The Need To Shout It Out

Update: The state of 4G [Ars Technica]

As a marketer, as an advertiser of a product or service, often times we have to shout out half-truths to sell our product. It is a fact. We do it seemingly quite often these days, ignoring the little prick from our conscience. Eventually it shapes our personality and individual actions towards one another. It is quite a scary thought.

What really grinds my gears is the public misinformation being spread by corporations nowadays which feeds on lack of knowledge on technical issues. Take 4G internet for example.

While Wikipedia acknowledges there are “loose usages” of this term, just like when 3G was first introduced, 4G cellular system “must have target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access”.

Let’s explore some Malaysian companies claiming to have 4G.

YTL Wimax (July 2010)

P1 WiMax (Around for some time)

(We’ve seen izzi’s banners, all claiming 4G)

Now for some real world tests.

Some providers are able to provide milliseconds worth of “BURST” speeds. So you’re loading a 100Kbyte typical website, it will be done in no time at all. Great demonstration of technology and if you’re a client, of course you will be convinced. Other’s cheat by using special logins which uncap their lines and gives special priority privileges on traffic.

When you go home and start using it, you find out your coverage is not that good. Because many people are connected to the same network node in your area, there is congestion. Worst of all, there are bandwidth quotas which are quite miserable. (Although I must admit some other countries like Australia are far worst in terms of quota)

How about 100 megabit speed? Pipe dream.

Do you know that in America, there is a difference in standards between AT & T (iPhone) 3G and Verizon’s 3G? If we go with our 3G sets there, we have to hook on to AT & T as Verizon’s standard uses a different frequency NOT compatible with our phones.

Likewise with Wimax. Intel who ships Wimax chips on their laptops are going with 802.16m (802.11 a/b/g/n is Wifi) The other 3GPP standard, telcos like it. There is no love between these two. Kinda like twins separated at birth, same idea, different ideals.

Telekom Malaysia has long been guilty of false advertising.

When Streamyx started, it was 384kb/s “BROADBAND” speed for a long time. The acceptable industry standard back then was 1.5mbit. And we know the legendary problems TM faced during the initial phases.

Today we get 1  - 4 mb/s depending on how much we are willing to pay. Truthfully, we are at a pretty good state. Now we got to bring down “latency” from 400 ms to <200 ms to the USA. Personally, I prefer an ISP with extremely good latencies instead of “apparent 50 Mbit download speeds”.

In the words of Steve Jobs, “Click *boom*. Click *boom*.” That’s how responsive I want my sites to load.

Thank you very much!

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