Time flies and it’s already 3 years since the previous edition of my book became available. Time for an update and I’ve worked hard over the course of the past 12 months to ensure my introduction book on wireless networks continues to reflect the latest state of how the technology is deployed and functions in practice. A lot of things have happened in the past three years so I had to adapt the title a bit and the third edition is now called ‘From GSM to LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G‘! So what’s new?
I recently came across this interesting post by Michael Thelander over at RCR Wireless in which he describes how 3GPP meetings and the people attending ‘tick’ from his point of view. Regularly attending industry meetings around the world on a quarterly meeting myself I’m glad that these meetings are a tad more relaxed in most aspects than what Michael describes in his post. I’ve heard similar stories of 3GPP meetings from other people in the past so I don’t think he’s exaggerating.
One thing he doesn’t mention is how well Internet connectivity works when hundreds of people attend such meetings. From what I’ve heard, 3GPP meeting organizers take special care to select venues with high speed Internet connectivity (and I don’t mean a DSL line with a few Mbit/s) and bring their own kit to manage the traffic. Still, I’ve heard people saying that often, Internet connectivity is a challenge during meeting weeks. Let’s see Michael’s post was titled ‘part 1’, so perhaps he’ll mention something on this in future posts.
It is actually quite shocking to see a comparison of how much mobile data €30 buys you in different countries in Europe. Let’s take a look at two examples: In Germany, according to the statistics of Rewheel and my own experience, €30 buys you around 6 GB with the cheapest network operator and far less with other network operators. On the other end of the scale is Finland where less than €30/month gets you a ‘all you can eat’ flatrate subscription!
Last year I was excited by a new add-on my fixed and mobile network operator of choice started offering: For 10 euros extra I could make calls from everywhere to everywhere in the EU, the US and Canada – fixed and mobile. Also, my monthly data bucket was extended from use in the EU to the US and Canada as well. Looks like the offer might have been a bit too successful as it has now been quietly discontinued for new customers.
Recently, I reflected a bit over how fixed and mobile networks have evolved in the past 30 years, i.e. since the mid-1980s. For the first time I realized then that during that time frame, networks have been totally turned inside out.
Hurricanes have hit the Caribbean pretty hard this season and in many countries, mobile networks have been severely damaged. One consequence of that on the Dutch part of Sint Maarten island is that local operator UTS has decided not to restore GSM services at all due to the heavy damage. Instead, they want to migrate their remaining GSM subscribers to their 3G and LTE network. Interesting, this is the first time I’ve heard about a natural disaster as being the reason for ending GSM service.
Back in the 1980s the BASIC programming language was a must have feature on any home computer. Initially conceived in the mid-1960s it was swiftly adapted even for the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800 that became available in 1975. The freely available Tiny BASIC could fit into 2-3 kByte of memory and thus made it ideal for machines with only a few kilobytes of RAM and ROM. With additional features, BASIC then really took off in the 1980’s as the programming language for the masses on computers such as the Commodore 64, the Apple II and uncountable other platforms. They pretty much all had in common that programs were entered with line numbers and programs could be listed on the screen while programming and debugging. Editing code was nowhere near as easy as it is today but one could at least see a TV screen full of code at a time which helps a lot when coding algorithms with many variables and loops.
An interesting fact that is perhaps a bit forgotten is that BASIC also made it to much more restricted devices such as calculators that only had a single display line. The Sharp PC-1401 calculator that was released at the beginning of the 1980s is an interesting example. Being semi-conscious about such devices I was quite surprised when a friend recently showed me an even more restricted device that came with a BASIC interpreter but only had a single row of 7-segment digits instead of full ASCII characters and a non-ASCII keyboard.
In the first part of this series, I emphasized that in 3GPP Release 15, a major focus is to get a first incarnation of 5G into the field that complements 4G LTE. Instead of today’s approach where a device is either connected to GSM, or to UMTS or to LTE, i.e. only to one technology at a time, things will be different in 5G. Due to the higher frequencies bands used and other reasons (see part 1) it was deemed better to enable mobile devices to connect to LTE and 5G New Radio (NR) simultaneously. This is referred to as Dual Connectivity EN-DC. So how will this work in practice?
An event I’ve been looking forward to for a long time is this year’s Vintage Computing Festival Berlin (VCFB) which takes place in about one and a half weeks from now, Saturday and Sunday on the 7th and 8th October 2017 in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. If you are even only remotely interested in the history of computing and you are anywhere near Berlin over that weekend, it is the event to attend! Unlike in previous years when the dates did not fit into my travel calendar it is a perfect match this year. And best of all for me, I did not only decide to go but I will also bring a small exhibit of my own!
Recently I had to retire two electronic gadgets, a mouse and a speaker. It happens, you might say, electronics doesn’t live forever. True, but in these cases it was the first time that I had to retire devices not because their electronics failed, but because of the plastic outside that has started to become soft and sticky! Both the mouse and the speaker were still functioning properly and I used them almost everyday. Quite sad to see and a real waste!
Time flies and it’s already 3 years since the previous edition of my book became available. Time for an update and I’ve worked hard over the course of the past 12 months to ensure my introduction book on wireless networks continues to reflect the latest state of how the technology is deployed and functions in practice. A lot of things have happened in the past three years so I had to adapt the title a bit and the third edition is now called ‘From GSM to LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G‘! So what’s new?
