Philip Khor

16 Aug 2010 update: http://www.goinglte.com/4g-it%E2%80%99s-all-semantics-1606/

First off, a short introduction.

When 3G came out, it operated at a theoretical “max” of 384kbit/sec. That’s barely enough for a steady YouTube stream. And even then, most early service providers were not able to keep up with their promises of “video conferencing”, broadband on the phone claims, etc.

Few years later, a newer standard dubbed “3.5G” or more commonly known to the techies as HSDPA (high speed data packet access) went mainstream. This is when the smartphone era started to pick up as more people adopted the technology. All is good and dandy; until CONGESTION came into the picture.

You see, even though the technology limit of 3.5G is a whopping 7.2 mbit/sec, most providers lock you at 3.6 mbit/sec mainly to accomodate more users. Furthermore, in real world situations where there are obstructions like buildings and bad clouds (ionosphere?) the actual speed may dip below 1 megabit/sec. And as more and more people take up the “smart plans” with unlimited access, you can imagine the work a cell tower has to do, from the switching and frame transfers and whatnots.

Then, some smart people thought of 4G.

I wrote about 4G elsewhere; basically it is a step above current offerings. P1 is one of the MANY players in Malaysia (others catering to businesses and other market segments).

4G is not only about crazy awesome stratospheric speed promises.

4G mainly promises to handle congestion.

Let’s say a 3G tower has the capacity to handle 8 con-current users at 7.2mbit/sec HSDPA. So if there are 16 users wanting data, speeds for everyone will plop to 3.6, and when 32 people come online, it will plop to sub-1mbit/sec speeds.

4G is much more scalable in dividing the bandwidth spectrum, time splices for each individual user. Sure, you won’t get that insane TM HSBB 20mbit/sec fiber speeds on 4G (by right, technically YOU SHOULD!) but future 4G networks promises smooth operation, say as you’re driving along on the North-South highway, or at high density subscriber bases, where traditional 3G networks would choke.

Another thing: low latency. Perceived speed is about transfer rate, yes, how many megabits per second? But another factor to look out for is your ping, or latency. For online games on Facebook, video chats and web’s general responsiveness, you definitely want a sub-10 ms ping (millisecond is 1/1000th of a second)

Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, MSI, Toshiba will launch new notebook computers with P1 Wimax soon. I think it is a smart move by P1, forming strategic alliances with their partners. The last one I remember was with an Antivirus company (F-Secure), all they provide was the billing platform and the customer base to support. Genius.

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