Don't SWEAT it... Day One

I stole this idea entirely from Ricky because I was all thinked-out from the brainstorming of 2D game ideas. We were supposed to think of as many game ideas as possible. They didn't have to be feasible, or even very good. Here's the full list:

1. Escape from the Zombie Apocalypse
2. Extreme Accountancy
3. Mario Gets the Groceries
4. Hockey Players Beating the Crap out of Eachother
5. Beat the Crap out of a Mac
6. Beat the Crap out of a Vista PC
7. Drive Highway 99
8. Drive Down No. 3 Road
9. Extreme Underwater Basketweaving
10. Beat the Crap out of Gary Bettman
11. Poutine-Throwing in Quebec
12. Stop Gang Crime
13. Register Your Firearms
14. Clean the Chimney
15. Barbecue a Deer
16. Shovel the Driveway
17. Do your: Homework
18. Do your: IT Project
19. Do your: IT Blog Posts
20. Do your: IT Assignment 2A
21. Find Something to Do at Lunch
22. Brainstorm Game Ideas
23. Do the Shopping
24. Rob a Bank
25. Sneak out of the House at Night
26. Sneak out of the House at Night II: Steal Daddy's Car
27. Fill up on Gas
28. Drive through Richmond
29. Make Soviet Russia Jokes
30. Help Cloutier Stop a Beachball
31. Mario With a Lightstaber
32. Go 4x4-ing
33. Drive through Kentucky in your 1986 Z28 Camaro
34. Drive a Lamborghini to Catch Italian Criminals
35. Drive a Porsche to Catch German Criminals
36. Drive a Lada to Catch Russian Criminals
37. Drive a Ford to Catch American Criminals
38. Drive a Toyota to Catch Japanese Criminals
39. Drive a Kia to Catch Korean Criminals
40. Drive an Aston Martin to Catch English Criminals
41. Smuggle Drugs out of Miami
42. Evade the Cameraman
43. Blow the Dust out of your SNES Cartridge
44. Help Shane O'Brien Stop His Own Goal
45. Solve: IT Problems
46. Solve II: Tech Support
47. Solve III: Help your Grandmother with her AOL
48. Where in the World is Liam Clarke?
49. Justify Buying a Mac
50. Try to Save your Photoshop Project in IT
51. Try to Load your Photoshop Project in IT
52. Rollllllllll up the Rrrrrrrrrrrim to Winnnnnnnnn
53. Take Transit into the Downtown Core
54. Wait at the Border
55. Get your NEXUS Card
56. Get your Passport
57. Get your Passport II: Before Summer Starts
58. File your Taxes
59. Buy an Affordable Home in Greater Vancouver

His account of the entire day is on his blog.

Well, at least we're better than Engadget

We may not exactly be your comprehensive source for all information and news 3G... but at least we're better than Engadget. My, how the mighty have fallen.



Dear Engadget,

We told you this day would come; that is to say, the day where you are knocked off your poncy diamond-encrusted news throne and into the black abyss of ignominy. I guess that's what you get when you become Sony- and Apple-bandwagoning pikeys. I suppose we should congratulate you for finding what everyone thought was rock bottom, and smashing through it like a nuclear bomb through paper. For this, we thank you. We admit, we couldn't have gotten to where we are now without your fall from forgottenness to complete discomfiture.

In closing: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *cough* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *wheeze* ha ha.

Sincerely,

TGT (The Thirdgen Times)

What comes after 3G?

Did you fail math in Kindergarten? 4G, duh. Oh, you want to know what 4G actually means? OK.

4G will be the generation where cellphones cease running on specialized radio networks. 4G will be the generation where cellphones become IP-based and run off what is basically a specialized "internet". Cellphones will basically become WiFi devices that run on a different frequency than WiFi. Voice calls will no longer be actual voice calls, but will become a digitized form called a data call, which is kind of similar to VOIP (Voice Over IP) that you can get for your landline. With VOIP, instead of an analog signal (or an analog signal converted to digital then converted back to analog) being sent over the telephone line, you are sending a signal that starts off as digital and remains digital. It is basically a two-way streaming audio session. 4G cellphone networks will run on the same principle. With the arrival of IP-based cellular telephony should come cheaper data rates. As it stands today, it costs about $45/mo or more for an unlimited data plan. The cellular companies say this is because it requires specialized hardware and software to provide a gateway to the internet from the cellular network, (and they're right, they need huge switches that can cost tens of millions of dollars) but the main reason is because they can get away with it because we don't have the competition in Canada like the United States (where an unlimited plan can cost $35 or less). Since the phones are already accessing the IP-based "internet" network, it is easier to provide a gateway to the actual internet.

The technology that will be powering the 4G networks is called LTE. Almost all carriers have planned to go with LTE for their 4G network (since nothing else exists yet). LTE will use a MIMO channel access method that will provide a throughput maximum (tested) of 326.4 Mbit/s using 4 antennas. The optimal cell size of an LTE network is 5km, which is very good. 30km has good performance, and 100km has acceptable performance. Sub-200ms latency is achievable using small IP packets. The mobile spectrum available can be sliced into 1.5Mhz slices, which is almost unheard of for a full radio channel. LTE also has the ability to broadcast the DVB-H standard of TV broadcasting, allowing direct TV broadcast to your phone.

So how much is this all going to cost me?

In short? Not much. In fact, nearly every new phone model released in the last year is capable of 2.5G or 3G data transmission. EDGE and EVDO are both technically 3G technologies, although 3G can be used as a technical term or simply as a term to divide different generations of technology. And since EDGE and EVDO run off of the existing 2G cellular protocols (GSM and CDMA) no new hardware is required to utilize these new data technologies. I can't think of a single phone carried by any current wireless provider that cannot utilize either 1xRTT, EVDO, or EDGE.

If you want to take advantage of the (relatively) blazing-fast speeds that 3G data services such as HSP(D)A, you will need to get a new phone. You will also need to make sure that the phone you do get is compatible with the specific band that the provider offers. For example, Blackberry is selling the Storm as a HSPA-compatible device. Telus offers it for sale. While you may be dissuaded by the HSPA-compliant advertising, the Blackberry Storm operates on the UMTS 2100MHz band only. Telus is only going to operate the UMTS 1900MHz band, since that's all they have a license for. These are things that you have to watch out for when you're considering buying a current-generation cellphone that touts support for 3G technologies.

Similarly, don't get caught up in the whole 3G craze in the first place if you can avoid it. If you don't browse the web or use e-mail on your phone, then you really don't need to upgrade until CDMA is no longer offered, which won't happen for a long time. AMPS was operated underneath CDMA and GSM for 6 years because of all the businesses and people that did not want to pay to upgrade to digital (keep in mind that this was when phones were the size and weight of a cinderblock, and cost more than the car you had to put it in.)

If you really don't feel like upgrading right now, you don't need to. When the time comes to renew your contract or you find a good deal on a phone that supports all the new technology, go for it. Until then, your current 3G phone will do fine for all intents and purposes.

HS(D)PA vs. UMTS

HS(D)PA and UMTS are high-speed cellphone data protocols. HS(D)PA stands for High Speed (Downlink) Packet Access. The (D) is optional, so I'll just call it HSPA from now on. UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard. UMTS is a 3G technology, but it is currently being developed into a 4G technology. UMTS is sometimes called 3GSM, because it was meant to succeed the GSM standard. While UMTS is technically based of GSM, it uses the air interface (the soft radio interface between the handset and the cell tower) of W-CDMA. I know it's confusing, but bear with me. A lot of carriers are moving to UMTS as a transition technology before moving to HSPA, since HSPA is an evolution of W-CDMA. HSPA is designed to increase the available data rate by a factor of five or more. HSPA is named as such because it actually creates another W-CDMA channel called the High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH) that is used only for data and operates differently than a regular W-CDMA channel.

If you haven't been paying attention, here's the progression:

CDMA2000/IS-95/cdmaOne/GSM -> W-CDMA -> UMTS ->HS(D)PA

HSPA is fully backwards-compatible with EDGE, the current popular GSM data protocol, as well as W-CDMA, so you don't need to change your handset when HS(D)PA is rolled out, unless you want to take advantage of HSPA speeds.

302-640

A user on a cell-phone discussion forum discovered a network called "302-640" in the Richmond Hill, ON area with his Blackberry Storm. It is a 3G network using UMTS technology, which according to Telus' website is being developed jointly by Telus and Bell for their slowly emerging 3G and 4G networks. It seems to be a test of sorts. The network name, according to the International Telecommunications Union, 302-640, corresponds to the MNC (Mobile Network Code) of a Bell channel using UMTS 850Mhz and 1900Mhz bands. According to a Telus tech in the area, they are doing test rollouts of their 3G and 4G network infrastructure, which is being provided by Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei. The user who found the network reported that while able to connect and make SOS (Emergency 911) calls, he was not able to make a phone call or come across a voice or data channel.

GSM vs. CDMA

This debate has been raging on for years. Allow me to give you some background on the two technologies so you can make an informed decision. CDMA stands for "Code-Division Multiple Access". CDMA is a "channel access method". A channel access method allows multiple terminals (in this case, cellphones) to connect over the same multi-point physical medium. In essence, a channel access method allows multiple cellphones to connect over the network using the same radio frequency by divvying up the radio channel in different ways.

There are four major channel access methods. They are:

• FDMA (Frequency-Division Multiple Access) provides different frequency bands to different datastreams, which basically gives each cellphone its own radio frequency. This method was used in AMPS and requires the most available radio frequencies.
• TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access) gives each cellphone using a radio channel a time slot in which they access the cell tower. For example, during milliseconds 1-2, handset 1 transmits data. Then, from milliseconds 2-3, handset 2 transmits its data. Then, on milliseconds 3-4, handset 1 transmits more data, and so on. This makes it appear as though both handsets are transmitting simultaneously. TDMA has a tendency to cause dropped calls, however.
• CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) modulates the signal sent by the cellphone using a specific code given to it by the cell tower. Each handset has its own specific code, assigned by the tower. The data sent by the phone is modulated using the code, and the tower differentiates between each cellphone's data by seeing how the signal is modulated and comparing that to the code assigned to each phone. This allows multiple handsets to transmit over the same channel.
• SDMA (Space-Division Multiple Access) is also called MIMO (Multiple-In Multiple-Out) which means that one handset sends out multiple signals to multiple cell towers. This frees up a lot of bandwidth by effectively dividing the bandwidth of the handset's transmission by the number of towers it's transmitting to.

In this context, CDMA means cdmaOne or CDMA2000, which is not a channel access method but a cellphone technology, although cdmaOne and CDMA2000 use the CDMA channel access method. CDMA transmits on the 1900MHz band, while GSM transmits on the 800MHz band, using TDMA technology. As such, GSM penetrates better into the ground and through walls, but CDMA has better range. Basically, CDMA2000/cdmaOne and GSM are the same, except for two major details: data support and dropped calls. Statistically, CDMA has less dropped calls than GSM, and its current revision supports higher data speeds and better bandwidth. CDMA uses UMB and EVDO technology which allows for 275Mbit/s for data, while GSM uses EDGE and GPRS, which allows for a maximum of 1Mbit/s.