Re: Cellular phone networks in US, Europe and Japan - what data rates ?

Hi Frank.
I don't know about Europe, but can tell you about here in South Africa.

> I know that one reason in Europe are the costs. It is still a connection
> based charging and users pay every second they are online. In Japan I
> think it is a packet switched network and so the users pay for the
> amount of transfered data ?!

Costs are definitely an issue here - we pay R2.58, which is around
US$0.34. Quite expensive consiering that the _only_ option we have is GSM,
at a maximum transfer rate of about 9.6 kbps. There are talks about GPRS
within the next year or so, which could see speeds as fast as our normal
landline dial ups, and one of the Cellular Service Providers here has just
released HSCSD, which touts a 28.8kbps speed, but no other billing model
as yet. 

I believe that the technologies are different in Japan. In SA, we're using
WAP over GSM, and they're using another technology called iMode. This is
much quicker, and works where you only pay for the data you transfer. This
is due to their packet-based architecture, which is what GPRS will bring
us. Packet-based architectures are "connected" all the time, and the
request for data and transferral thereof happens much quicker as a result.

Hope this sheds a little light.
Daniel

Received on Tuesday, 7 November 2000 01:35:04 UTC