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Wireless Networking China Networking Upgrades

Huawei Claims 30Gbps Wireless 'Beyond LTE' 146

shreshtha writes "Huawei says it has 'recently introduced ... Beyond LTE technology, which significantly increases peak rates to 30Gbps — over 20 times faster than existing commercial LTE networks.' It claims to have achieved this with 'key breakthroughs in antenna structure, radio frequency architecture, IF (intermediate frequency) algorithms, and multi-user MIMO (multi-input multi-output).'"
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Huawei Claims 30Gbps Wireless 'Beyond LTE'

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  • Cap (Score:5, Funny)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:06PM (#39471259) Homepage Journal
    Of course it's a "peak" rate. If you sustain that rate for two seconds, you'll have already more than blown through your entire cap of 5 GB (40 Gbit) per month.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:08PM (#39471267)

    So which company had its fancy new antenna tech lifted for this. China's R&D = Reconnaissance and Deception.

    • by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:18PM (#39471315)

      So which company had its fancy new antenna tech lifted for this. China's R&D = Reconnaissance and Deception.

      Certainly, it is not Apple... get a grip.

      (duck)

      .

      • You shouldn't duck, you should explain.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You shouldn't duck, you should explain.

          Yes he should to make sure it's a whoosh!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      no company had their antenna tech lifted. They just found that if you actually make an antenna that is actually soldered to both devices without a break, then you use multiple "antennas" to transmit the data, some dedicated to sending while others are dedicated to receiving full duplex style, then you can achieve much higher bandwidths than if you try to send stuff through an antenna over the air.

      • no company had their antenna tech lifted. They just found that if you actually make an antenna that is actually soldered to both devices without a break, then you use multiple "antennas" to transmit the data, some dedicated to sending while others are dedicated to receiving full duplex style, then you can achieve much higher bandwidths than if you try to send stuff through an antenna over the air

        That gotta be an extreeeeeemly long antenna !

    • by janvo ( 639733 )

      Alcatel-Lucent, the old Bell Labs

  • by dakohli ( 1442929 ) on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:17PM (#39471309)

    Seriously, I think we are entering into a period where the bandwidth is way more important than the processor. I am sure that Moore's law can be manipulated into something that will predict how quickly things will advance.

    It wasn't that long ago that mobile bandwidth was pretty much useless, now we have speeds that have surpassed early home wireless networking.

    I live in a rural area, only have 2G, I'm waiting for 3G, but I'm not sure it will ever quite get there, my provider will most likely just jump it and go to whatever the next level is, making my phone obsolete in the process. Of course with a bit of luck, the standard will be backwards compatible, but at some point they will have to just abandon some technology and look forwards.

    • by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:33PM (#39471407)

      I think bandwidth (as in transfer rates) will hit diminishing returns rather soon. Once your phone can stream live HD video and audio...what's the incentive to improve? Sure, file downloads could be faster, but most people would rather just stream their content, and unless your mobile devices have terabyte hard drives in them you won't be downloading a huge amount anyway.

      I'd say once mobile devices can consistently transfer at ~10Mbps, the focus should really switch to increasing coverage and caps. All the speed in the world doesn't help if you can't get reliable service or you use up your monthly allotment in five minutes.

      • by Belial6 ( 794905 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @12:03AM (#39471569)
        Exactly. If I could stream a video stream that was my phone's full resolution along with audio that was decent, I couldn't care less if I got a faster stream. Give me an auto login to my home server and a Linux (or something else) desktop that is sized for my phone with remote desktop and I will have peaked my transfer speed needs. Honestly I don't even want most of my data on my phone, or on some third party's server. I want it stored in my home and streamed via vpn to my phone as I need it. If I lose my phone, I just change the password, grab a new phone and it is like nothing ever happened. This would also mean that I wouldn't care how fast of a processor the phone had, or how much storage it had. As long as it could decode the audio/video stream, I'm good to go.
        • Modern smartphone + HSPA or better and you're pretty much there. I use my phone similarly (Android with an RDP client), and streaming video hasn't been a problem for the last year or so...

          You just need ot move somewhere that offers you cell service that can provide you with enough bandwidth.

          • by Belial6 ( 794905 )
            I agree that the bandwidth is mostly there now. It is the software side that could use some work.
            • Hmmm, which software issues are you still having?

              I find PocketCloud's RDP client to be pretty much everything I need when I'm on the go. And with more or less universal Android Bluetooth HID support as of 3.0/4.0 (Honeycomb and ICS respectively), using the devices as a remote workstation actually becomes feasible. Hell, my phone has almost the same resolution as my subnotebook (1280x720 vs. 1280x800), and HDMI out if I want it.

              • I's be very uncomfortable running an RDP terminal server exposed to the internet. I highly recommend tunneling over SSH.

                I use OpenSSH on my (jailbroken) iPhone, and the free 2X RDP client to connect remotely into my home Windows machine. I assume there are SSH apps from the App Store that will let you set up tunneling as well.

                The screen is still too small to do any real work (would be better on an iPad or other tablet), but it's OK for quickly checking up on things and is pretty responsive on 3G.
                • VPN is always an option too... and one that's usually easier to set up with home routers that support it actively :)

              • by Belial6 ( 794905 )
                The software issues would be things like, having the phone automatically VPN into my server. Right now, not only do the phones not auto login, the VPN software in Android is plain out broken. it has been from the beginning. I am still surprised that it hasn't been fixed yet. Once getting access to the server is taken car of, the next step would be having the server serve up a desktop that is appropriate to a phone. I am not talking about just sharing a standard Windows 7 desktop. That can be done now
          • Almost there, but not quite. iPlayer HD is 3.6Mb/s. That's possible with HSPA, but only if you're relatively close to a fairly uncontended tower. BluRay quality video is around 30-50Mb/s. That isn't possible with HSPA.

            Phones don't have that resolution yet, but they're getting there, and I wouldn't be surprised if picoprojectors became a lot more common...

        • Uh... the point is to prepare for everyone in downtown New York trying to watch HD youtube videos all at once.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • I don't think you can honestly say it'll NEVER be enough bandwidth. I think the GP has a good point - bandwidth is the new processor speed. In fact, I'd say that it's more than that - bandwidth is the new system speed. Think about it, RAM is dirt cheap to the point where 3Gb is the minimum you expect from a low end machine - more than enough for average user who just wants facebook, email and youtube. Processors carry enough oomph to decode 1080p with ease, particularly (And oddly enough) the low end types

            • if people are sharing the network then you could have dozens to hundreds of requests for video feed concurrently, the amount of network bandwidth always has to be matched to the expected load more bandwidth always gives you more design options - there is always a trade-off to be made, in general high bandwidth wireless allows more people access to the network more cheaply
      • by Benaiah ( 851593 )

        I think bandwidth (as in transfer rates) will hit diminishing returns rather soon. Once your phone can stream live HD video and audio...what's the incentive to improve? Sure, file downloads could be faster, but most people would rather just stream their content, and unless your mobile devices have terabyte hard drives in them you won't be downloading a huge amount anyway.

        I'd say once mobile devices can consistently transfer at ~10Mbps, the focus should really switch to increasing coverage and caps. All the speed in the world doesn't help if you can't get reliable service or you use up your monthly allotment in five minutes.

        So narrow minded. First of all this bandwidth has to be split by the number of users. How about once you can stream Video, then you will have to stream 1080p video. Then whatever is beyond that. The cloud could do all your processing and what we would carry around in our pockets would just be dummy terminals.Having higher bandwidth unlocks possibilities that were previously deemed infeasible. The more bandwidth the more decentralised the network, the more robust and cheaper cost of use. Plus then our devic

      • by Spad ( 470073 )

        It hasn't exactly worked out like that for wired internet, so why would it for wireless? My provider is currently deploying 100Mbps connections to their customers, despite still having silly caps on data usage that they introduced when they moved from a 10Mbps top tier to a 20Mbps one. I'd have much prefered it if they'd followed your vision and stuck with 10Mpbs that they could reliably deliver to all their users 24/7 and remove the need for caps.

      • I dunno, available bandwidth and content has always struck me as an armor/munitions sortof relationship when it comes to innovations. they drive each other. once the bandwidth is there, someone will have something just too big to fit down the pipe consistently. I remember the first time i used a dedicated T1 connection. on an internet designed by and large for 14.4 modem access, it was mindbogglingly fast. now my phone has a faster connection, and its never fast enough. incentive to improve? content creator
      • the focus should really switch to increasing coverage and caps.

        And reducing latency/jitter. The latency spikes mean using things like ssh over cellular links is often highly annoying in my experiance.

      • Well the hitch to your view comes when we hit a point where you can provide a wireless connection that is as robust and reliable as a wired one more cheaply than a wired connection. People mention rural areas all the time as a good market for using cell networks for last-mile internet, but even in NYC, stringing cables is a problem. There are all kinds of other infrastructure in the way, and current lines go through private property where the owners are not allowing Verizon access. Current Internet conne

      • That's the same reasoning as when I bought a 9600 baud modem a while back. "It can transmit and receive faster than I can read or write! Surely I will never need more than that!"

    • by jpmorgan ( 517966 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @12:05AM (#39471575) Homepage

      Moore's law? Not really. There are theoretical limits on maximum bandwidth that are far more restrictive than theoretical computation limits. For a given SNR, the maximum digital bandwidth of a communication channel is proportional to the frequency bandwidth. You can get closer to the Shannon-Hartley limit with better rf circuits coding, noise models, etc... but there's still a limit.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        This is misleading. The reason why is that, because of things like spatial coding using MIMO, orbital polarization (discussed last week), etc--plus many more to-be-exploited phenomena--the number of "channels" possible is effectively limited only by computational capability. Yes, there's a well-defined limit per-channel, but the number of possible channels is proportional to processing power.

    • by mccrew ( 62494 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @12:09AM (#39471587)
      Moore's Law does not apply to:
      1. Bandwidth
      2. Battery life
    • I think we are entering into a period where the bandwidth is way more important than the processor

      Siri.

      Trivial amount of processing on the mobile device, consuming bandwidth to/from "the cloud", and presenting UI/results to the end user.

      With significant increases in bandwidth and significant decreases in latency you will see the performance (and capabilities) of SIRI increasing geometrically.

      Scaling CPUs in the cloud/server-farm is only a matter of throwing money at the problem to solve demand.

    • by TheLink ( 130905 )
      Bandwidth is overrated. Latency is the hardest problem to solve so far.

      Where's my ansible? ;)
    • "I am sure that Moore's law can be manipulated into something that will predict how quickly things will advance."

      AT&T's Law: Wired broadband technology will advance at a rate such that internet access perpetually costs $40US per month. Wireless broadband will perpetually cost $30 per month, plus $5 for unlimited texts and $20 for a voice plan, and require a 2-year contract.

      Finagle's Corrolary to AT&T's Law: No, you can't get it without a voice plan.

  • sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alienzed ( 732782 ) on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:18PM (#39471323) Homepage
    and AT&T will be able to charge overages in less than 1 second. I wonder if their servers will be able to throttle you in at 0.7 seconds into a large download.
    • To get that kind of speed, you'd need 8 antennas in your mobile device to get the full advantage of the MIMO streams.
      I'm sure it's possible, but good luck getting enough national spectrum allocations to make the mobile hardware investment viable.

  • They achieved that with "much greater bandwidth". The reason why bandwidth is restricted in current systems is because cell stations have to support thousands of users simultaneously providing 30 Gbps even with all sorts of multi-antenna systems with signal processing seems unlikely for unicast systems; it might be possible for downlink multicast, though.
    • They achieved that with "much greater bandwidth". The reason why bandwidth is restricted in current systems is because cell stations have to support thousands of users simultaneously providing 30 Gbps even with all sorts of multi-antenna systems with signal processing seems unlikely for unicast systems; it might be possible for downlink multicast, though.

      There should be a full stop after "simultaneously".

    • I guess the important question then is whether they have managed to increase the transmission density of a certain amount of spectrum. If you can increase the amount of data that you can transmit over a certain slice of spectrum then it is likely a big win because I would imagine spectrum is one of the major costs in a cellular network.

  • Christ, it can see itself arriving.

  • This is refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:29PM (#39471389) Homepage Journal

    I find it refreshing to see them creating new technology instead of just implementing standards.

    Plus it just confirms my comments yesterday about even engineering and design talent moving overseas; that no job is "safe" any more from the risk of being offshored. Given Huawei's market share in the telco industry, this particular bit of engineering should make anyone still working for the formerly big names in telecommunications some serious pause when they think about their job security.

    It isn't that long ago that people thought a job with Northern Telecom would last a life time, and we know how that turned out for those who believed in that dream.

    • I find it refreshing to see them creating new technology instead of just implementing standards.

      Which came from espionage of a First World company, as Chinese "companies" are wont to do.

      Plus it just confirms my comments yesterday about even engineering and design talent moving overseas; that no job is "safe" any more from the risk of being offshored. Given Huawei's market share in the telco industry, this particular bit of engineering should make anyone still working for the formerly big names in telecommunications some serious pause when they think about their job security.

      The more reason to halt the move and reverse it, even if it takes force. With enough force, even the most "irreversible" things in economics can be made to reverse course back to the First World. Job security is something worth preserving in the First World, even if it comes at political costs.

      It isn't that long ago that people thought a job with Northern Telecom would last a life time, and we know how that turned out for those who believed in that dream.

      That can be restored with law. Given how badly Huawei implements things, their technology is only good for a political prop

      • by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @03:04AM (#39472155) Homepage Journal

        While some might dream of a return to "America First" and "Made In Canada" policies and tarrifs, I can't imagine us ever returning to such systems.

        First and foremost, the consumer won't stand for it. The consumer now expects computers at under $1000 instead of the $2000 plus it used to cost to manufacture them onshore.

        A recent article I read pegged the "Made in America" price of an iPad at roughly $1400 -- more than double the market price. At such prices, people simply would stop buying them, because it's pretty damned hard to justify toys over $1000 in most people's minds.

        I don't think it's a good situation for the "First World" at all, but I can't see any of the companies involved in offshoring being willing to return to North American manufacturing and assembly when it would make their products completely uncompetitive in the rest of the world markets. Quite frankly, companies like Apple make far more from their foreign sales than they do from North American sales. As a result, if you returned to a nationalistic policy on manufacturing, they'd simply pull up the remainder of their North American roots, officially become a foreign company, and keep on with business as usual. With the US one jewel less in the globalization crown.

        And the same goes for all the other big multinationals. The only thing keeping their head offices in the US or Canada is tradition. Globalization has become an unstoppable behemoth; no one with real influence over the government through lobbyists would tolerate stepping back from globalization.

        Let's face it -- the corporations sold out the people by lobbying the government for years or decades, and the people were too engrossed by their television sets and Big Macs to notice until it was too late.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          "I don't think it's a good situation for the "First World" at all"

          Sure it is. Think of offshoring as your tax for helping the third world to industrialize faster. Conditions and labour rates rise in the beneficiary countries until they start their own post-industrial economies. Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, India and Mexico are past the initial industrialization stages. China is getting there. Soon we'll (all) be outsourcing to Africa and getting them up to speed. Just like England did with America

          • The problem is that the cost is paid by the First World, especially the US, and the citizens of those nations. As deep as it has become a problem, the only way to fix it is to kill globalization until citizens of the First World are not penalized for their citizenship as they are now.

            There is no problem if the benefits were direct and dislocation was non-existent. However, it would not allow businesses to enslave people.

            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              "The problem is that the cost is paid by the First World, especially the US, and the citizens of those nations."

              Um, no, that's the point. Think of it as redistribution of wealth on a global scale. Yes, it's "socialism" which Americans seem to have some kind of superstitious aversion to, despite engaging in such socialist activities as having police forces, firefighters and public highways.

              Bringing the third world up to speed is good for us all, and MOST of us first worlders think it's reasonable to kick i

        • While some might dream of a return to "America First" and "Made In Canada" policies and tarrifs, I can't imagine us ever returning to such systems. ...
          And the same goes for all the other big multinationals. The only thing keeping their head offices in the US or Canada is tradition. Globalization has become an unstoppable behemoth; no one with real influence over the government through lobbyists would tolerate stepping back from globalization.

          England would gladly like to inform you otherwise - for it once sent back . It can be stopped with enough force, just that you end up with a ton of dead lobbyists and a country more capable to deal with threats like China's industrial espionage.

          That, and the US has a large enough internal market that can withstand pressures from outside well. Include the rest of the NATO-defined First World where workers are treated favorably, and you have a way to lock-out the vagaries of the Third World.

          First and foremost, the consumer won't stand for it. The consumer now expects computers at under $1000 instead of the $2000 plus it used to cost to manufacture them onshore.

          The prototypical

        • not really at all. read this as to why the iPhone isn`t made in the USA

          http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]

          employee costs are far less important than the availability of labor to quick ramping up of production and proximity to parts suppliers.

    • You're being taken in by misleading, grandiose claims that TFA does nothing to explain.

      The most important game in wireless is increasing spectral efficiency (bps per Hz of spectrum) because it leads naturally to greater throughput for the same bandwidth allocation. If you can reach Shannon's limit on real channels then it's basically game over. It's not about some pie in the sky absolute data rate that might be achieved with a couple GHz of spectrum at your disposal when you're within spitting distance o

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25, 2012 @11:33PM (#39471409)

    "It claims to have achieved this with 'key breakthroughs in antenna structure, radio frequency architecture, IF (intermediate frequency) algorithms, and multi-user MIMO (multi-input multi-output).'"

    Huawei is a Chinese company just recently been banned from quoting on Australian government contracts amid suspicion of putting backdoors into its kit for the Chinese government:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/03/24/0424215/australian-govt-bans-huawei-from-national-network-bids

    So we have a lot of announcements recently about how amazing and indispensable Huawei kit is. But like this one, they can't point to a single breakthrough, its all kind of vague claims that can't even pinpoint what breakthrough they made. It's all very much like a Chinese pride thing.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Virtually every major network in the western world uses Huawei equipment. Huawei even offered to provide the Australian government with the source code for all their software and drivers. The Australian response was just a racist knee-jerk reaction clouded in a thin veneer of political showmanship.

      • Not only can they not shake off the reputation of being too close to the Chinese government, their hardware is usually lower-tier.

      • by geekpowa ( 916089 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @12:31AM (#39471661)

        Reason why Huawei stuff is so prolific is that they literally give it away. Undercutting competitors and getting market share is their principal concern, not providing a decent product.

        Of all the stuff you find in a typical telco cool room, Huawei consistently, in my experience at least, is the most problematic. Serious quality issues, things feel like they are held together with duck tape and string. Fragile and prone to regular failure. Software interfaces are rubbish. Poor quality and change control. e.g. two products with same product designation in two different telcos will be essentially different products. Awful stuff.

        I've worked with a number of telco CIOs not one of them has had glowing things to say about them. They all buy on price and later regret it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          >Serious quality issues, things feel like they are held together with duck tape and string. Fragile and prone to regular failure. Software interfaces are rubbish
          Excuse me. Two problems.
          A) Its DUCT TAPE! Not duck tape. How dare you
          B) Duct tape makes pretty good screw/hole replacement in computers. I use it all the time in our servers/desktops. (Since management refuses to upgrade 10+ year old hardware.
          and an extra C) Duct tape is a wonder tool. Adhering to nearly everything and easy to handle. It also las

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • (Even if I do not know why/how this news with almost no specific fact at all hit /.) if true, this is not threat for LTE: it is a real competitor of GPON and all FTTH technologies.

    And I don't mean achieving 30Gbps: A technology that can deliver, let's say, good/sustained 150Mbps in the air for a home user, would kill all fiber project being developed nowadays.

    • Repeat after me: NOBODY is going to build a cellular network which will *guarantee* actual real-world throughput of 150Mbps for every user in their footprint in anything even approximating the near future. Possibly not even in my lifetime.

      The cost in towers, spectrum, and backhaul is economically prohibitive.

      Sure they'll sell you "up to" mumble-something, but that's just an opportunity to let the network get congested at either the wireless or backhaul level and not care.

      NO Wireless technology scales to
    • It's not really a competitor to FTTH (or other fast, wired types of connection). They are complementary technologies:

      - There's no point in wasting limited EM spectrum providing data services to a fixed/non-movable point like a home or business. Even if the wireless technology is just as fast/reliable as wired, it's just plain inefficient. Leave the wireless spectrum free for mobile devices (which generate more than enough demand by themselves to saturate any amount of bandwidth you throw at them)

      - Throughpu

  • by Crypto Gnome ( 651401 ) on Monday March 26, 2012 @01:10AM (#39471785) Homepage Journal
    Standards are wonderful things, oddly enough almost nobody actually rolls into active service products meeting all these fancy numbers.

    In Down Under Land (Oz tray Lee Uh) Telstra rolled out an LTE network. Sure In Theory LTE can deliver "Up To" 300Mbps. Despite Telstra being very much a PREMIUM service provider their shiny-new tech delivers speeds which are not even in the same city, let alone the same ballpark. (to use an Americanism)

    Now don't get me wrong folks, LTE is MUCH better than HSPA+, but absolutely nobody on the Telstra LTE network is getting even HALF of the "maximum theoretical throughput of an LTE network".

    So if "LTE can do 300Mbps" means end-users are getting maybe 35Mbps, then the JOYous claims of "up to 3.5Gbps" might maybe one day deliver 100-200Mbps of real-world actual throughput.

    And while I'd hate to be the person who claimed that "640K is enough for anybody", I do honestly believe it will be quite some time yet before a mobile-handset (phone, iPad, etc) would need more than "one hundred megabits per second" (or thereabouts).

    People driving WiFi gateways or using cellular communications from a "fixed location" scenario would. And that will lead to a two-tiered service, you can pay X for "mobile usage" which is FAST (by todays standards) but not pushing the limits of the technology, or you can pay XXXtra for Ludicrous Speed and the caveat being "not for mobile handsets".

    This would keep the vast unwashed masses from snowing the network, and the premium/business-grade/etc users will still have plenty of capacity.
    • While I'm not accusing you of it, I will say a mistake I was aware of, but only recently noticed how often I was making it was in confusing MBs and Mbs.
      i.e. 8 bits in a Byte
      noting that
      100MBps is 800Mbps
      1GBps is 8Gbps
      300Mbps is 37.5MBps

      Most numbers on the computer end seem to report in MB, whereas network providers generally quote in Mb, Whereas we all have 1GBps and 10GBps networks installed in our homes, cable providers are still barely in the 10Mbps (1.25MBps) range.

      • by sr180 ( 700526 )

        Exactly. Ive regularly hit speeds of around 25-30MBps on Telstra's LTE network in normal usage. This isnt too far off the advertised maximum.

        • Could even be above maximum?
          Think it depends on the data frame, there's two levels of error correction "is this bit a bit" Analogue RF -> digital and "is this Byte a Byte" (e.g. 4 bits information and 1 bit parity).
          One of the reasons TCP has done so well is it does a very very good job of "is this Byte a Byte" under a wide variety of network level bps streams. But even that loses 20% of the bandwidth (which suggests 4bits information 1bit parity)

          Suggests the maximum "real" TCP MBps of a 300Mbps line is 3

      • 8 bits in a Byte

        Not really.

        Most low-level communications protocols have some framing overhead, so it's generally safer to assume that you can transmit one byte for every 10 bits. So 100 MBps requires a 1000 Mbps data rate. There's also some overhead at higher layers in the stack, such as Ethernet (or similar), IP, TCP and HTTP headers, though those are much less significant, consuming well under 1% of your effective bandwidth in most cases. Also keep in mind that we normally measure our files in power-of-two sizes (Ki

    • by xlsior ( 524145 )
      I do honestly believe it will be quite some time yet before a mobile-handset (phone, iPad, etc) would need more than "one hundred megabits per second" (or thereabouts).

      Perhaps, but there are a lot of other devices that are NOT cellphones that still communicate with celltowers, like LTE / WiMax modems used by people outside of DSL/Cable range. Massive increases to wireless data speed would be a very welcome development for people in rural areas who often don't really have any alternative highspeed option
    • by jquirke ( 473496 )

      Those 300Mbps speeds are quoted for 4x4 MIMO configuration for 20MHz bandwidth.

      Telstra are using a 2x2 MIMO with 10MHz bandwidth. The theoretical speeds are closer to 90MBps, and indeed, if you read the whirlpool forums, people are in fact getting close to that.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Theft. Huawei is famous for it.

  • Just a tidbit of info here. In the industry, the assignment of the 4G name requires 1Gbit/s; but playing on people's perceptions that we should expect 4G now, a lot of companies brand what is inside known as 3.9G as 4G. While competitors adapt same practice, court cases are built slowly. Both 3.9 and 4G is LTE ( though diff freq). 3.9G is ~20Mbit/s if I'm not mistaken.

    AFAIK (only secondhand info) only South Korea has true 4G.

    Couldn't be bothered to fact check, as it doesn't really interest me.

    • To carry the 4G moniker, the technology must support 100Mbit PEAK rates from mobile clients, and 1Gbit peak rates from non-mobile or low-mobility client.

      There is no 4G available in the US, but US Carriers are allowed to call LTE and HSPA by the 4G name because ITU gave them a pass for US Marketing only.

      The ONLY technologies that actually meet the 4G standard as it is written are LTE Advanced (not available in the US) and 802.16m WirelessMAN-Advanced (also not available in the US).

  • Please tell me what kind of infrastructure that is needed to achieve this to each tower.

    Fiber?

    If then continue your digging into the homes directly instead.

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