Korean carriers to launch broadband-shaming 300Mbps network this year

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/20/sk-telecom-lte-a-300-mbps/?ncid=rss_truncated

by bane • 13 years ago

42 44 13 years ago

Yeah, right. What are they going to do with 300Mbps to a smartphone? 4k video? That means that 4k phones are coming soon, too, right?

Right: http://bgr.com/2013/11/06/samsungs-4k-smartphone-displays/

kalleboo• 13 years ago

Why to smartphones? Imagine a laptop with this built-in. No more hunting for and connecting to insecure WiFi in cafés. Background iCloud backups/Mail sync when the laptop is in sleep.

signa11• 13 years ago

Yeah, right. What are they going to do with 300Mbps to a smartphone? 4k video?

well, think of it as phone-as-a-modem, or no expensive last-mile issues with taking fiber to the home and all that...

SkyDrone• 13 years ago

We are looking into low-latency Dual-Full HD video streaming for the next Sky Drone FPV solution with real 3D Oculus Rift support :) 300Mbps would come handy

XorNot• 13 years ago

This is an iirelevancy. You'll never see this type of speed in the real world, since to do it they're combining 3-channels. Meaning 1 tower, servicing 1 person per antenna sector will manage it, but that'll be it.

jrockway2• 13 years ago

I believe the speed increases are due to better beamforming algorithms, which use multiple fixed antennas to behave like one or more directional antennas at the same time. The idea being that the antenna only sends power in a small cone to your device and only hears responses from inside that small cone. This lets you fit many users onto the same frequency space, since they can't hear each other and each have the full slice of spectrum and time to themselves. It's space multiplexing, as opposed to time and code multiplexing that's currently widely used.

(The problem is that this requires really good digital signal processing. Normally we make directional antennas by putting bits of metal around the driven element that pick up the signal and re-radiate it out of phase. These work really well, and you probably have on on your roof to receive TV signals. But beamforming does this all in software, using a number of actual antennas to radiate out-of-phase to increase power in a certain direction. The reverse is true for receive; correlating phase information to "hear" a signal only from a certain direction. One direction is easy, but 100 directions is hard. That's where better DSP equates to more "bandwidth" for mobile phones.)

802.11n contains rudimentary beamforming, but the state of the art for software signal processing on $5 commodity chips is not amazing, and of course, the 2.4GHz ISM band is basically unusable because there is so much interference from non-beamforming (etc.) devices. 802.11ac improves this incrementally with better hardware. So it makes sense that at carrier grade budgets and with dedicated spectrum, good beamforming is possible. If so, and that's what this is, I totally believe 300MBps.

802.11ac has a 256QAM mode that can do almost 1Gbps. Of course, on the 2.4GHz band, you'll never hear 16 levels of signal over all the noise. But with dedicated spectrum, things change.

(This is mostly secondhand knowledge, so take it with a grain of salt. My cubemate at work is a WiFi expert :) I'm just a ham who is happy making QSOs at 31.25baud with PSK31.

promptcritical4• 13 years ago

Must be nice to live in a first world country.

res0nat0r4• 13 years ago

Note that South Korea is smaller than the state of Kentucky. I'm sure geography has a small part to do with it.

promptcritical4• 13 years ago

I'm sure it does. I'm from West Virginia, by the way, where federal stimulus money for broadband expansion ($24 million) got funneled to Verizon Network Integration to put routers in libraries. They used $22,600 dollar Cisco 3945's.

I'm sure corruption, regulatory capture, incompetent politicians, and oligopolies have something to do with it too.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201205050057

ulfw2• 13 years ago

Note that New York city is a densely populated small city with a huge population. Still can't provide proper internet speeds.

benologist• 13 years ago

3rd generation rewrite of

http://www.sktelecom.com/en/press/detail.do?idx=1054

kyle_t• 13 years ago

After travelling/living in Southeast Asia for 8 months and paying between $5-10/month for LTE speeds that are consistently more reliable and quicker than in the USA it makes me shudder when I get my bill every month for $100+ for two lines. Granted there are differences i.e labor costs and total land area coverage, but on the whole the price difference doesn't make up for it.

grecy3• 13 years ago

A guy visiting from nowhere in Australia was telling us how he gets twice the minutes, unlimited texts and twice the data on LTE+ for about 1/2 of what it costs in the USA.

rxdazn• 13 years ago

you don't even get edge when you're in the middle of nowhere in Australia, much less LTE.

e.g: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/coverage-networks/ou...

avn2109• 13 years ago

And Australia is a country with an overwhelmingly higher cost of living than almost everywhere in the US.

interstitial• 13 years ago

It's almost like the management of America's mobile carriers and pharmaceutical companies went to the same business schools, were members of the same fraternities and bribe the same senators or something.

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

On the other hand, South Koreans are required (by law) to use Internet Explorer 8 or earlier for online transactions[0], and they are required to register for many (perhaps all) websites with user-generated content using their unique national ID number (sort of the Korean counterpart to a Social Security number)[1].

This is due to a law passed in the late 90s, in the name of security. Perhaps it once worked, but it clearly doesn't today: http://www.zdnet.com/bank-data-of-20-million-customers-leake...

They have very extensive censorship of websites - not "just" pornographic, but also those that are "subvserive" or "harmful to minors". In combination with the aforementioned "citizen identity number" law, this has been used to suppress political dissent and/or protest.[2]

Much as I wish I could do better than my molasses-esque Time Warner connection at home, I'll savor my freedom in the US to the extent I can.

[0] http://www.zdnet.com/south-koreans-use-internet-explorer-its...

[1] (There are exceptions, and the full realities are a bit more complicated, but it's bad enough that virtually everyone uses some form of Internet Explorer: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-secu...)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_South_K...

robbiep• 13 years ago

Who needs a national id number when you have the NSA?

yongjik• 13 years ago

When you want to buy pretty much anything from a Korean website, you'll need one. (I don't think NSA would help you there.) Not necessarily your own number, it seems. Korean banks really believe in transparency and have repeatedly opened up millions of ID numbers for every hacker to use.

10feet2• 13 years ago

Internet Explorer 8 or earlier for online transactions

This could actually be incredibly safe and a good idea. If you only use IE for banking, and use the other browsers for everything else, you will be a lot more secure than someone who uses Firefox or Chrome for both.

lstamour4• 13 years ago

Just a reminder, this /is/ HN. "[using IE8 or earlier] ... incredibly safe and a good idea" -- them's fightin' words. Now, I'm not going to say that diversity isn't a bad thing, but I will say that diversification using older browsers and ActiveX controls where everyone is forced to use the same browser and so is not actually diverse at all ... well, that's where things go south. If most people set their default browser to non-IE and as a consequence are forced to type in their bank's URL directly rather than click a link to get there, fine. If most people choose, unwisely, not to do so, then they're more vulnerable to phishing attacks that additionally might add malware. If most people are required to use Windows, and therefore cannot use Mac or Linux under the current implementations, then again that restriction on diversity is bad for the self-defence of the system as a whole.

Finally, what you're really getting at is "use Incognito tabs for banking," as those by default don't load plugins that can sniff or execute on pages nor retain cookies for later CSRF. Sadly, safety is a moving target and browsers and OSes have moved on since late 1990s.

Joona• 13 years ago

If you only use IE for banking

But they don't.

acchow• 13 years ago

Exploits can escape your browser sandbox.

ksec• 13 years ago

What is so Broadband Shaming about it? In Reality if you live inside even a small size village you are very unlikely to get 300Mbps to yourself. Factor in radio frequency distortion I would be surprise if you could even get a constant 100Mbps.

Unless you are from US where i heard broadband are pretty bad.

salient• 13 years ago

I get 1 Gbps for less than $20 where I live (Europe), and unlimited bandwidth, but I'm not bothering with the extra speed yet because I'm going to need a good 802.11ac router and an SSD-enabled laptop to take full advantage of it.

So I'll wait a year longer or so until 1+ Gbps Wi-Fi arrives in laptops and also in routers (second wave of 802.11ac routers will do that, first wave isn't quite there yet). By then SSD prices should be a little lower, too.

teh_klev• 13 years ago

Which country/area would that be?

misterjinx• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure he's talking about Romania. You can read more about this here http://business-review.eu/featured/rcs-rds-offers-highest-fi... and a reddit discussion on the subject at that time here http://redd.it/1nz2ig (many comments)

ulfw2• 13 years ago

Many countries have 1gbps (Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey...) but only if Google does it in the US in a city or two does it get some public air time.

lstamour4• 13 years ago

"Broadband-shaming 300Mbps"? Speak for yourself, as that happens to be my current broadband speed over plain copper cable. Sure, I'm living a few years ahead of most people, but it is a lot easier to roll out LTE than other forms of Internet. I just wish that, like Wi-fi, your service didn't degrade as quickly the more people connected to it. I remember back in the day, when no one had LTE up here in Canada, it was routine to see speeds of 60-150mbps. Now, less so. Depends on where you are, what device you have, a whole host of factors. Of course, more spectrum is always nicer, not so much for marketing purposes as here but to ensure there's enough space for everyone to get more of the shared pool of bandwidth available. I'm sure if I ran LTE speed tests under a tower at 2 AM I'd get some amazing results too. :)

jrockway2• 13 years ago

I used Sprint's 4G network before there were any 4G phones. It was wonderful. Then the 4G phones started being launched, and it didn't work at all. It was kind of sad, because the speeds were great.

techsupporter• 13 years ago

Back when Xohm was still a thing (and still only in Baltimore), I did the trick of ordering a Xohm modem and using a billing address in Baltimore while physically using the device in Dallas. The IP and reverse DNS showed I was connecting to a Sprint 4G-enabled tower well before Dallas was supposed to have service.

It was screamingly fast. I think I topped out at 65Mbps down and 40Mbps up. It's amazing how fast the network goes with no other load.

girvo• 13 years ago

I currently get 100mbps on my cable connection in Australia of all places :)

lstamour4• 13 years ago

The real question of course, is, if we ran speed tests to servers in Toronto and Australia, would we see the same results? ;-) Of course, this is where (a) we need faster server-room connections and (b) lots of jumbo frame support by default over the Internet. ;-)

notastartup• 13 years ago

Having lived in Korea, it really doesn't matter if they make it 1000mbps. Porn is blocked (thanks to the hardworking volunteer force of Korean moms and grandmas keeping children and husbands safe from the filth that would make Confucius nosebleed), freedom of speech has consequences (since your social security number is required), much of the Korean web space is still stuck in early 2000s with an odd hint of George Orwellian theme to it.

I think that I would have the same level of joy if I heard that North Korea decided to make 1000Mbps line for their dedicated network of Juche websites focusing on every aspect of Dear Leader.

I'm guessing they require you to enter your korean social security number in hopes that it would not be possible for a North Korean spy to infiltrate the landscape of online shopping and girly music videos. Ironic, because ActiveX vulnerabilities give North Korean spies far more data and with far more ease.

Korean carriers to launch broadband-shaming 300Mbps network this year

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