Cellular Networks or Why America Sucks

[Oban]

A former employee of mine worked on that Telus TV project.

The main issues were limited content made available for the Canadian market, the drain on battery life and the fact that the software was only licensed for a small subset of the total phones sold by Telus.

At one tradeshow I went to they had a sample of the video they were broadcasting to users, I was shocked at the poor quality.  Hell, /gif/ has better quality video.  I honestly still believe that the reason why video on cell phones failed was because of the shit quality, not anything else.  Hell, I have watched videos from youtube and iTunes on my iPhone quite a few times.

EDIT:

Oh, and Rogers is the fucking great Satan of the Cellular industry.

[IainC]

Sky do a TV to mobiles service in Europe.

[Venkman]

Hell, I have watched videos from youtube and iTunes on my iPhone quite a few times.

But you gotta admit watching something on an iPhone screen is very different from your average RAZR or newer LG things. I still believe that while the tech infrastructure seemed to be there, it was the devices themselves that held back the user experience. I've always wondered if other countries are using mass transit so much more than the US and therefore have a culture more adaptable to different viewing habits versus Americans who are predominantly driving between places with TVs.

All of your points are very interesting though. Glad you mentioned that you're abiding by NDAs based on what you know 

Do other countries have as many freakin' models of handsets as we do? I swear the only reason they can do this is because they stop caring about the end user experience beyond the signing of the 2 year contract. This is the part I think Apple took the most advantage of. Seems like they designed a smartphone for end users and then shopped it around until they found a carrier. This is very different from ceding control to the carriers.

[Oban]

But you gotta admit watching something on an iPhone screen is very different from your average RAZR or newer LG things. I still believe that while the tech infrastructure seemed to be there, it was the devices themselves that held back the user experience.

Yes on the iPhone, but not on the infrastructure.  A lot of cell sites out there past the suburbs are still being fed by T1's or bundles of microwave based DS1's.  Perfectly fine for voice and sms, not so good for anything that requires sustained speeds over 112Kbps.

[naum]

With an iPhone, you are able to:

…watch television, several apps available (here is one - http://www.slingmedia.com/go/iphone , wifi only but I heard that it can do 3G, just temporarily gimped)…

…take bar codes and/or pictures and immediately pull up catalog product page on internet for ordering and delivery, camera on iPhone needs autofocus to make this work better, but there are addons that enable this now…

…record and stream video (if jailbroken)

But still no cut + paste (though coming in v3.0 or again if jailbroken)

And use your phone as a personal digital assistant, coming in a few months — http://azspot.net/post/114923308/siri-demo

My big peeve is the all the mobile network capping now - 5G/mo, kind of dampens media consumption… …or Apple gimping certain features — like I can DL videos and .mp3 in the background but it will only enable on WiFi and not 3G (though my present iPhone is still the Edge network, which is OK for email and textual stuff, most of the time, though it seems to flake out at inconvenient intervals). It's really gotta suck if you don't have cable/DSL in the boonies, and your only option is satellite (which is giant suck, and capped even lower, unpublished rates) or mobile cards/

Even new MiFi (Verizon) that geeks gone gaga over is capped at 5G/mo at $59 (250M for a $39 plan).  Overage costing $.05/$.10 per MB…

[Jimbo]

I used my cell phone when the IHERN would go down on the ambulance to call in patient reports, and sometimes a cell phone is nice to have for a secure line because of the idiots with scanners we had in our areas.  It isn't as bad now, since we went to 800 MHz, it isn't as bad, but I'm sure more people will buy freaking scanners in that range and we will be back at ground zero on security again.  800 MHz isn't that great either, we still have dead zones out in the hills, but we are a mix of urban and country area, so setting up repeating info happens sometimes.  I can remember one fire we had to no coverage to dispatch (no cell or 800 or old EMS frequency), so we had to set up a relay from one truck that could hear dispatch and one that could hear us on the fire.  

If I still was on the squad more, I would kill for this phone (Nebu, Broughden, Sky, and all you others that run around in the woods would too) http://www.toughestphone.com/
But since it doesn't have a ton of bells and whistles I doubt it would do good here, I would hate to go back to text messaging on the regular screen, wonder if they could come up with a fold phone with waterproof keys that are large enough to push.  It says when I dig around the site, that the North American launch is this summer, who is going to carry it?  I'm pissed at Verizon right now, but they have the best coverage in my area.  I could see getting a phone that combines a PDA with a phone, as there are some great drug guides, pt Dx, treatment guides, burn calculations, etc... that we have been sharing with each other at work.  It is a pain since we all have diffrent gear.  One PA has a ton of stuff on her PDA, but won't give it up, since another FNP had a hellish time reinstalling the programs to her Iphone.


Hell I live in town and I have crappy coverage in my subdivision.  I keep looking at cell phone antennas, as I think it would fix it, but I have to do it so my damn housing association doesn't bitch at me.  I think I'm going with Wilson Electronics for either an antenna, I don't think I have the space to mount and use a cell phone booster.  JDTECK has a nice system , but I wonder if it is a repackaged Wilson system.  Anyone else have any luck with other antenna or booster units?

[Venkman]

But you gotta admit watching something on an iPhone screen is very different from your average RAZR or newer LG things. I still believe that while the tech infrastructure seemed to be there, it was the devices themselves that held back the user experience.

Yes on the iPhone, but not on the infrastructure.  A lot of cell sites out there past the suburbs are still being fed by T1's or bundles of microwave based DS1's.  Perfectly fine for voice and sms, not so good for anything that requires sustained speeds over 112Kbps.

Ah good to know. I used to read about companies making big investments to drive multimedia on cell phones, but I always wondered how far and wide that spread. I could totally see them focus just on major cities and bone everyone not in one.

@naum: thanks for the heads up on Siri. I really need that thing, driving as much as I do. However, it's only useful if it'll work with a hands-free headset (I'm on my fourth one atm). Any idea if it will?

[Oban]

There are quite a few rugged phones out there for CDMA and GSM networks.

I would contact the business office for your carrier of choice and ask about one since they may not be available at retail stores.

Samsung makes a rugged flip and a rugged candy bar.  Casio has a nice, slightly gimmicky, product too. 

Personally I never went for the rugged phones since there is usually an http://www.otterbox.com/ that fits whatever the current flavour of the day is.

I miss my Iridium, that was a fucking tank of a phone.  Hell, it could disrupt tv's and other phones during call setup.  It could also be used as a personal defense baton.

As for cell phone repeaters, just wait.  If you are using ATT the picocells are coming out soon...

[NiX]

Oh, and Rogers is the fucking great Satan of the Cellular industry.

I left them for Telus. Terrible service all around.

[Broughden]

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.

Now go back and read my FIRST post about companies stupidly being stagnant and protecting thie turf versus innovation. Samething you just said.

Which has nothing to do with me thinking this is the fault of some secret cabal, I have no idea where some of you get your ideas from.

[Broughden]

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?

Which is actualy why the woman in the NPR program said we should just import the Japanese protocol rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, but that it was once again an example of how backwards we were becoming.

[Oban]

If we do that then we are suppressing American innovation and allowing those foreigners to win.

[MahrinSkel]

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.

I call bullshit on this one as far as cell service goes.  They've already rebuilt the networks 3 times and are going for a 4th, and each time they've deliberately crippled it to keep it "closed" even as they gladly share each others infrastructure.  It's pure rent-seeking behavior.

Simple example: I used to have a RAZR phone, and I wanted to load my MP3's on it, something I knew it could do, except...I had Verizon for a network, and Verizon deliberately and specifically crippled their RAZR's so they could not be loaded with MP3's, if you wanted music you had to buy it from them, at $5+ a track.  Yes, there were hacks to get around it, if you were savvy enough and didn't mind risking bricking your phone, which is why nearly all phones are now "OTA" (Over The Air), they can have their firmware checked and reloaded over the network.

My phone is a general purpose computing device that has been deliberately crippled so I have to pay $10 (or $3 a month) for a shitty app to check my email because trying to use the integrated browser on GMail never seems to work no matter how many times they rewrite the server feed trying to work around it.  Apple won't let Flash on the iPhone even with severe limitations, because then they couldn't sell you apps that reformat a Google search for $20 a pop.  Android is trapped between Google's intent to make it an open general purpose always-on network device, and the network provider's desire to cripple it.  It is so useful to be always reachable, that we don't stop to think how much more useful it would be to always be *really* connected.

--Dave

[Oban]

Well, some of your points are valid. 

The expensive legacy infrastructure is usually written down and/or paid off by the time we roll around to the next technology.  Oh, and hey we get to keep most of that equipment around anyway to support legacy customers which is just money in the bank.  Plus the fact that new equipment is always better/faster/cheaper...  As for infrastructure sharing, those large towers you see are generally owned by one of the two major tower companies and then we all have to lease space and buy power from them.  Roaming agreements allow for network sharing, sure, but we have to pay for that ability in a bilateral relationship.  What do you mean by crippled to keep it closed?

CDMA carriers are able to lock down their phones and subscribers to a greater extent than GSM providers simply because of the lack of SIM cards and readily available unlocked phones.  The whole ringtone thing still amazes me.

The point about flash and Apple, not so much.  Considering the fact that google search is built in to the browser, I am not quite sure what you are getting at here.  Also Flash really does kill the battery in phones, at least as it is currently implemented.  Can you elaborate on this point?

[Quinton]

The point about flash and Apple, not so much.  Considering the fact that google search is built in to the browser, I am not quite sure what you are getting at here.  Also Flash really does kill the battery in phones, at least as it is currently implemented.  Can you elaborate on this point?

Flash, in general, is going to suck on mobile devices.  Hell, a lot of flash content has trouble on my 2.4GHz core2duo laptop with 2GB ram.

I think the "kill the battery" argument is total crap though.  Give the user the choice -- if they really want to run something cpu intensive that's going to impact their battery life, maybe to them it's worth it.

Modern smartphones really are little handheld computers, and with recent ARM cores having MMUs (and soon, virtualization capabilities), running full operating systems (linux, osx, etc) that can manage resources and ensure that core functions (phone, etc) are not starved by less essential apps, it's kinda silly to pretend they have to be locked down single-function embedded devices.

Network operators don't want to be "dumb pipes", because they're desperate to "monetize" their users as much as possible, but the trend seems to be toward more openness, not less.  The apple store is still a walled garden, but it moves the point of control to a third party (that still imposes stupid restrictions on developers, but it's hard to be as stupid as a cellular carrier).  The android market is more open (no human approval process, but malicious, copyright-violating, etc apps can be removed), and android devices allow app installation from PC or web too.

I'd like to see more mobile hardware shipped where replacing the entire OS does not require defeating dumb "protection" mechanisms, if people want to do this.  I think we'll be there in the next year or two.

[Lianka]

Oh, and Rogers is the fucking great Satan of the Cellular industry.

Amen to that, brother!  I worked for them for all of 10 weeks (IVR Customer Experience Team).  8 of those were my desperately trying to get out.  Seeing it from the inside, I am shocked when _anything_ Rogers owns or has ever touched works.

[Oban]

I have yet to meet an employee at Rogers that has been in their position for more than six months.

[Daeven]

The point about flash and Apple, not so much.  Considering the fact that google search is built in to the browser, I am not quite sure what you are getting at here.  Also Flash really does kill the battery in phones, at least as it is currently implemented.  Can you elaborate on this point?

Because Flash / Flex3 is the best damn stateful UI over http developed ever. Creating an application in Flex makes you realize just how big of a damn hack every other UI over the browser is.  Meh. 10" touchscreen fliptops it is.

[naum]

The point about flash and Apple, not so much.  Considering the fact that google search is built in to the browser, I am not quite sure what you are getting at here.  Also Flash really does kill the battery in phones, at least as it is currently implemented.  Can you elaborate on this point?

Because Flash / Flex3 is the best damn stateful UI over http developed ever. Creating an application in Flex makes you realize just how big of a damn hack every other UI over the browser is.  Meh. 10" touchscreen fliptops it is.

Flash sucks.

Only good for video and even there, sucks aardvark balls compared to H264, in terms of video quality per file size.

UI tactile response is poor - compared to HTML or even worse, to old school terminal setups where response time is measured in sub-seconds. Flash, OTOH, stutters and memory leaks like a sieve. It runs reasonably on modern Windows OS machines, but sucks on any other platform. And in case you haven't noticed, non-Windows platforms (not just Apple and the minute Linux desktop, but all the mobile platforms which are soon going to be the de facto manner in which users access online content.

[Trippy]

Only good for video and even there, sucks aardvark balls compared to H264, in terms of video quality per file size.

Flash, for video, is just a player and it can handle many different video codecs. The most popular codec, thanks to the blazing fast encoding speeds of the open source tools is Sorenson Spark. There are other better codecs out there, though, that the Flash player supports including H.264. It doesn't even need to be packaged in an FLV container, the Flash player can read an H.264 MP4 directly.

[naum]

Only good for video and even there, sucks aardvark balls compared to H264, in terms of video quality per file size.

Flash, for video, is just a player and it can handle many different video codecs. The most popular codec, thanks to the blazing fast encoding speeds of the open source tools is Sorenson Spark. There are other better codecs out there, though, that the Flash player supports including H.264. It doesn't even need to be packaged in an FLV container, the Flash player can read an H.264 MP4 directly.

Yes, I am aware of that.

But Flash player still sucks compared to native players.

[MrHat]

I just wish that I could hear people on my cell phone like I do on my landline.

[Yegolev]

I just wish that I could hear people on my cell phone like I do on my landline.

Isn't this a phone problem rather than a network problem?  My father-in-law nearly deafened me today and we are on different networks.

[Sky]

Why the fuck would you want television on your phone? 

If you find yourself watching tv on your phone, I think it's time to consider your lifestyle and maybe re-prioritize.

Then again, I don't use a cell phone. Leave me the fuck alone. Also, I dislike people who call me from a cell phone and tell them to find a real phone so I can understand what the fuck they're saying and hang up on them.

[Oban]

Tell them to get a better phone or stop talking on those piece of shit bluetooth headsets they get for free.

[HaemishM]

But Flash player still sucks compared to native players.

The Flash player is a buggy, incoherent piece of refried monkey shit infected with AIDS, SARS and the goddamn Swine Flu. It is almost as slow and shitty as Java, and it's implementation is so badly variable from platform to platform that I hesitate to ever tell someone something I've developed with it will work. And it just seems to get worse and worse with every iteration. And this is from someone doing nothing more elaborate or processor-intensive than creating a fucking animated banner. Flash is a wonderful program that does some great shit. But Adobe needs to take their fingers out and stop trying to release a new version of CS every 6-12 goddamn months and make sure their current version works well. Also, they need to fix the Adobe Reader which has become the most bloated, sluggish useless piece of shit program in existence.

I want to mind rape Abode some days.

[Lantyssa]

Since their business model is to now sell a new product every year, I don't think they're concered about any given iteration.  Why fix it when there will be a new one a month later?

[Teleku]

I don't know wtf is up with everybody's phone.  I almost never have a problem with understanding people on a cell phone.  Comes in perfectly.  The "cut in and out" thing only happens very rarely, or when I'm waaaay out in the middle of nowhere (and it actually sounds even better, in case of my parents shitty ass land line  ).

Also, the quality of the phones, both in physical ability and in sound quality has gone up at a constant rate since I can first remember using cellphones in the 90's.  And every cellphone I used in the 90's had significantly worst sound quality and breakup than any phone does now.  Seriously, fuck those phones.

Which one of us is in the bizarro world because half the comments in this thread make no god damn sense to me.

[Yegolev]

I do bag on Verizon and I seem to be in the minority when wishing I was on Cingular again, but I've decided that it must be because I have a Blackberry.  Fact is that I usually had 4-5 bars with Cingular but I'm lucky to get three with Verizon, maybe four if the Magic Cellphone Unicorn happens to be shitting a rainbow where I am standing that moment but this is rare.  On the other hand, I have my pitiful one or two bars in More Places_TM, as the man says.  So, I'm willing to blame this one on my hardware since everyone else loves Verizon and I don't know any better.

[Trippy]

It really depends on where you live. At my old location AT&T was the only provider that I could get a signal from cause they were the only provider the city allowed to put up a cell tower. At my new location my AT&T reception sucks.

[Oban]

Please, don't mock the magic rainbow shitting cellphone unicorns.

[Salamok]

Also, the quality of the phones, both in physical ability and in sound quality has gone up at a constant rate since I can first remember using cellphones in the 90's.  And every cellphone I used in the 90's had significantly worst sound quality and breakup than any phone does now.  Seriously, fuck those phones.

1998-1999 AT&T + Nokia 6120 (at least i think that was my phone) = best sound quality/reception I have ever had.  Of course since then I have only experienced Cingular and although they have gotten slightly better in the last year or so they still suck by comparison.  I think it is time for me to switch carriers.

Fact is that I usually had 4-5 bars with Cingular

Are bars a uniform system of measurement?  I have pretty much come to the conclusion that if you get any signal at all Cingular starts counting at 3.

I also love how there is a spot at the busiest section of the busiest freeway in Austin that seems to drop your call 4 times out of 5.  The fact that it is right after the on ramp I use daily makes it extra special.

[Lantyssa]

You shouldn't be on the phone while driving anyways.  The intersection is just looking out for you by telling you to hang up and drive.

[Salamok]

You shouldn't be on the phone while driving anyways.  The intersection is just looking out for you by telling you to hang up and drive.

The busiest section of the busiest freeway at 5:00pm goes like 5 miles an hour and being a freeway it has no intersections. 

[Polysorbate80]

You shouldn't be on the phone while driving anyways.  The intersection is just looking out for you by telling you to hang up and drive.

The busiest section of the busiest freeway at 5:00pm goes like 5 miles an hour and being a freeway it has no intersections. 

It's still functionally equivalent to driving around with a .08 blood alcohol level