Why I choose 3G over Wi-Fi
Say what you will about the wireless phone companies, but in a crunch their managed 3G cellular networks get the job done when Wi-Fi connections fail.
I was in Chicago at a telecom trade show this week and had to cover a Federal Communications Commission's meeting via Webcast. Ironically, the meeting was focused on the FCC's proposal to draft new regulations to keep the Internet "open" and "free."
The video for the Webcast, which I was watching over an unprotected Wi-Fi connection, started out fine. But after only a few minutes, the picture began to break up, the buffering wheel on the media player churned wildly, and the audio stopped and started so often that I only could make sense of two or three words at a time. Sometimes the audio would start up where it had left off, but then quickly jump ahead to the live stream, cutting out entire sentences and paragraphs.
When I couldn't take it any longer, I shut down my computer, rebooted, and plugged in my Sprint 3G air card.
Almost immediately after launching the video, Chairman Julius Genachowski's face popped up on the screen clearly. But the best part was that I could hear everything he was saying. I didn't experience one hiccup, not one pause. There was no little circle turning round and round as the video buffered. It was working perfectly.
The problems I experienced were likely due to congestion on the unsecured Wi-Fi network. Even though I didn't see a lot of people connecting to the network, there was still likely a lot of traffic. Meanwhile, Sprint's 3G wireless network is more tightly managed, because the licensed spectrum is a limited resource that must be used efficiently. So even if there had been congestion, I might not have even noticed.
Sprint, which owns spectrum licenses, has more control of the traffic that is on its network than the trade show folks who put up the Wi-Fi network, which uses unlicensed spectrum. In theory, the Wi-Fi network should be at least three times faster than the cellular network. But when there is a lot of traffic on the Wi-Fi network, Web pages load slower and video gets warped and choppy.
How Net neutrality fits in
One of the issues that has been hotly debated among Net neutrality supporters and detractors is how to prevent network operators from favoring some traffic at the expense of services, while also allowing the operators to manage their networks to ensure their customers have good experiences.
As I sat watching the choppy FCC Webcast, trying to piece together what was being said, I experienced firsthand how an unmanaged, congested Wi-Fi connection, simply doesn't work, especially when it comes to video.
And if we are to believe companies, such as Cisco Systems, which makes most of the routers powering the Internet, the Net is about to become a whole lot more congested. In June, the company said that Internet traffic worldwide would grow to five times its current size between 2008 and 2013. And much of this growth will come from video. Not only is video traffic very time sensitive, but it also eats up a lot of bandwidth. The result is a double whammy for network operators.
With a recent survey of more than 20 service providers around the world, Cisco predicts that by 2013, 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic will be video. Today throughout the world, the average broadband connection, generates about 11.4GB of Internet traffic per month. Of this 11.4GB of data crossing Net monthly, 4.3GB of it is video or some other type of visual application, such as social networking or collaboration services.
What this means for network operators is that a tsunami of data traffic is coming. And even though network operators continue to add capacity to prevent congestion, they also need to better manage their networks.
Network design becoming more critical
At the Supercomm 2009 trade show this week, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donavan said that there must be changes in how networks are designed and managed to keep up with demand.
"The capacity we carried in 2008 will be a rounding error five years," he said. "We need to fundamentally rethink how we're carrying traffic in our networks. We have to rethink how we interoperate, how networks are constructed, how routing is done. How we move content in off-hours."
He warned that there will be consequences if operators don't act soon. "We'll end up in a dire situation a few years out if we don't collectively step up as an industry and throw Moore's Law out the window," he said.
So with more traffic on the network, operators say now is not the time to change regulation that could inhibit the way they manage their networks.
"If you have to treat all bits the same, it's hard to manage and protect the network," Tom Tauke, Verizon's chief lobbyist said. "When you're trying to make the network flow, you can't have lawyers looking over engineers' shoulders telling them what they can and can't do."
It seems that the FCC has gotten the message. In the nondiscrimination principle that was presented at its meeting this week, the document spells out that network operators cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications, but it allows for traffic discrimination when allowing for reasonable network management.
Of course, the FCC is only in the beginning stages of drafting the new Net regulations. And no one knows what the final wording will be. But I hope that when the official regulations are adopted, that network management is preserved unscathed. Because if it's not, we're all in trouble.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
As a long-time consumer of cellular data, I do not agree with your perspective - I feel that the carriers will cap LTE and offer tiered accounts just as they do now for their 3G service. I subscribe to Clear in PDX as well, as an experiment - their service is often interrupted, and now the sector I'm in is experiencing its second major hardware failure in 3 months with an estimated 4 week repair time. I'm not holding out any hope that I can rely on cellular carriers when I need it, having been let down at times by ATT, VZW, and Clear with service interruptions and changes in their TOS that have raised my effective cost of doing business with each of them.
We call that "feeding at the public trough".
All the private development is nothing more than companies building easier ways to feed more. Now if you want to talk about a company that makes calculators or watches that's another thing.
"Cell phones have become much more of a necessity then a landline ever was."
You MUST not be very old. It wasn't all that long ago that land lines were critical to everyday life, particularly business. Cell phones simply replaced all of that.
@DrtyDogg,
Government butted its nose into the hard line phone business because it perceived that AT&T's was an unfair monopoly and that opening up the business to competition would benefit consumers. In the long run the end result was great if you made a ton of long distance calls, but for local calling the spike up in costs due to the lack of subsidies that AT&T was spreading from their long distance profits over to their local operations made phone costs more EXPENSIVE for the typical consumer. Monopoly or not, government's meddling made REAL costs more of a burden for just about all, except for perhaps telemarketers.
In some parts of the country 3G is not available, on a recent trip in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, there were areas with no GSM service at all, yet a small hotel in the middle of nowhere had an excellent broadband connection.
To MyRight Eye, that's the role of an elected government to protect the rights of the people when there is a monopoly, or near monopoly situation. Currently there are four national wireless carriers and in my community two cable broadband carriers (the second carrier was only available within the last 9 months, most communities only have one cable broadband carrier), true competition would eliminate these regulations but alas it seems that neither our local elected officials or the companies want competition so we have regulations to protect the consumer.
Also the only thing AOL and other US ISPs are after is ... more money. They already have enough resources (money) to increase their network capacity yet they prefer they cheaper solution - to "manage" (throttle) the traffic. And seems FFC will allow them to get away with that...
One amusing thing I pulled:
Cisco says Internet traffic will double in the 5 years between 2008 and 2013. AT&T's CTO says Moore's Law is no longer good enough.
Moore's law suggests: X thing doubles in power/speed/capacity every 18 months. Sooo....
1 unit of bandwidth in (for example) Jan. 2008 >
2 units of bandwidth in Jun. 2009 >
4 units of bandwidth = Jan. 2011 >
8 units of bandwidth in Jun 2012
So, they're six months ahead of schedule and have 60% more bandwidth than they were projected to need. Why does the CTO want to throw this law out the window again? Could it be that there's another reason AT&T is so hot and bothered to convince everyone that the Internet will go down in flames if they aren't allowed "manage" their traffic in an opaque sense?
I can run a speed test on my iPhone 3GS and get an average speed of around 2 Mbps with AT&T in my area. When the tethering hack worked, I pulled similar numbers when I did a speed test with my MacBook using AT&T's network. There may still be room for improvement with AT&T's network, but it still runs rings around Verizon's network in my area (I've had both).
I do agree that it's hard to compare when we don't know what the broadband connection was for the Wi-Fi, and nobody knows exactly how many were sharing that connection. Obviously, if you have many using that shared Wi-Fi connection, it's going to be slowed down compared to a dedicated gateway to the cellular network. Which, then, would depend on the cellular traffic.
Internet video alone will account for over 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html
But WiFi in a public place is much different then a Cellular broadband connection . Now what would the outcome have been if the majority had been using that same cellular network? Sorry but I don't buy the argument.
Sprint no longer puts a 5 GB cap on my data--something about being a Premier customer probably, but I'd hate to be on AT&T or T-Mobile in this country.
Besides, when you're on the road, do you take time to search for a WiFi hotspot or give your banking information to whomever is watching the public network? Who do you trust? Mobile broadband works.
To the author: why did you have to re-boot?
Why do you say that? I'm no AT&T fan but I teather with my iphone as my main connection and it works perfect.
I've seen the 3G data maps for AT&T and T-Mobile. They look like Sprint and Verizon 2-3 years ago.
Android...yea , we have a map for that.
iPhone is akin to the guy with the "little man-step" Howie just PWND you Apple.
No matter, here you go again, my original comment for you to reconsider (but this time I included you in the comments too):
EXCUSE Me!, he (verizon's CEO) reasoned the need to manage SMART NETWORKS? Like when Verizon did not allow its customers to use WIFI networks to offload data/voice/VOIP demand. OR it charges Huge $s for its customer?s privilege to set up and run Femtocells; again crippling Verizon's own ability to offload its "smart network" to the Internet. Or ignoring SIP type technologies altogether? Who is being SMART here please?
Mr. Seidenberg (ms Reardon), please quit insulting us. The solutions will prevail if Verizon's glorious Walled-In Green Garden is opened up. The major providers (and some media writers) are creating (supporting) their oligopoly-arguments through limiting their customer's access to all internet on ramps and then dishonestly crying about thier artificial high capacity demands at the same time.
The only ones that could believe them would be the FCC protectionist.
Watch the rest of the world competitively pass the USofA by.
- by PixP October 24, 2009 7:28 PM PDT
- What a bias article. That? ATT give you a free subscription?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- by jaguar717 October 26, 2009 1:39 PM PDT
- A "bias article"? Engrish much?
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (81 Comments)I thought we had the difference between nouns (bias) and adjectives (biased) taken care of by elementary school, but I guess ignorance knows no bounds.