Edited by author 09-03-2003 05:04 AM
When the GPRS standard was first proposed, sceptics said that it didn't have the capacity that a serious service would need. Now, it turns out that some carriers are finding it hard to meet existing demand and are switching data services off.

The first to admit to doing this is Globe Telecom in the Far East...

Talking with the CEO of Cellglide the issue is that the network operators have not learnt the lessions of their fixed counterparts in terms of datanetworks and traffic shaping.

Just like the SMS boom we have seen the networks release GPRS without the necessary network tools to allow easy use. Thus we have a situation that sees a cell become congested with as few a 4 users. Any one remember the launch of GPRS by Cellnet a few years ago. The FT and Telegraph were so impressed at just what a SNAFU it was that they devoted a quarter page to highlight just how poor GPRS was. Since then we have had more and more handsets released, the MNOs have overhauled their Portals to match the ability of "fast" data and from what I can see done little else to inprove speeds. The standard answer from my provider is that "you are billed by the byte sir and the network transfer data when capacity allows so regardless of how long it take for the page to load it still costs the same." and they wonder why I prefer to use my Laptop in a Hotspot!

The larger issue as I see it is that any move by the network operators to reimpose a walled garden approach will be to stifle and effectively eliminate any form of third party provision of services. Whether these be third party IM tools, or entertainment based services, or any other service which runs over the GPRS/WAP bearer.

If customers cannot access content providers who are located externally to the MNO environment, then the effect is to kill off the market prior to it's start. (or is this their plan?)

With third parties releasing new services every month, this poses a serious threat to small and medium sized businesses.

I've been amazed by the number of emails I have had, too; from people saying, in effect: "This is true! I thought it was just me, and I must be thumb-fingered. Why does nobody raise an outcry?"

Edited by author 09-09-2003 07:35 AM
"I've been amazed by the number of emails I have had, too; from people saying, in effect: "This is true! I thought it was just me, and I must be thumb-fingered. Why does nobody raise an outcry?"

Which networks? I regularly hit my t-mobile GPRS account really hard and don't have any speed problems.

I'm having big problems with Orange. Once again, my target WAP page is unreachable on GPRS, fine with GSM diallup, fine with Opera/Win in WAP viewing mode :-(

In general, it's every day around 9am, 6pm, and all of Friday afternoons...

Network- wide, or confined to a particular area? Could be a BTS capacity issue if it's localised.

Edited by author 09-11-2003 07:22 AM
Connection speed tester at http://www.info-techs.com/speedtest says I'm getting 37.1 kbps on GPRS at the moment.

Try it (and post results) if you have suitable kit- this was using an Ipaq 3870 connected via Bluetooth to a nokia 6310i on t-mobile in St Albans. It would be interesting to see results from different places and networks- and at different times of the day.

I had a long conversation with Orange Data, and I seem to be (a) living in a cell that had (still has IMHO) a long-term transmitter problem, and (b) travelling to work which has a cell that appears to be groaning under the load and Orange have a load more planned. They have planning permission and are waiting to start work apparently. How unlucky is that ?! However, just for fun I had to go to London on the train the next day and did a GPRS test all along the route, and got about 70% usability. What did surprise me was that sitting in Starbucks off Oxford Street GPRS was again very poor. I think insufficient bandwidth is the cause here. I just want to get it sorted as I have landed some paid(!) development work and need to be able to use GPRS on a regular basis.

Generally speaking, people I talk to think things are getting worse. I'd quite like to look at the metrics of GPRS; if people actually used the data that the phone networks are dreaming about charging us for, how many new masts they'd need.

Edited by author 09-22-2003 04:04 AM
>if people actually used the data that the phone networks >are dreaming about charging us for, how many new masts >they'd need.

Depends on how much spare air interface capacity they have now, and how much voice capacity they're willing to dedicate to GPRS in order to guarantee throughput. The answer could be none or lots depending on what the BTSs look like. A simple spreadsheet driven 'we will need x more masts to support y GB of data usage' won't add up as it really depends on local loadings, overhead and BTS capacity.

Peter can you do some speed tests?

Can do.. Is there a WAP site where I can do this, otherwise I could try from home linking via my laptop.

http://www.info-techs.com/speedtest will do you on a laptop. Don't know about WAP sites, I'm sure it's possible but can anyone be bothered ;+)

Guy - turn the argument around, if people could actually use GPRS they'd make enough to pay for more masts etc very quickly, remember that it's far from cheap...

I find GPRS coverage and availability on Vodafone in SE England is appalling.

Coverage should be pretty much identical to GSM unless Voda have some severe interference problems. What's your voice coverage like?

Edited by author 09-22-2003 05:47 PM
Just managed to get on (in Alton), and the result is: 4.8Kb/second or 39 Kbps. If it's working tomorrow AM i'll try then. That was using a Tosh laptop with a USB connection.

Just tried another one after clearing the browser cache: 2.8 K bytes/sec or 23 Kbps - same hardware

One more thing - looking at the log for the Motorola GPRS manager, I notice that I set the Quality of service to "default - subscribed preference" in all cases, but lookig at the log it shows "Setting Quality Of Service - Minimum" - i'm not sure if this changes to something a bit higher once I get connected ..

Edited by author 09-23-2003 09:40 AM
Not too bad @ 39kbs- change in speed between the 2 tests is most likely down to load variations on the cell. What signal strength is your phone showing?

QOS- I'm not sure this is too relevant, depends if voda have implemented QOS in their network yet.

Phone strength was about 50% both times. re the QOS, I'm using Orange - had to come off Vodafone due to extremely poor reception in Alton..

Jim Hughes, re your /m14 - I'm not convinced.

It's far from cheap, true; but the numbers of people prepared to use it at this price are far from huge. Keep the price at today's level, and everybody will simply wait for a WiFi hotspot to be set up.

Cut the price to the level where people can actually use it, and I'm not sure the payback is justified. I'm looking at the (very poor!) 3G coverage that is already there. It's coming along with fits and starts and hiccups, but it is coming. Most phone companies are now starting to plan the slowdown of their investment in GSM masts, not a vast increase.

And the potential of GPRS isn't great. Once there's a choice between the 30K average speed of GPRS and the 300K of 3G or the 512K of WiFi/broadband, GPRS will not stay popular except in emergency, I feel.

Guy (re /m21), I don't know the figures so you could well be right.

GPRS is starting to smell a bit like ISDN, good functional tech but overtaken and too heavily priced to get the market penetration it really deserved.

Jim/Guy

I'm not sure I agree with this. WLAN hotspot coverage will never approach the ubiquity of GSM/GPRS, and neither will 3G in the short term.
The market is't exactly flooded with quality 3G handsets yet, and there is no mass market for laptop/PDAs. GPRS is appearing in most new GSM handsets though, and they have a pretty large market. My money is on email to handsets/Blackberries, MMS and telematics as the applications which will drive GPRS. We'll see if the per kb charge comes down, I'm guessing it will in time.

Mike,
I'm not saying you're wrong. I am saying, however, that there's a limit to how far down it can come.

A lot depends on how quickly we get true (seamless) roaming from hotspot to GPRS. If I log onto a hot spot - and then find I haven't finished, but I've got to move (catch a train, taxi, whatever) then I won't mind too much doing a few close-down operations over GPRS - you know, saving the file, leaving the chat-room, and so on.

But even then, I'll be sure to set my system up so that if it sees something that isn't GPRS, it drops off instantly.

So the question - which I can't answer - is how much of the time I'll be in reach of a hotspot, and how much of my work will simply have to be done RIGHT NOW whether I'm at a hotspot or not.

If the volumes go down, then the network will have to keep charges relatively high. If the volumes go up, the networks will have to increase their provision. Either way, it doesn't sound like a formula for huge profits.

Hi all,

I've worked on GPRS network infrastructure and have some comments that might help check the bandwidth you're getting.

The performance is related to all the things you would expect like RF coverage and all the forms of interference. But it is also very dependent on the traffic profile. The protocols are not great at supporting intermittent data as there is a reasonable overhead in establishing a GPRS radio link (temporary block flow) and getting the coding scheme adjusted to give an optimum throughput.

Therefore there's a good chance that just browsing the web will give a poor throughput (other reasons aside) depending on the page content. If you have a data kit or PCMCIA card, try using a PC to FTP/HTTP a large file or download some streaming media.

With our kit, we find variations from 30 - 70+ kbit/s depending on traffic pattern.

Also, GPRS is *very* phone dependent. We can achieve 70+ kbit/s on a Sierra Wireless PCMCIA card (highly recommended) while we can crash a Sagem (battery out to recover) by sending it >~40kbit/s.

You may also be interested to know, there is an operator in the States (OK, perhaps bad example as GSM/GPRS usage is a lot lower than here but...) that has a single 64Kbit/s link for about 1/3 of the country...

Edited by author 09-26-2003 06:00 AM
Hi Guy, just read your latest piece, copied on the Register, it seems O2 are doing it as well.

I built a WAP site for a friend and uploaded it to some webspace I have, I can access it fine using wapsilon but not if I go through O2's wap service on my phone.

Several other people i've asked to test it report the same problem as well, although I havent chased it up yet to see what networks they are on.

Regards

Dazzz

GPRS guy,
We're getting good and technical now ;+)
GPRS throughput also varies significantly by available coding scheme-therefore influenced by handset and network capabilities too.

Guy,
Your comments are true for the laptop/PDA user (and me too!), but as mentioned earlier that's a pretty small segment of the market, even though laptop/pda users can generate orders of magnitude more data.

please let me know which is the best gprs mobile phone.

what is the modem speed.

as i am planning to buy one


u can mail me on sumit@jiskcon.com

I'm getting13.6kbs in Manchester city centre using an Orange SPV, its about 3.30

I got 29.1kps on my Motorola MPx200 with Orange. First attempt died after a few minutes of trying to find the website. Refresh worked in under a minute.

I'm getting fed up with it all, I'm about the only person in my group of friends that uses GPRS as they don't see the point as it's slow. And I'm getting that way to. I was thinking about changing networks, but the problem from reading these posts seem the same everyway. I was wondering if 3G phone will be better, but the phones themselves seems rubbish.

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