Friday, June 18, 2010

Words of Wisdom from CommunicAsia (3G vs 4G)

One of the panelists, Peter Wang, chief engineer at Huawei Technologies, said operators can stretch their network by maximizing HSPA spectral efficiency to close the gap with LTE's bandwidth capacity. This can be done by increasing the number of base station units or upgrading the units' software, Wang said.

I'm sure the 3 telcos in Singapore will just ignore the above line in bold. The iPhone is a very good indicator on the true 2G/3G coverage of Singapore. My iPhone keeps getting lost signals even though I'm on 2G. 3G is even worse. If you're unable to get reliable signals in a certain location, it's a clear indication of insufficient base station units. The 3G signals are also not even hitting its 7.2Mbps speed, and I'm not even talking about the 14 / 42 / 84 Mbps based on the latest HSPA+ release.

I don't understand the urgency to go to 4G when the 3G infrastructure is not even up to mark! I've written about this some time back here. But do the telcos care? Judging from my experience on the 3G network, I guess not.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do u think the businesses really care about their customers wellbeing? I don't think so. In S'pore, there's no choice: if don't like ST/M1/Starhub's coverage, then don't use handphone. It's as simple as that. I'm sure the Telcos know, so they have no incentive in perfecting the 3G system.

As for why 4G? It's so that they can CONvince the people to spend more money on 4G handsets. Else how to make big bucks and pay their management millions of dollars?

chantc said...

That's something that I do not understand. Why is there no minimum standard of service? We're paying for a 7.2Mbps service (that's the minimum 3G speed) but we're usually getting less than 1Mbps. Is it fair for us to pay for 3G when we're not getting anywhere near that speed?

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