4G network goes live for lucky few

TeliaSonera today switched on LTE networks in Stockholm and Oslo with coverage for 400,000 customers. The operator is pushing Long Term Evolution as offering ten times the speed of 3G, promising speeds between 20 and 80 Mb/sec at 2.6GHz, and making synonyms of LTE and 4G - as though WiMAX had never existed. But WiMAX …

[Brett Brennan 1]

WiMAX in the US is still ahead

Clearwire/Sprint have really started the roll-out of 4G WiMAX in the Colonies here. I've gotten excellent performance (as it should be with a still-nascent customer base) - equivalent to or better than DOCSIS cable. Latency is the same as 3G, but once the pause is over, web pages load lickety-split.

Here in the States the marketplace is going to be a bit more interesting. With AT&T suffering from iPhone overload and neither Verizon or T-Mobile moving very quickly on LTE, WiMAX has a good chance of establishing a foothold against the GSM competition.

Of course, Sprint has got both guns out and is blazing away at its feet: currently there is an authentication "glitch" that prohibits anything but a PC running Windows of OS-X from connecting to the Sprint-managed WiMAX network. Sprint is giving away free Cradlepoint PHS300 wireless 3G/4G routers with the Franklin U300 WiMAX/3G modem...but these will only connect to 3G on Sprint right now. (They work 4G with Clearwire however.)

Is this a technical glitch, or Evil Sprint knowing that, with a 4G plan that restricts 3G to only 5GB before draconian overage charges kick in, they can suck some extra revenue from the punters? Given that Sprint is demonstrating 4G in the stores using the PHS300 - plainly flashing the green LED of "3G-only" service - it really makes you wonder.

[Nexox Enigma]

better than cable?

"""I've gotten excellent performance (as it should be with a still-nascent customer base) - equivalent to or better than DOCSIS cable."""

Your Portland (I assume) cable must really blow. Random Googling suggests that an uncapped

Clearwire connection gets you something like 13mbit, whereas 15mbit is pretty typical for cable modems these days. Plus Clearwire is supposed to cap users to 4mbit, which is pretty impressively not fast at all.

I have a DOCSIS 3 connection from Comcast, possibly the worst ISP in the multiverse, but it'll do 50mbit down no problems - at least it will when they haven't decided to disconnect me because they lost track of my account or something.

From what I've heard the Clearwire deployment is pretty crap, and is doomed to fail if many users actually try to use it.

[Frank Long]

LTEvs Wimax

@Brett Brennan 1 :

"Latency is the same as 3G, but once the pause is over, web pages load lickety-split."

One of the big features of LTE is the lower latency, down to a target of 10ms for connection set up.

"Here in the States the marketplace is going to be a bit more interesting. With AT&T suffering from iPhone overload and neither Verizon or T-Mobile moving very quickly on LTE, WiMAX has a good chance of establishing a foothold against the GSM competition."

Verizon is moving very, very quickly with LTE.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/19/lte_announcements_at_wmc/

Black Helicoptor as to reveal any more could potentially be damaging to my career...

[Andus McCoatover]

Keyboard failure:

"Of course, Sprint has got both guns out and is blazing away at its [own] feet"

Dammit, this pub needs a plastic cover on the keyboard if I'm gonna read a line like that!

Snort! Thanks, Brett!

[Anonymous Coward]

Required Title

Basically a playground just for nokia then.

[Steve Brammer]

Nothing to do with Nokia...

No Nokia involvement whatsoever I'm afraid. The infrastructure in Stockholm comes from Ericsson and in Oslo it comes from Huawei.

[Andus McCoatover]

Almost..

I was, as a Nokia employee and a member of the team building Sweden's "3G" network, working on the Network Management System in Nokia's "NOC" - Network Operations Centre. OK, not Telia, but it'll surely follow. Unless things have changed since 2003(2002?). Kinda lost touch since I left NSN a couple of years ago.

As an aside, the building was located on the (converted) top floor of a multi-storey car park in Stockholm. The car fumes from downstairs made your eyes water sometimes.

[RainForestGuppy]

El Reg .. Not up with the news

It's been announced this weekend that O2 is going to trial 4G in Slough.

Not so lucky for UK users as you have to live in Slough, which is without question a complete dump.

[Bill Ray]

Re: Your currency conversions are wrong

I've a feeling that the decision to charge 4 Kroner has more to do with marketing than currency conversion - they wanted to offer 4G for 4K, but that didn't really work in Norway.

Bill.

[Mage]

Hype and Nonsense

With the SAME spectrum and ONE user near mast, the speed of LTE is same for WiMax and HSDPA/3G/HSPA.

Under load Wimax and LTE are about twice as good to 4 times better per user.

The Headline speeds are total capacity for 4x normal HSPA channel with a single user very close to Mast.

[Mage]

WiMax

Clearwire can't even g'tee 4Mbps on a economically loaded mast.

Their quoted speeds are single user peak speeds.