That particular article contains quite a few factual errors on the "LTE advantages"-side as to not being a very good reference in your defence.
The fact is that HSPA+ is a huge improvement over HSPA and HSPA+ will still evolve in the future. The improvements LTE has that cannot be implemented in HSPA are much smaller than many think.
Good link. The jig is up for wireless providers. It's LTE or bust going into 2012 to 2015. The mobile bandwidth demand globally is going to cripple 3G (including HSPA+) networks by 2015. They have to start investing and moving to networks and base stations that *are designed* for extremely high-bandwidth data.
I'm not saying providers aren't going to implement widespread HSPA+ but a good chunk might skip that and go straight to LTE. Some providers will have to do that for competitive advantage.
Now why on earth would they skip HSPA+ as it most often is a simple SW upgrade on the NodeB? Yes, you will likely have to improve your transmission to the site, but that you'll have to do with LTE as well. You see, improving your 3G networks with the latest HSPA+ functionality gives you a much better bang for buck at the moment in so many ways that it would be silly not to upgrade.
HSPA+ is also much about other technologies, which improve things like power consumption (CPC, voice over HSPA, 3GPP Fast dormancy) and inter- and intra-cell interference (improved receivers and interference cancellation). These will give users easily double battery life compared to today's 3G with improved connection quality and faster response times (UE state changes are much faster).
Available bandwidth (and coverage) can be (and is) improved dramatically by going the 900MHz/850MHz route.
So where would you get a competitive advantage with LTE? Less coverage, marginally faster speeds and latencies, poor voice support (for now) and much shorter battery life? It will happen, but not yet next year or the year after.
If you think of how power hungry the current generation LTE chipsets are and what the operator has to invest to bring LTE to the masses, it's quite clear that existing WCDMA 3G operators will go HSPA+ and implement LTE at a leisurely pace.
I wrote nothing about chipsets. I only wrote "HSPA+ doesn't bring new things, but LTE does.".
What I'm saying here, is that LTE (because of lower latency, SC-FDMA in UL, always-on, only 2 UE states, and others) is actually bringing something new compared with HSPA, while HSPA+ brings (except higher DL/UL speed) nothing new compared with HSPA.
Hmm. Here's just a few of the "nothing new" that HSPA+ brings that are not "just higher speeds" HSPA:
- New core and radio network architecture (same arch. as LTE in fact) -> Lower latency (25ms range)
- Voice over HSPA (spectral efficiency improvements and lower battery consumption)
- Continuous Packet Connectivity (lower state change latencies, dramatic improvement in battery life, reduces intra-cell and inter-cell interference thus reducing power requirements and improving reception. Allows always connected efficiently)
- 3GPP Fast dormancy (reduces paging channel congestion, improves UE state change latency, improves battery life on terminals)
- Advanced receivers (improves signal reception -> better BW or better battery life depending on usage)
And one more, but this is only speed related:
- Multicell (granted only improves theoretical DL speeds into the 84-168Mbps range, no biggie )
Like I said in the previous posts, LTE is an improvement, but not as big an improvement (yet) as many people think it is. Thus HSPA+ is a VERY sensible investment as LTE real life improvements are currently quite marginal not even considering the higher costs associated with its deployment.
Naturally Verizon has to go all-out LTE early as they have nowhere else to go. Thus they do as much smoke-and-mirrors marketing on LTE as they can. I would in their shoes. But marketing is marketing and many people fall for it. This of course forces AT&Ts hand and they have to go in as well in addition to their existing 3G network being quite limited in its capacity at the moment for other than purely technical reasons.
Why would the rest of the world go all-in on LTE when their HSPA/HSPA+ has not fully been exploited and utilised yet? They will, but they are not in such a hurry as Verizon is.
It just common sense to expect the iphone going LTE going down the road. So why this is posted as ibig news?
It is news because if there were NO references to LTE in the code - that could be an indication that testing has not even begun meaning that a product using that technology if farther out that we would like. In the past when items such as iPhone2,1 have popped up in code it has indicated an imminent product release.
Aside from that, rumors don't often qualify as news - and while appearance of the code snippet itself is not a rumor - what it means and for the future release scheduled of Apple products is today still in the realm of speculation which is akin to rumor.
It just common sense to expect the iphone going LTE going down the road. So why this is posted as ibig news?
You must be new to Apple rumor sites.
They post this sort of stuff to get pageviews. It's not about reporting news (after all, they're rumor sites, not news sites). More pageviews = more advertising dollars.
Comments
yes: http://3g4g.blogspot.com/2008/01/com...pa-vs-lte.html
That particular article contains quite a few factual errors on the "LTE advantages"-side as to not being a very good reference in your defence.
The fact is that HSPA+ is a huge improvement over HSPA and HSPA+ will still evolve in the future. The improvements LTE has that cannot be implemented in HSPA are much smaller than many think.
Regs, Jarkko
Good link. The jig is up for wireless providers. It's LTE or bust going into 2012 to 2015. The mobile bandwidth demand globally is going to cripple 3G (including HSPA+) networks by 2015. They have to start investing and moving to networks and base stations that *are designed* for extremely high-bandwidth data.
I'm not saying providers aren't going to implement widespread HSPA+ but a good chunk might skip that and go straight to LTE. Some providers will have to do that for competitive advantage.
Now why on earth would they skip HSPA+ as it most often is a simple SW upgrade on the NodeB? Yes, you will likely have to improve your transmission to the site, but that you'll have to do with LTE as well. You see, improving your 3G networks with the latest HSPA+ functionality gives you a much better bang for buck at the moment in so many ways that it would be silly not to upgrade.
HSPA+ is also much about other technologies, which improve things like power consumption (CPC, voice over HSPA, 3GPP Fast dormancy) and inter- and intra-cell interference (improved receivers and interference cancellation). These will give users easily double battery life compared to today's 3G with improved connection quality and faster response times (UE state changes are much faster).
Available bandwidth (and coverage) can be (and is) improved dramatically by going the 900MHz/850MHz route.
So where would you get a competitive advantage with LTE? Less coverage, marginally faster speeds and latencies, poor voice support (for now) and much shorter battery life? It will happen, but not yet next year or the year after.
If you think of how power hungry the current generation LTE chipsets are and what the operator has to invest to bring LTE to the masses, it's quite clear that existing WCDMA 3G operators will go HSPA+ and implement LTE at a leisurely pace.
Regs, Jarkko
I wrote nothing about chipsets. I only wrote "HSPA+ doesn't bring new things, but LTE does.".
What I'm saying here, is that LTE (because of lower latency, SC-FDMA in UL, always-on, only 2 UE states, and others) is actually bringing something new compared with HSPA, while HSPA+ brings (except higher DL/UL speed) nothing new compared with HSPA.
Hmm. Here's just a few of the "nothing new" that HSPA+ brings that are not "just higher speeds" HSPA:
- New core and radio network architecture (same arch. as LTE in fact) -> Lower latency (25ms range)
- Voice over HSPA (spectral efficiency improvements and lower battery consumption)
- Continuous Packet Connectivity (lower state change latencies, dramatic improvement in battery life, reduces intra-cell and inter-cell interference thus reducing power requirements and improving reception. Allows always connected efficiently)
- 3GPP Fast dormancy (reduces paging channel congestion, improves UE state change latency, improves battery life on terminals)
- Advanced receivers (improves signal reception -> better BW or better battery life depending on usage)
And one more, but this is only speed related:
- Multicell (granted only improves theoretical DL speeds into the 84-168Mbps range, no biggie
Like I said in the previous posts, LTE is an improvement, but not as big an improvement (yet) as many people think it is. Thus HSPA+ is a VERY sensible investment as LTE real life improvements are currently quite marginal not even considering the higher costs associated with its deployment.
Naturally Verizon has to go all-out LTE early as they have nowhere else to go. Thus they do as much smoke-and-mirrors marketing on LTE as they can. I would in their shoes. But marketing is marketing and many people fall for it. This of course forces AT&Ts hand and they have to go in as well in addition to their existing 3G network being quite limited in its capacity at the moment for other than purely technical reasons.
Why would the rest of the world go all-in on LTE when their HSPA/HSPA+ has not fully been exploited and utilised yet? They will, but they are not in such a hurry as Verizon is.
Regs, Jarkko
It just common sense to expect the iphone going LTE going down the road. So why this is posted as ibig news?
It is news because if there were NO references to LTE in the code - that could be an indication that testing has not even begun meaning that a product using that technology if farther out that we would like. In the past when items such as iPhone2,1 have popped up in code it has indicated an imminent product release.
Aside from that, rumors don't often qualify as news - and while appearance of the code snippet itself is not a rumor - what it means and for the future release scheduled of Apple products is today still in the realm of speculation which is akin to rumor.
So you're going on record that all 5th gen iPhones in the world will have LTE because Verizon will have towers up covering 50% of their consumer base?
You said that LTE coverage was weak... I simply stated that I do not think covering 50% of the US population is eight months is weak......
That was my only point.... I was not aware that I implied anything else....
It just common sense to expect the iphone going LTE going down the road. So why this is posted as ibig news?
You must be new to Apple rumor sites.
They post this sort of stuff to get pageviews. It's not about reporting news (after all, they're rumor sites, not news sites). More pageviews = more advertising dollars.
Welcome to the Internet. Enjoy, youngster!