It's not about an individual having/needing 300 Mbps on a phone. That's the wrong way to look at it. Faster link speeds can benefit things like power consumption (race to sleep concept, shorter duty cycles, etc). And having more capacity and efficiency is a good thing. Why would you tell them to stop?
Because I've found that above 50 Mbps, any increases rarely decrease page loading time, except when there are a LOT of big images hosted on fast servers. Otherwise, loading multiple files from slower servers becomes the bottleneck.
That speed is the mobile cell capacity. You have to share it with other users in the same cell. It maybe high for a single user, but shared with tens or even hundreds of other users, it's not that high any more. For 300Mbps LTE, if there are 100 users using internet at the same time, each user can only get about 3Mbps. Even if each user doesn't need more band width. The operator still wants to increase the cell capacity by upgrading to more advanced LTE technology. Thus, it can serve more users per cell and make more money. So, you see, the high speed is a marketing tool to attract end users. It is actually more for the operators themself.
Race to sleep could actually help battery life, I figure that's going to be the big internal marketing for these crazy high speed LTE chips. Speakers, ya, I would LOVE speaker phone to be louder and better quality (both for when using speaker phone in the car, or listening to a podcast without headphones)
Once upon a time, a 1.5Mbps T-1 connection was considered ridiculous too, with 56K modems being just fine for most people.
Besides, Broadcom is in the ARM SoC and network communications business, I don't think there's much they can do about speakers or battery life apart from improving the efficiency of their products. Which just happens to be exactly what they're doing here with each generation.
I'm sure they're incerasing efficency too since that's always a problem.
Speakers? They don't get fixed because there's no request for pricey speakers which are going to be crappy anyway since they have to fit in a phone. Just use earphones, that's what people do when they want to listen to music. For talking, you don't need higher quality than what is currently available.
Any idea how close this will come to covering most of the 4G-LTE bands necessary for getting around the world? You know... through most of the 200 sovereign nations camped out on this beautiful blue orb were all riding around on?
Or is this another only-works-at-4G-speeds-in-the-lower-48 thing?
The way I understand it, the real question is how many ports (bands) can the modem expose to be built in. Right now most phones have at minimum an international and a US version because the modem doesn't have enough ports to simply build bands for every single WCDM + LTE channel in use. As newer modems add more ports, a truly "universal" handset becomes possible.
It's essentially a Renesas SoC, so it doesn't indicate much about what Broadcom would choose to design. Broadcom really wanted an LTE modem, and the deal with Renesas included this chip (and a quad-A7 successor, per their Analyst Day presentation) which can provide an immediate foothold in the LTE market. It'll take more time to integrate the new modem with the rest of their existing SoC IP.
This is the new LOW-end from them. The competition from MediaTek is beginning to eat into their market and using comms as their advantage, QC hopes to claw back some customers.
Verizon/AT&T let me choose regular, reliable, 4G, 2GB data, unlimited talk and text for $45.00 a month instead of inventing these nearly useless "features" on a 3-5 inch display that you use to further fleece the country and make your executives richer.
We need some competition, Qualcomm is currently setting the price for its expensive Modem. I am hoping Mediatek will soon give them a run for its money with their relatively cheap Modem solution. Broadcomm was suppose to do that but couldn't keep up the pace with Qualcomm. Heck even Intel couldn't keep it up since their Infineon acquisition.
I seem to need to make this same comment everytime another high speed WWAN article comes out. I feel like I should just save a copy and paste it in.
The key piece of understanding for why very high data rate modems are important is this: the channel is SHARED. This is not about a single user getting a private 300Mbps connection, this is about the capacity of the whole cell shared among all the users.
A single cell has a fixed amount of resources, and it must divide up those resources amongst all the users of the cell. So, right now the popular modems in use are CAT3, which puts an upper limit of 100Mbps on each user - so if one user receives ALL the resources the cell has it will get up to 100Mbps.
But now there are ten users on the system that want data at the same time. LTE is nice for predicting behavior (unlike CDMA based tech like HSDPA and EVDO, which is a little more subtle) 10 users divide up the total resources in 10 pieces. So now if the cell is being fair to everyone, and they all have good connections, they receive 10Mbps at best. And to be clear, this is if everyone has ideal connection to the tower, more likely they will see 50-70% of that 10Mbps due to noise and spatial channel correlation. So 5-7Mbps - that's ok, but not great really.
Of course smartphone subscription rates are climbing fast, and more and more people are wanting data. So let's look towards a time when there are twice as many users - now 20 people want data, and each gets 5Mbps at best.Oh and channel conditions are rarely perfect, so let's bring that down to 3Mbps. Starting to get pretty slow...
So, newer modems on both sides can help the situation - one they do carrier aggregation, this expands the available resources by adding more spectrum to the cell. They can also move to higher density modulation (256QAM) and higher order MIMO to improve how much data can be sent over the same spectrum.
So let's say we move all the users in our 20 user scenario to CAT6 30Mbps equipment. Now each user could get up to 15Mbps, and a more realistic 9Mbps - those are good speeds that people will be happy with.
So please understand that the really high speeds being talked about are not suggesting that an individual user is going to see 300Mbps coming into their smartphone, but instead that the network will be better able to ensure 10Mbps+ connections to a larger number of users, and everyone will have a better experience using the system.
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SlyNine - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
That 4GB cap might as well be 4KB.flyingpants1 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
Who cares? Consistent 10-20mbit for my CELL PHONE is just fine. 300mbps is just ridiculous. Please stop.I wish they'd stop messing with screens and LTE, and fix speakers and battery life.
danstek - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
It's not about an individual having/needing 300 Mbps on a phone. That's the wrong way to look at it. Faster link speeds can benefit things like power consumption (race to sleep concept, shorter duty cycles, etc). And having more capacity and efficiency is a good thing. Why would you tell them to stop?SodaAnt - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
Because I've found that above 50 Mbps, any increases rarely decrease page loading time, except when there are a LOT of big images hosted on fast servers. Otherwise, loading multiple files from slower servers becomes the bottleneck.mach665 - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
That speed is the mobile cell capacity. You have to share it with other users in the same cell. It maybe high for a single user, but shared with tens or even hundreds of other users, it's not that high any more. For 300Mbps LTE, if there are 100 users using internet at the same time, each user can only get about 3Mbps.Even if each user doesn't need more band width. The operator still wants to increase the cell capacity by upgrading to more advanced LTE technology. Thus, it can serve more users per cell and make more money.
So, you see, the high speed is a marketing tool to attract end users. It is actually more for the operators themself.
Acarney - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Race to sleep could actually help battery life, I figure that's going to be the big internal marketing for these crazy high speed LTE chips. Speakers, ya, I would LOVE speaker phone to be louder and better quality (both for when using speaker phone in the car, or listening to a podcast without headphones)r3loaded - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Once upon a time, a 1.5Mbps T-1 connection was considered ridiculous too, with 56K modems being just fine for most people.Besides, Broadcom is in the ARM SoC and network communications business, I don't think there's much they can do about speakers or battery life apart from improving the efficiency of their products. Which just happens to be exactly what they're doing here with each generation.
Murloc - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
I'm sure they're incerasing efficency too since that's always a problem.Speakers? They don't get fixed because there's no request for pricey speakers which are going to be crappy anyway since they have to fit in a phone.
Just use earphones, that's what people do when they want to listen to music.
For talking, you don't need higher quality than what is currently available.
sadlkjh - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
well, get a couple of thin modems, have them share your data plan and bye bye cable.hrrmph - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Glad they got the 3G GSM in there.Any idea how close this will come to covering most of the 4G-LTE bands necessary for getting around the world? You know... through most of the 200 sovereign nations camped out on this beautiful blue orb were all riding around on?
Or is this another only-works-at-4G-speeds-in-the-lower-48 thing?
extide - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
That is really up to the transceiver and amps, not the modem. The modem should work at any frequency that LTE works at.Rocket321 - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
The way I understand it, the real question is how many ports (bands) can the modem expose to be built in. Right now most phones have at minimum an international and a US version because the modem doesn't have enough ports to simply build bands for every single WCDM + LTE channel in use. As newer modems add more ports, a truly "universal" handset becomes possible.lmcd - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Look how the mighty Broadcom has fallen. Dual A9 in 2014? PowerVR instead of a successor to VideoCore IV?Excors - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
It's essentially a Renesas SoC, so it doesn't indicate much about what Broadcom would choose to design. Broadcom really wanted an LTE modem, and the deal with Renesas included this chip (and a quad-A7 successor, per their Analyst Day presentation) which can provide an immediate foothold in the LTE market. It'll take more time to integrate the new modem with the rest of their existing SoC IP.fteoath64 - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
This is the new LOW-end from them. The competition from MediaTek is beginning to eat into their market and using comms as their advantage, QC hopes to claw back some customers.Chaser - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
Verizon/AT&T let me choose regular, reliable, 4G, 2GB data, unlimited talk and text for $45.00 a month instead of inventing these nearly useless "features" on a 3-5 inch display that you use to further fleece the country and make your executives richer.iwod - Sunday, January 12, 2014 - link
We need some competition, Qualcomm is currently setting the price for its expensive Modem. I am hoping Mediatek will soon give them a run for its money with their relatively cheap Modem solution. Broadcomm was suppose to do that but couldn't keep up the pace with Qualcomm.Heck even Intel couldn't keep it up since their Infineon acquisition.
Belegost - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
I seem to need to make this same comment everytime another high speed WWAN article comes out. I feel like I should just save a copy and paste it in.The key piece of understanding for why very high data rate modems are important is this: the channel is SHARED. This is not about a single user getting a private 300Mbps connection, this is about the capacity of the whole cell shared among all the users.
A single cell has a fixed amount of resources, and it must divide up those resources amongst all the users of the cell. So, right now the popular modems in use are CAT3, which puts an upper limit of 100Mbps on each user - so if one user receives ALL the resources the cell has it will get up to 100Mbps.
But now there are ten users on the system that want data at the same time. LTE is nice for predicting behavior (unlike CDMA based tech like HSDPA and EVDO, which is a little more subtle) 10 users divide up the total resources in 10 pieces. So now if the cell is being fair to everyone, and they all have good connections, they receive 10Mbps at best. And to be clear, this is if everyone has ideal connection to the tower, more likely they will see 50-70% of that 10Mbps due to noise and spatial channel correlation. So 5-7Mbps - that's ok, but not great really.
Of course smartphone subscription rates are climbing fast, and more and more people are wanting data. So let's look towards a time when there are twice as many users - now 20 people want data, and each gets 5Mbps at best.Oh and channel conditions are rarely perfect, so let's bring that down to 3Mbps. Starting to get pretty slow...
So, newer modems on both sides can help the situation - one they do carrier aggregation, this expands the available resources by adding more spectrum to the cell. They can also move to higher density modulation (256QAM) and higher order MIMO to improve how much data can be sent over the same spectrum.
So let's say we move all the users in our 20 user scenario to CAT6 30Mbps equipment. Now each user could get up to 15Mbps, and a more realistic 9Mbps - those are good speeds that people will be happy with.
So please understand that the really high speeds being talked about are not suggesting that an individual user is going to see 300Mbps coming into their smartphone, but instead that the network will be better able to ensure 10Mbps+ connections to a larger number of users, and everyone will have a better experience using the system.