disappointment.

What kind of comparison should be done???

Joe Huber
[email protected]

"Jerome Zelinske" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:Np%[email protected]...
> I don't know the local cost of roadrunner, but my dsl is around $50, so
> how is evdo 3 times the cost? Besides that it is apples to oranges.
> dsl does not get me data on my phone.

Nor can you take your DSL down the street, across town, or anywhere else one
can go with the coverage area.

Bob

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 02:07:41 GMT, Jerome Zelinske
<[email protected]> wrote:

> I don't know the local cost of roadrunner, but my dsl is around $50, so
>how is evdo 3 times the cost? Besides that it is apples to oranges.
>dsl does not get me data on my phone.

DSL (unlimited 1.5 Mbps down / 384 kbps up) is being offered for
$25/month by SBC and $30/month by Waymark in this market (before
taxes). 80/30 = 2.67 ~= 3. These are the long-term prices, not the
introductory short-term prices. Comcast is offering cable Internet
for $42/month to cable customers.

I'm not talking about getting data on my phone, I'm talking about
getting data on my laptop. DSL, or cable, or whatever it is, gets me
high speed Internet on my laptop when I'm in my hotel room while
traveling, and that is where I'd be using EV-DO most
frequently...seems like apples-to-apples to me.

Joe Huber
[email protected]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 02:28:15 GMT, "Bob Smith"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Nor can you take your DSL down the street, across town, or anywhere else one
>can go with the coverage area.

Since Sprint is marketing EV-DO to business users, perhaps we should
look at some places where business users might realistically need data
access, instead of these ambiguous places like "down the street" or
"across town":
1) Hotel room
2) Airport
3) Convention center/public meeting place
4) Client's company
5) Taxi cab/other transportation
6) ???

In my experience, most of 1-3) are now covered by WiFi or wired
Internet, which is much cheaper than EV-DO, and in some cases free.
Your clients might let you use their network, or they may not. If
they don't EV-DO is nice. EV-DO would be a great for 5). I would say
the majority of usage would be with 1-4).

Maybe I just work for a small company where expenditures are
scrutinized, but there's no way I could justify to my employer a
charge of $80/month for a service that I can get free/much cheaper in
most of the places I need it, not to mention the fact that with the
present limited coverage area of EV-DO, if I did need EV-DO, there's a
very good chance I might not be able to use it for lack of coverage.
Maybe your employer is different.

Joe Huber
[email protected]

Cable internet tends to be rather pricey compared to DSL.
SBC DSL is $14.95 for 1500kbps and $24.99 for 3000kbps.
I agree that fixed broadband should not be compared to mobile
data services.

--
John Richards

Jerome Zelinske wrote:
> I don't know the local cost of roadrunner, but my dsl is around $50, so
> how is evdo 3 times the cost? Besides that it is apples to oranges.
> dsl does not get me data on my phone.

John Richards wrote:
> Tinman wrote:
>> John Richards wrote:
>>> Yep. I stayed at a Comfort Suites hotel recently, and the whole
>>> chain has free WiFi in all rooms. Even if you're not a payin guest,
>>> you can go sit in the lobby and use their WiFi.
>>
>> I travel a lot on business. Most all of the hotels I've stayed at
>> that offer free WiFi use a proxy server-based authentication system.
>> You are given a password at check-in, and sometimes the password
>> must be used with a username (generally, your room number).
>>
>> In fact, the last Comfort Suites I stayed in did exactly that
>> (password only). So while I could certainly use WiFi in the lobby,
>> someone wandering in off the street without a password could not
>> (as, IMO, it should be).
>
> The Comfort Suites I stayed at (Oakbrook Terrace, IL) did not
> require any sort of password or login to use the WiFi.

Then whoever contracted that installation didn't do a good job. "Free"
access is meant for guests, not people who happen to wander into the
lobby. One way or another, the cost of that access is eventually
trickled down to paying guests. OTOH you may have just happened to stay
there before the installation was complete. One manager told me they got
burned--their ISP/contractor either cut them off or increased their
rate--due to massive downloaders (locals) sitting right in the parking
lot.

Regardless, open access is the exception, not the norm, in hotels, and
I've stayed at every national chain. Certain high-end hotels don't even
offer it for free--you pay for it daily.


--
Mike

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:44:23 GMT, Paul Miner <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 02:56:51 GMT, "[email protected]"
><[email protected]> wrote:

>>I think Sprint is overcharging. Maybe their network has low capacity
>>so they are not being price competitive to keep the problems from
>>manifesting themselves. I can believe that.
>
>Low capacity? Do you just make this stuff up?
No, why would you say that?

Surely you understand that Sprint has T1 lines to their cellsites.
If 2 million subscribers suddenly started subscribing to EV-DO and
watching video constantly would there be enough capacity on the
cellsite for the voice calls, of would it all grind to a halt? The
latter, obviously.
>
>>>> Not sure what the difference is. I tried several at verizon, they all
>>>> seemed to be same speed for what I looked at. EV-DO seemed no better
>>>> for regular websites. Admittedly it was a brief test.
>>>
>>>1xEVDO is supposed to be up to 400-500Kbps througput. 1xRTT tops out at a
>>>theoretical limit of 115Kbps (ISDN speeds).
>>
>>I didn't watch any videos.
>>
>>What I did was look at the same exact ebay auction page with an LG
>>VX8000 (EV-DO), an LG VX7000 (same phone but no EV-DO) and another
>>phone that was there on the kiosk. They all seemed to load that page
>>at a similar speed. The EV-DO didn't seem to help at all!
>>
>>I expected the VX8000 to be way faster. But it wasn't.
>
>Your "testing" was flawed, which led to your disappointment.

Heh. Hardly. I said I didn't watch any videos. I wanted to see if
with regular web browsing there was any advantage perceivable. There
wasn't. The testing was perfect. Since I don't want to watch
videos, that is.

"[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:44:23 GMT, Paul Miner <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 02:56:51 GMT, "[email protected]"
> ><[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >>I think Sprint is overcharging. Maybe their network has low capacity
> >>so they are not being price competitive to keep the problems from
> >>manifesting themselves. I can believe that.
> >
> >Low capacity? Do you just make this stuff up?
> No, why would you say that?
>
> Surely you understand that Sprint has T1 lines to their cellsites.
> If 2 million subscribers suddenly started subscribing to EV-DO and
> watching video constantly would there be enough capacity on the
> cellsite for the voice calls, of would it all grind to a halt? The
> latter, obviously.

Can you point to a single cellsite (for any carrier) that regularly handles
2 million simultaneous subscribers?

The T1 line is very appropriate for the current environment- anything more
would be like sending the big school bus to pick up a single child. The
line can be upgraded as use necessitates it, and the company saves money
until then.

Paul Miner <[email protected]> writes:

>>I really want EV-DO performane (low latency, specifically).

>Sprint's EV-DO latency is the same or slightly worse than 1xRTT
>latency in most cases.

Dang! By "most cases" what do you mean? I've been hearing great reports
about EV-DO latency. Is Sprint doing something bad? Do you happen to know
if VZW EV-DO latency is different?

http://cent.syr.edu/projects_mobile_article.asp?id=66

Sprint only offers 1xRTT data service (50 to 70 Kbps) and plans to
deploy EV-DO next year. EV-DO is pretty hot, offering throughput in
excess of 500 Kbps and round-trip latency under 200 milliseconds, based
on our testing in the Washington, DC, area.

Thank you.

--kyler

"Joseph Huber" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 02:28:15 GMT, "Bob Smith"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >Nor can you take your DSL down the street, across town, or anywhere else
one
> >can go with the coverage area.
>
> Since Sprint is marketing EV-DO to business users, perhaps we should
> look at some places where business users might realistically need data
> access, instead of these ambiguous places like "down the street" or
> "across town":
> 1) Hotel room
> 2) Airport
> 3) Convention center/public meeting place
> 4) Client's company
> 5) Taxi cab/other transportation
> 6) ???
>
> In my experience, most of 1-3) are now covered by WiFi or wired
> Internet, which is much cheaper than EV-DO, and in some cases free.
> Your clients might let you use their network, or they may not. If
> they don't EV-DO is nice. EV-DO would be a great for 5). I would say
> the majority of usage would be with 1-4).
>
> Maybe I just work for a small company where expenditures are
> scrutinized, but there's no way I could justify to my employer a
> charge of $80/month for a service that I can get free/much cheaper in
> most of the places I need it, not to mention the fact that with the
> present limited coverage area of EV-DO, if I did need EV-DO, there's a
> very good chance I might not be able to use it for lack of coverage.
> Maybe your employer is different.
>
> Joe Huber
> [email protected]

Maybe you do ... But the point here is that every one of those places have a
separate charge, other than your home based DSL / Cable modem. There will be
times where you won't be able to get into a hotel/motel where the service is
provided or provided at no charge. WiFi providers @ airports charge a fee.
Same thing for the convention center.

Add to the fact that Vision EV-DO cost averages $3 / day or less. When
considering that just one use of that service, can more than pay for the
service, when signing up new clients or saving one you might be losing.

Bob

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:07:50 GMT, "Bob Smith"
>Add to the fact that Vision EV-DO cost averages $3 / day or less. When
>considering that just one use of that service, can more than pay for the
>service, when signing up new clients or saving one you might be losing.

I know this is theoretically possible and makes for good advertising,
but I'd be interested to know if anybody here as actually faced a
situation where having high-speed Interent at your fingertips would
have been the sole or primary determining factor in winning a new
client or keeping and existing one from leaving.

Verizon's EV-DO has been out for awhile, and is priced similarly to
Sprint's. Does anyone know how are Verizion's EV-DO sales are doing?

Joe Huber
[email protected]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:58:29 GMT, Paul Miner <[email protected]>
wrote:
>>On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 02:56:51 GMT, "[email protected]"
>><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>Surely you understand that Sprint has T1 lines to their cellsites.
>>If 2 million subscribers suddenly started subscribing to EV-DO and
>>watching video constantly would there be enough capacity on the
>>cellsite for the voice calls, of would it all grind to a halt? The
>>latter, obviously.
>
>As someone else already pointed out, there is no cell site serving 2
>million customers anywhere in Sprint's network or anyone else's
>network, for that matter. Long before it gets to that point,
>additional sites would be added. Bottom line, your "grind to a halt"
>observation also looks to be made up. :-)

One cellsite? Who said one cellsite? Not me. That's ridiculous.

If they had 2 million subscribers among their entire population of
customers distributed over all their cellsites who suddenly upped
their usage of bandwidth by 100x we would ALL notice it. Sheesh.

They would need to limit subscribers until they were sure they could
carry the load. So prices are high until then.

Heck, if they made broadband cellular phone data service cost $3 a
month we would likely ALL subscribe, they could never expand enough to
provide that much service.

"Joseph Huber" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:07:50 GMT, "Bob Smith"
> >Add to the fact that Vision EV-DO cost averages $3 / day or less. When
> >considering that just one use of that service, can more than pay for the
> >service, when signing up new clients or saving one you might be losing.
>
> I know this is theoretically possible and makes for good advertising,
> but I'd be interested to know if anybody here as actually faced a
> situation where having high-speed Interent at your fingertips would
> have been the sole or primary determining factor in winning a new
> client or keeping and existing one from leaving.
>
> Verizon's EV-DO has been out for awhile, and is priced similarly to
> Sprint's. Does anyone know how are Verizion's EV-DO sales are doing?
>
> Joe Huber
> [email protected]

You'd need to ask that in the Verizon newsgroup.

Bob