Finnish Carrier Sets New World Record for 4G Download Speeds

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/finnish-carrier-sets-new-world-record-for-4g-download-speeds

by bemmu • 10 years ago

75 61 10 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

martinko2• 10 years ago

And the rest of the world could soon behave a lot more like the Finns do.

The core issue here is the lack of fiber-connected base stations. The vast majority of them globally are connected with microwave connections that will not be able to handle 1gbps speeds for multiple users at once.

This is a rather significant issue, as laying fiber from the backhaul (sometimes even backbone) network requires a lot of earthwork, the fiber needs to be laid underground and active infrastructure also needs to be deployed. I don't see this happening anytime soon.

dogma113811• 10 years ago

Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering and it's not like this service is available everywhere across Finland.

Having a small population and only a few highly populated metropolitan areas make it easy.

Providing 1gbps cellular connection in NYC isn't really possible, Helsinki on the other hand is doable. As for the rural areas they aren't covered in Finland and even if a few are the size of the country also plays a role because good luck getting 1gig cell towers across Nebraska.

kalleboo3• 10 years ago

Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering

Except the excuse you hear from Americans in every single thread about mobile tech is "Oh but the US has such a low population density! Obviously our service must be crap and cost a shitload!"

pavlov• 10 years ago

Finland is 1.7x larger geographically than Nebraska, and its population is 2.8x larger. So while Nebraska is certainly somewhat more sparsely populated, the difference isn't huge.

legulere• 10 years ago

I can't talk about Finland, but in Sweden I was really surprised how far I could wander from civilisation and still get 4G, Edge was pretty rare. Much better than what I get here in Germany and also cheaper.

(I shouldn't complain though, I'm using heavily throttled internet for free)

Maakuth• 10 years ago

As a Finn I generally get decent connectivity mostly anywhere. The rural town I live in has 7000 residents and all the three networks have decent 4G coverage here. Certainly not 1Gbps, but always tens of Mbps.

Pretty much wherever I go, I have at least 3G connectivity from maybe 2Mbps upwards. This basically anywhere except some areas of Lapland wilderness, where nobody lives.

This costs around 20€/month, 30€ if you want unlimited calls and sms.

martinko2• 10 years ago

Yeah, this is what 5g 'promises' to solve (I've heard about applications in Singapore and NY), despite the fact that no one has actually defined what 5g is.

dboreham3• 10 years ago

Nobody is providing a 1Gbps cell connection anywhere -- this article is marketing hype. They didn't provide 1Gbps "in Finland", they provided it "in their lab" (which could as well have been in NYC).

Population density is a red herring -- deliverable service speed has much more to do with the amount of money the carrier wants to spend on provisioning service than the population density.

fwiw: I travel quite a bit and the fastest LTE service I've tested has been in Tokyo (high population density) @ 52M/23M. meanwhile, here in Montana (low population density) I usually see around 20M/15M.

lucaspiller• 10 years ago

Here in Lithuania the population is also very sparse outside the big cities, but I have no issues getting a full 4G signal even in remote countryside. The land here is rather flat which obviously helps, but the country also has the highest FTTH percentage in Europe so they must be doing something right :-)

jpeg_hero• 10 years ago

What kind of fiber could you even provision to the base station? 50gbit? 100gbit? Is that even possible?

detaro• 10 years ago

10, 40 and 100 Gbit/s are common fiber speeds (as in, you can buy standardized parts from multiple vendors), but at least 100GbE is properly expensive (something in my brain says +100k€ per interface, but that figure probably is a few years old). And that's per individual fiberpair & wavelength, so it is easy to bundle up multiple channels.

I assume the quoted wireless speeds are for a single client under perfect conditions, what summed up bandwidth can a single tower support with multiple clients? 10 or 40G probably go a long way already.

runeks• 10 years ago

If you're digging in the ground anyway, why not multiple fiber strands, and as many empty tubes as you can fit in there too? The digging is what costs (at least here in Denmark), not the materials.

tbihl• 10 years ago

I'm not arguing that we should use submarine style cables for base stations, but so you know what's possible: those cables (about 1 inch diameter) routinely do terabits per second.

jsjohnst• 10 years ago

You can get 10G Ethernet SFP+ modules using OM3 fiber for $100 these days. 12 strand outdoor fiber sells for $0.33/ft. Yes, neither of these is what you'd use as a backhaul link between cell sites, but it gives you an idea when you can do 60G over 300m distance for under $1,500 all in (assuming you already have SFP+ capable hardware at both ends). As others have stated, LR grade hardware has came way down in price just like the SR stuff has.

elipsey• 10 years ago

Great, now I can burn through my data cap in 8.42 seconds

finspin• 10 years ago

Not really an issue in Finland since the standard mobile phone plan comes with unlimited data.

jpalomaki• 10 years ago

This same carrier just some days ago issued a statement on average their mobile data customer used 13GB of traffic in August.

http://corporate.elisa.com/press-releases/bulletin/?id=41240...

dboreham3• 10 years ago

Rule of thumb: carriers actually deliver, once users are up and running on the service (not the first day after deployment), around 1/10 of whatever speed they mention in press releases.

nordify8• 10 years ago

You are sorely mistaken with regards to Finland.

Regulation in Finland defines what broadband speeds are acceptable. This includes mobile broadband. Acceptable speeds are a minimum of 50% of top speeds using a 4 hour average or a minimum of 40% of top speeds at any time.

And this regulation is enforced.

mnarayan01• 10 years ago

  Acceptable speeds are a minimum of 50% of top speeds [...]

I assume that's advertised top speeds?

dboreham3• 10 years ago

For wireless service? That makes no sense. They would have to have regulated different laws of physics.

imaginenore• 10 years ago

Here (in one of the EU countries) we have a strange situation when 4G is 20+ Mbps, but out home DSL maxes out at 2.5 Mbps. We're thinking of switching over to 4G, but it's only unlimited at night.

TorKlingberg• 10 years ago

I have worked in the field, so I may be able to answer some questions. As always, real-world speed will no be this high any time soon. This is a lab demo which is very different from reality.

They do specify the techniques they used:

* Five-carrier aggregation: Each LTE carrier uses up to 20 MHz, so this uses 100 MHz of bandwidth dedicated to a single user. Bandwidth in the air is scarce and many carriers do not have that much in total. LTE is expanding into higher frequencies (towards 5GHz) where there is more BW available, but the range is shorter.

* 256 QAM: This requires very good receivers and extremely low background noise and interference.

* 4x4 MIMO: MIMO is quite magic and unpredictable, even more so than radio signal propagation in general. For 4x4 to work the phone needs to have four separate antennas, and they need to be separated enough to receive different combinations of signals from the four transmitter antennas. 2x2 MIMO is common and works if you are close enough to the base station and get lucky with the angles and signal reflections.

davidf183• 10 years ago

A few minutes ago I just ran a Speediest on my iPhone 6s+ in Manhattan near a busy intersection on the Upper West Side.

47.6 Mbps download / 23 Mbps upload

I use Verizon, which has deployed LTE-Advanced which allows for the carrier aggregation of different data streams on different spectrums.

My phone uses the Qualcomm MDM 9635 modem: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x7

The Samsung Galaxy S7 uses the more advanced 9645 modem: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12

Honestly, I don't know why I need > 45 Mbits/ sec download and 23 Mbits/sec upload. I don't seem to have problems at all with Verizon, even with the tall buildings.

What I do have problems with is the high cost of the service which does much to explain why people don't use more bandwidth on Verizon and use more on WiFi.

I would much prefer lower costs for Verizon data usage than higher download speeds.

icelancer3• 10 years ago

I get 50/20 on Tmo in the Seattle/Bellevue area which is to be expected, given their corporate structure is largely based here (for US operations). But I agree; the speeds are largely irrelevant considering I am only getting 5 GB/month at those speeds and EDGE/2G speeds otherwise.

Would vastly prefer 10/5 or 10/2 or something with near-unlimited data.

davidf183• 10 years ago

Just curious. What is your handset? Wondering which modem you have.

vmp• 10 years ago

The standard mobile phone plan in Finland comes with unlimited data, and carriers differentiate their services based on speed.

Meanwhile in Germany, providers ask ~8 euros per month for a 14.4-50 Mbit/s "flatrate" with 1Gb traffic limit... they do provide "unlimited" traffic as advertised but once you consume more than that you are restricted to ISDN speeds (about 64kbit/s). The marketing guys came up with the word "high-speed volume" so they don't need to refer to this as a "limit".

Really scummy practices if you ask me. :( Although the average person may be content with 1Gb of data per month, what use could 64kbit/s have in 2016 (other than texts and narrowband voip ("Call your friends like its 1999™")?

Gracana• 10 years ago

Same in the US. It amazes me that it's legal, it doesn't match any reasonable interpretation of the word.

ioltas• 10 years ago

Japan is getting to that as well these days. A couple of companies are popping up, outlining that they get the price down with such offers while maintaining the connection speed... Up to a certain limit.

germanier• 10 years ago

German carriers paid more than 700 € per resident (including non-users like children and elderly) during multiple spectrum auctions in the last 16 years just for the right to transmit mobile internet over the air – much more than in most other places (US carriers paid less than half per resident as far as I know, Austrian less than a fifth). That money has to be earned somewhere.

Finnish Carrier Sets New World Record for 4G Download Speeds

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