Cellular Networks or Why America Sucks

[Broughden]

So listening to NPR yesterday they do a report on differing cellular services around the world. Come to find out other than some parts of South America and Burma the US is down near the fucking bottom in terms of what are our capability is.

They were saying in Japan for example you can do the following ALL with your cell phone:
Watch TV...yes HD quality streamed television on your cell phone
Pay your bus or train or subway fare
Scan a barcode sticker at a street corner and have a taxi dispatched to your location without having to know the street names or location.
Pay for anything out of a vending machine

Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Not to drag this down a political road but I think this whole situation is a great example of one of the biggest problems currently facing the US. This country and its corporations use to make money and be profitable by being innovators and being at the cutting edge. Now its all about businesses protecting their turf rather than innovating and simply churning the markets to inflate their stock prices to be "profitable." For example cable companies trying to limit bandwidth for their internet customers because god forbid you might watch TV or a movie over the net rather than using their cable television service.

Hell Im in the 16th largest market in the US and we STILL dont have the 3G network.

So question to everyone living outside the US....what cellular services do you currently enjoy? Rub our faces in your technical superiority.

[schild]

Japan and South Korea are tiny.

[Merusk]

Nothing new.  I read similar articles 3 or 4 years ago when cell phones were just hitting their peak in the US and landlines were trending down but still greater #'s than cell lines.  They've been big overseas for a lot longer and had capabilities we're only getting to now for a while.  The example I saw then was SMS cards in Europe.  You could pull it from one phone and plug it in to another as easily as an SD memory card on your digital camera, and be ready to go.  We still don't have that capability when swapping phones from what I see when my wife gets new phones.

We've been way behind on consumer tech vs Japan for a long, long while. Not just in phones, but TV and other areas of 'American superiority' as well.

[Teleku]

Just to clarify the Japan cell phone "pay for your train/food/anything" ability, its not really a matter of actual cell service.  Many of the phones just have a chip in them that when you walk up to the ticket taker, you waive it over the sensor and it automatically takes deducts the appropriate amount from your account. 

This is similar to many of the cards we have in the US.  Such as my transbay card here in SF, where when I get on the bus, I just waive it over a sensor and it deducts from my account.  All the Japanese did was stick the little chip in the back of a cell phone to make it slightly more convenient (since the Japanese carry them everywhere), instead of having a separate card for it like we do in the US.  Has nothing to do with actual cellphone service.  They also just expanded it so you can use it to buy things at several places (but thats limited only to certain places/machines at train stations.  Vast majority of vending machines require actual cash).  Biggest block to something like that in the US is getting all the companies involved(retailers/public transit/various cell phone companies) to all agree to work with each other.  This is easier in Japan where they still have the remenents of Zaibatsu's (now called Keiretsu) where a broad range of corporations all integrate deeply with each other.

Its cool and nifty, but just thought I should clarify in case you thought it was apart of some amazing cellphone service technology.  Frankly, I wouldn't keep much money on that cell phones account anyways (like, just what you would need to be buying about than a weeks worth of train tickets) since if you lost your cellphone, somebody could go on a shopping spree with it.

Also, the HD TV thing is something that would be seen as a retarded gimmick that would never be used in the US (IMO), and wouldn't really be a profitable service.  It works in Asia because everybody spends hours and hours a day commuting to and from work/school sitting on a train.  That doesn't happen here.

I agree we are very badly behind on several technological fronts when compared to several other countries, but there are practical reasons as to why we don't have some of this.

[K9]

Japan and South Korea are tiny.

Isn't the infrastructure handled at the state level? I can understand hicks in the remote parts of Iowa not getting shit on their phones, but you can't really say the same for many of the smaller and wealth-dense states. I might be wrong on this.

[HaemishM]

The cell phone companies in the US monopolize their network like you wouldn't believe. Just getting tiny shit approved for use on the network is amazingly difficult and constraining. It's one of the reasons mobile phone gaming has been a wasteland of retread casual games and parlor games until recently. Not to mention I know very few people who like their coverage - most complain about its spottiness at some point or other. Coming from the almost anything goes dev platform that is the Internet, it's quite frustrating trying to do any kind of mobile marketing or development.

[Merusk]

They not only monopolize, but they pay off the right guys to make sure the networks aren't declared a public good.  They learned from the cable companies failure to do so.

[Nevermore]

I'm just glad that competition between the various cell network companies is driving innovation.

[Salamok]

Screw you all and your newfangled cell phone ideas!  I just want to go back to 1999 when my cell phone call quality was on par with my land line. 

[Yegolev]

I like the juxtaposition of the previous two posts.

[Broughden]

Japan and South Korea are tiny.

Russia isnt and they beat us in phones and services offered.

Also couldnt cellular companies release some of these new services at least in the major metropolitan areas such as LA, NY, Chicago, etc? The excuse "America is big uhr" that the cell phone companies give doesnt really hold any weight when there is no legal obligation to offer a service nationwide or not at all. They could take the top 20 biggest cities and start there...but they dont even want to do that.

Its like my cable company trying to sell me phone service and wasting millions in advertising for its service. That technology is dead. Move the fuck on.

[Nebu]

Russia isnt and they beat us in phones and services offered.

I'm going to bet that this is only the case in western Russia.  When you consider the area that services are offered in, things change.

[Yegolev]

This thread smells like Entitlement.

[Broughden]

Also, the HD TV thing is something that would be seen as a retarded gimmick that would never be used in the US (IMO), and wouldn't really be a profitable service.  It works in Asia because everybody spends hours and hours a day commuting to and from work/school sitting on a train.  That doesn't happen here.

Obviously you have never traveled for work. Being able to use hulu or netflix or some other net based service to download or stream and watch programs would be a HUGE boom in the industry.

The fact that my new amazing Google phone cant do this is fucking retarded as far as Im concerned.

Russia isnt and they beat us in phones and services offered.

I'm going to bet that this is only the case in western Russia.  When you consider the area that services are offered in, things change.

Read the rest of my post about only offering said new services in the population packed major metro areas.

[Soln]

lol try Canada if u want teh sux

[Murgos]

Meh, lack of being on the bleeding edge in this case has dick all to do with 'THE MAN KEEPING US DOWN' and everything to do with that we have an incredibly dense and expensive infrastructure already in place.

Power distribution in the US is one of the main building blocks in our society and is one of the aspects of the 'public' works of our country that is most in need of upgrading.

Now, think about the block you live on and what it would cost to rip everything out and put in nice, shiny new components.  Next consider everything withing a mile.  Now start adding in the rest of the country.  Trillions isn't even begging to cover it.

Bridges, roadways, trains, waterworks and the airways are all facing these issues.  We are at where we are because of 100 years of innovation and investment.  It's not going to change overnight or even over a generation.

[Broughden]

We are at where we are because of 100 years of innovation and investment.  It's not going to change overnight or even over a generation.

And my point is it seems the two things in bold have stopped. And that has happened in a generation.

Or maybe I just have PMS.

[Yegolev]

You are just getting old.

[Murgos]

And my point is it seems the two things in bold have stopped. And that has happened in a generation.

Or maybe I just have PMS.

You have PMS.

Seriously, if every time you encounter a problem in your life your immediate instinct is to attribute it to a secret cabal of people fucking with YOU for no discernible reason and in spite of every logical thought that the situation should be otherwise it's probably a pretty good indicator that you are insane.

[Oban]

Hi, former cell company executive here.

There is no cabal, but there are numerous industry forums, groups and so on which allow the companies to stay in touch with each other.

North America is big.

North America has trees and suburbs with trees.

North America has far too many regulatory bodies on the state, regional, metropolitan, city and village level. 

North America also has a nasty habit of nimbyism which prevents us from putting towers in places that are normal in the rest of the world.

All carriers have access to the same network equipment* (well, except Japanese kit and LTE will bring Japan back in to the global standards fold).

All carriers have access to the same handset equipment makers* (well, except Apple's iPhone).

All carriers have access to the same billing, support and value-added service suppliers.

Really what it comes down to is the regulatory environment.  There are things you can get away with in South Korea (in building repeaters and four bars of coverage on basement level 4), there are things you can get away with in Japan (aerial fiber everywhere!) and there are things you can get away with in Europe (hello 900 GSM with your superior building penetration). 

In North America, the regulatory environment is just way too fragmented to allow for a national deployment using the same methods and engineering.   In New York I was not allowed to place antennas on the roof tops of buildings if they could be seen from the street.  Well... err... kind of defeats the purpose of putting an antenna up there if it has to be blocked by tons of metal and concrete.  In Colorado I could not put up a new cell tower to provide improved coverage ( people complained about poor coverage ) in a suburb because the local government refused my building permit.  In San Diego I could not run riser fiber from the basement colo to the rooftop antennas because of city fire regulations.   In Toronto I can put antennas on the sides of someone's apartment building, but heaven forbid if I wanted to put up an antenna on an office building's roof in the downtown core.  Aye ya...  I could go on forever.

Also, releasing spectrum above 900Mhz for mobile use and expecting any form of in-building coverage or coverage in leafy subarbs, that's a big fuck you too.

EDIT, oh and Apple's entry in to the market with the iPhone and Google's Android are the two best things to happen to the industry since LTE was defined.

[angry.bob]

It's not Broughden, I heard most of the same segment. We really are at the ass end of the world when it comes to mobile utilization. And it's not because of the infrastructure we have. (Though that's crumbling to dust and has been for years). Listening to the things that people in places like Kenya and other third world countries are empowered to do with their mobile devices was amazing. Same other shit like being able to use the built in camera to snap a shot of a barcode on an ad, a rail map, or even a billboard, have the device read the code, and then serve the relevant website with a catalogue, train schedules, whatever is incredibly convenient.

That being said, I hate mobile everything and the only people who should be able to legally own a cell phone are doctors, emergency responders, governors, the president, and their staff. There are literally no other people on the planet who have so much important stuff going on that using a cell phone makes up for the idiocy that people engage in while using the phones in public. Here's three simple questions to determine if you should have a cell phone: 1) Did your cell phone calls in any way save a life/lives. 2) When using the cell phone in a vehicle, did you pull over and come to a complete stop before even thinking of taking the call. 3) While using the phone in a line did you turn off the device while the person in front of you was still being served, ensuring that you wouldn't be one of those assholes who holds up the line trying to take care of business in between making plans for later that night and then gets pissed at the person waiting on you for interrupting your call.

If the answer to any or all l of those questions is "no", you should not have a cellphone to begin with. If the answer to 2 or 3 is no, you're also a piece of shit as a person in general. Get some fucking manners.

[Trippy]

Watch TV...yes HD quality streamed television on your cell phone

The Japanese are not watching HDTV on their cell phones, they are watching *digital* TV on their cell phones. The Japanese mobile TV standard broadcasts at a video resolution of 320x240, which is roughly VHS quality.

[Broughden]

Watch TV...yes HD quality streamed television on your cell phone

The Japanese are not watching HDTV on their cell phones, they are watching *digital* TV on their cell phones. The Japanese mobile TV standard broadcasts at a video resolution of 320x240, which is roughly VHS quality.

Well since the current standard I have seen in the US is 0x0 resolution then any quality of theirs beats ours.

[Salamok]

bunch of useless random garbage

None of this explains why my cellphone in 1999 was a better PHONE than anything I have experienced since.  Somewhere along the way we traded call quality for a bunch of buzz words and feature rich bullet points. 

I guess it all has to do with AT&T's extensive network of CDMA/TDMA coverage that was scrapped for GSM.  Yeah yeah I realize all the 3g type of crap would never be possible with CDMA but all i wanted was a phone that fucking worked anytime/anywhere, 10 years ago this was available with a standard plan, today it isn't.

Too bad there wasn't some CDMA/GSM hybrid phone out there that did CDMA for voice and GSM for bells and whistles, naturally even if that existed cingular has managed to fuck up their network beyond the point of no return.  I sincerely hope they wake up one of these days to all their customers being gone.

[Trippy]

Watch TV...yes HD quality streamed television on your cell phone

The Japanese are not watching HDTV on their cell phones, they are watching *digital* TV on their cell phones. The Japanese mobile TV standard broadcasts at a video resolution of 320x240, which is roughly VHS quality.

Well since the current standard I have seen in the US is 0x0 resolution then any quality of theirs beats ours.

In some areas in the US you can already get TV on your cell phone.

[Oban]

None of this explains why my cellphone in 1999 was a better PHONE than anything I have experienced since.  Somewhere along the way we traded call quality for a bunch of buzz words and feature rich bullet points. 

I guess it all has to do with AT&T's extensive network of CDMA/TDMA coverage that was scrapped for GSM.  Yeah yeah I realize all the 3g type of crap would never be possible with CDMA but all i wanted was a phone that fucking worked anytime/anywhere, 10 years ago this was available with a standard plan, today it isn't.

Too bad there wasn't some CDMA/GSM hybrid phone out there that did CDMA for voice and GSM for bells and whistles, naturally even if that existed cingular has managed to fuck up their network beyond the point of no return.  I sincerely hope they wake up one of these days to all their customers being gone.

Your belief that a phone from 1999 is somehow superior to phones available today is amusing. 

ATT was never CDMA based.  The majority of ATT networks were D-AMPS (TDMA) based prior to their rollup and conversion to GSM.  Which is beside the point because CDMA versus GSM has nothing to do with anything above.  ATT also suffered from having so many networks integrated in to the national company, the legacy PacBell and Bell South networks being the major sore points. 

The main issue here was spectrum, when ATT moved to GSM the majority of the network switched to 1900MHz.  The D-AMPS system was in the 824-849 / 869-894MHz range which provided better building penetration and coverage in areas with trees.  1900MHz, not so much.  So yes, in a sense you could have had coverage under TDMA that you would not get once ATT upgraded to GSM.  But this had nothing to do with the technology itself, it had to do with the regulatory environment which allowed the FCC to grant spectrum in such a high band.  In fact, with GSM you suffer from dramatically fewer dropped calls due to switching issues and higher capacity per cell site assuming you have coverage.

As to your point about bells and whistles Verizon, Sprint, Bell Canada and Telus are the major CDMA carriers in North America and they all provide 3G connectivity.

But hey, don't let the above stop you from ranting like an idiot Salamok.

[Venkman]

In fact, with GSM you suffer from dramatically fewer dropped calls due to switching issues and higher capacity per cell site assuming you have coverage.

Provided you can make the call right? 

Good post about the regulatory environment. People tend to forget that national companies don't get some special federal mandate to bypass all the State and Local regulations. As a country, we're much more fractured in this regard, so rolling out anything national is a pita.

[Oban]

Provided you can make the call right? 

Exactly, no signal due to trees, structures or whatever and you will not be able to do anything. 

ATT and RogersCanada started to seriously refarm the 850MHz block last year after shutting down TDMA services in late 2007 (or early 2008 depending on the local regulatory agency).  So, if it makes you feel any better, you should be able to get the same signal strength you used to have if you have a phone that supports 850MHz and 1900MHz. 

As I said above, LTE will change the industry dramatically.  It supports the 700MHz band (holy crap awesome building penetration and way better signal strength in areas with trees) and uses multiple input / multiple output antennas to work some serious engineering magic on what is possible with wireless connectivity.

[Oban]

Oh, and this was covered by an NDA up until six months ago, but you want to know why we never had some of the interesting services like the Europeans had or the Japanese?

Advertising agencies.

Every time we would have a vendor pitch some new feature (Nokia and Nortel most often) we could deploy on the networks we would then take the thing to our customers and pitch it to them to see if they would be willing to use the thing.  For instance, localized SMS push advertising which was big in Europe and being used by McDonalds.  I was in a meeting with Saatchi & Saatchi where we pitched it to them for use as a test case.  We showed them the reports from Europe and they were very polite, but they never followed up or pushed it to their clients.  We even showed them how we could segment our marketing data for them, and then allow them to send an SMS in a specific geographic area at a specific time to a targeted market group.  Send an SMS with a coupon code for reduced price happy meals as the customer is about to go by if the weather is bad on a Sunday afternoon, and so on...  (and yes, customers could opt out or in anytime)

Electronic payments via your cell phone for vending machines and such?  No, because that would dilute the Visa brand since their was no card to be seen.  Why no logo?  Because Nokia was worried about diluting their brand by sharing space on the phone with Visa.

Blah, I could go on.

[Grimwell]

You should. It's somewhat interesting.

[Chimpy]

But if he does go on, it will either totally debunk Broughden's "ZOMG THE CORPORASHUNZ IZ KEEPING US DOWN" outlook on this, or give him more fuel because he will see Oban as an 'insider' who is trying to woo all of us in the unwashed masses into believing that the cell phone companies are all really a bunch of old softies who are working hard for us.


EDIT: woops, did not realize this wasn't in politics, changed  color accordingly.

[Quinton]

This is similar to many of the cards we have in the US.  Such as my transbay card here in SF, where when I get on the bus, I just waive it over a sensor and it deducts from my account.  All the Japanese did was stick the little chip in the back of a cell phone to make it slightly more convenient (since the Japanese carry them everywhere), instead of having a separate card for it like we do in the US.  Has nothing to do with actual cellphone service. 

Actually the latest generation of this is a little fancier -- they allow the software on the phone to query the state of the integrated stored fare card, so you can use your phone UI to check on how much cash you've got on the card, the last N train stations you've used it at, etc, etc.

[Oban]

See, and that works fine in a country that has an RFID payment standard mandated by a strong centralized regulatory agency.

What are the odds that your SF translink pass will work in NYC, Toronto, Chicago or DC?

[Selby]

Your belief that a phone from 1999 is somehow superior to phones available today is amusing. 

My mobile phone from 1996 was superior in certain ways.  It was a higher wattage phone (3-5W I think?), more durable (droppable), and behaved more "phone-like" (make calls, answer calls).  No voicemail, forwarding, GPS, video games, etc.  It did have 2 different color snap-on cases you could get - black and grey.  I don't for one second really feel that it was technologically superior to anything today.  My first cell phone I bought of the more modern style in 2001 was a piece of crap compared to then and now.  It wasn't until I bought a Palm phone that I felt cell phones had anything serious to offer.  Not like I'm in a rush to upgrade technology or anything, I have a rotary phone at my desk for all of the house calls I make.

[NiX]

Thanks Oban. Finally understand why I'm able to get a signal through Telus that my friend on Rogers can't get. It's even more ironic when you're in the Rogers Center and no Rogers customer can get a signal.

I'll debunk one of those features: TV on phones. They pimped that like a year or two ago up here in Canada and it failed. The cost vs. practicality just didn't make sense and someone made the point up above, we just don't share the same culture that would make it appeal to consumers. Heck, I'm sure statistics will show that a majority of people in North America spend most their time sitting on their ass watching TV on the couch.