Sprint Mobile Broadband Latest News |
| Thursday, 06 April 2006 | |
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Sprint announced and demonstrated a slew of new EVDO products and services at CTIA Wireless 2006. The biggest announcement was the announcement to deploy EVDO Rev A. This announcement is somewhat exciting and expected at the same time. It would be like car manufacturer announcing that when they start selling a new car next year, it will be much improved then the current models. This is great news for those wanting to know what is coming down the pike, BUT it also might be confusing for those that are looking to purchase or deploy EVDO now. EVDO Rev A Speed At CTIA 2006, there was so many exhibitors and attendees using the interent pipe at the Las Vegas Convention Center, it was impossible to really see the "real world" performance on products that used the live internet, too much bandwidth being used by everyone at the show. To test EVDO Rev A, the Sprint booth and Nortel booth had a local EVDO Rev A equipment running between their booths. We were able to do some benchmarks and throughput tests. These tests do not duplicate real world averages and throughput, BUT they do give you an idea of what we will be getting toward the middle to end of 2007. EVDO Rev A Cards are backwards compatible with EVDO Rev 0 network (current one deployed). In fact, when using a EVDO Rev A card on the EVDO Rev 0 network, you will see some improvement. After the EVDO Rev A network is deployed, you will then see:
Here is a picture of actual throughput tests, which shows we can get a maximum of 3.1Mbits/s and we were getting 3.0 Mbits/s.  The current EVDO Rev 0 gets a maximum throughput of 2.4Mbs/s, but in real-world averages, we will see 400Kbps - 700Kbps, with some seeing 1Mbits - 1.5Mbits (faster we have ever benchmarked is 1.8Mbits). Keeping in mind the exciting part of EVDO Rev A will be the upload speed getting bumped from 144Kbps to 1.8Mbits. This bump will allow 2 way video AND Voice over IP (VOIP). In order to handle VOIP, EVDO Rev A also, lowers the latency. For those interested, here are some ping times while on the local EVDO Rev A test equipment at CTIA 2006.  Notice the ping times in between 50's - 80's. This is MUCH improved over EVDO Rev 0 and for those applications that need low latency, such as VOIP, EVDO Rev A will allow these and many new applications, that are not possible now. Also, on display was the Sierra EVDO Rev A card and the Sprint Merlin S720 EVDO Rev A Card:  EVDO USB Device This announcement is HUGE. There are many new laptops that do not offer a PCMCIA slot, such as the MacBook Pro, 6 different Dell Models, Thinkpads and EVERY desktop computer on the planet. A USB EVDO dongle, changes the form factor of the EVDO PCMCIA card (requiring a PC Slot), and places the EVDO modem on a USB device. Almost every laptop and desktop has a USB connector, so this option is VERY attractive, since you can easily move your EVDO device from platform to playform (Windows or Mac OS X).
For best performance, if you use an external cable and move the device away from your computer around 12 inches, you will increase the performance of the device by as much as 3 Dbi. Your computer creates a lot of interference and that affects the signal. So, with a USB device, you will actually see better performance when using an USB cable, compared to using a PCMCIA, ExpressCard or embedded EVDO device.  Sprint/LinkSys EVDO Router This device will directly compete with the Kyocera KR1 Router and in some ways is very similar to it. Plug in your PCMCIA card in the router and you now can connect to the router over WiFi or Ethernet to connect to the internet.   Sprint ByteMobile, or disabling compresion One of the big issues on EVDOforums, is the thread on Sprint Mobile Broadband Compression. Basically, to conserve bandwidth, Sprint uses ByteMobile to compress data on their end before it gets sent to you over the EVDO network. This conserves bandwidth BUT also changes how images look. Sometimes the results are horrible. Well, Sprint listened. Sometime soon, there will be an update to the Sprint Connection Manager that will allow another application (one that you also download) to control the compression on the user's end and not Sprint.  Sprint had so much new stuff to show, that it looks like an ExpressCard solution was completely missed. The ExpressCard is the new form factor that is not compatible with PCMCIA EVDO Cards. Many new laptops use this format, including the MacBook Pro. There are many users waiting on this solution and we hope to have additional information soon on this (see the Novatel post in this area for more information). Sprint Real-Time Mapping Keep your eye on Real-Time Location solutions from Sprint. Imagine being able to go to a map and see the real-time location of your vehicles or employees. Down the road, imagine being able to see the location of your kids. Using a GPS enabled cell phone (more on IDEN phones, but CDMA will have this too) or device, you will have this option and it will only cost between $10 - $25 per device for unlimited monthly lookups.  Related Articles:
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 April 2006 ) |
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