TechEd - Vodafone versus Telecom 3G speeds

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pland

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#4828 31-Aug-2005 16:45

Interesting blog from http://www.drury.net.nz/ - not sure why they didn't compare download speeds ?

Vodafone versus Telecom 3G speeds 31/08/2005 2:30:58 p.m.

A couple of Vodafone guys (probably on their last day of employment) challenged the Telecom data guys to a speed test at TechEd - at the Telecom stand (what were they thinking!).

Ping test

network/lowest/average

Telecom / 91 / 133
Vodafone / 211 / 224
Wake up from dormant

Telecom 600 ms
Vodafone 4500 ms
From Vodafone:

"We're getting a good old fashioned hiding"

"We'll let you have that one as well"

johnr

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#19428 31-Aug-2005 17:22

This has been shown before and never disputed and remember the fastest car does not always win the race. It may help

pland

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#19433 31-Aug-2005 19:50

Johnr - from your response I presume you work for Vodafone.

My query re the speed was more for the sake of completeness of comparisons. I presume that with TechEd and with location downtown Auckland it would have given a good indication of loaded conditions.

The W-CDMA improvements over GPRS are phenominal in the latency area and will really make a difference.

Since you may have the inside track ... When are we going to see W-CDMA in a Microsoft device - it seems that Telecom have Harrier & Apache (coming) on T3G EVDO but Vodafone are still offering JAM's & SP3's running GPRS even though W-CDMA is launched.
I presume the Universal is available soon ( a few on show at TechEd) but this is a massive device - far too big for a reasonable voice device.

pland

freitasm

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#19435 31-Aug-2005 19:55

AFAIK Vodafone was showing the HTC Universal on their stand during the TechEd 2005 in Auckland. No word on when, but T-Mobile Germany is launching their version 1st September.

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johnr

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#19436 31-Aug-2005 20:19

Thank you freitasm and remember W-CDMA at 384k DL is not the end of the road its only the start

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/vlive/3g/story.jsp?item=whatis3g&subitem=3gstory

As I understand too TCNZ will have ED-DO rev A which will make things even better.

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#19487 1-Sep-2005 10:54

We did do speed comparisons. Downloading a 3.4MB MPEG from a Voda FTP:

EVDO downloaded the MPEG in 1 minute. Voda gave up - it was taking to long. Johnr is right it is not necessarily about the speed but from a performance perspective the Voda network takes 4500ms to wake up out of dormancy. EVDO takes 500ms. This means that EVDO already had 250K of the MPEG before the Voda card started downloading.

Also, we both went to CNN.com at the same time but the web pages looked different. The GMT reported by CNN on the Voda laptop was 20 minutes older than that reported by CNN on the EVDO laptop. That's caching for you. Don't know about you guys but I do like my news the same as my coffee - steaming hot and fresh.

It is interesting the Voda continue to compare speeds. They did it this week at TUANZ - Voda 3G and EVDO side by side. What they do is use www.toast.net and compare downloading a 878K image. What they don't tell people is that the image is resized by the Voda caching/compression server. Toast.net reports that the Voda card is running at 800Kbps. The image is a quarter of its original size i.e. 200KB. All Toast.net does is time start/stop to download the image but it thinks that the image is still 878K not 200K. On the other hand EVDO downloads the full 878K undoctored image.

I don't know about you guys but I think that this is dishonest and not a true comparison. EVDO had to download 4 times as much as Voda. Hardly a realistic or objective comparison.

SNicolle

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#19488 1-Sep-2005 11:06

agreed that the said comparison is a bit of bs.
EVDO is faster and great to use, but I also believe that relative to GPRS, Dial up and 256k dsl W-CDMA is an accepted and welcomed alternative. There are obstacles from switching to Telecom depending on who you are etc and the same with switching to Vodafone.

In reality they are competitve for a range of applications but outright speed is the forte of Telecom's EVDO network

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johnr

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#19492 1-Sep-2005 12:20

Think of the savings in $$ for the customer on vodafone and the races should be held in different places like Japan, UK, Spain, Hong kong. Israel, netherlands.

I think we all agree EV-DO has a edge on speed and no one disputes that.

But like before W-CDMA is just the start for voda and TCNZ have EV-DO rev A coming up

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#19494 1-Sep-2005 12:43

Hey Jama good photo of you floating around here at work with your T3G top on at teched.

Jama

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#19499 1-Sep-2005 13:10

I guess you do save money if you only download 25% of the image.......

SNicolle

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#19505 1-Sep-2005 13:49

the vodafone tortise vs the telecom hare (results aside because it remains to be seen)

it comes down to meaningful applications and thorough coverage that add value for the user than just speed.

the fact remains that speed can enable applications and the disparity can influence offerings

freitasm

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#19748 6-Sep-2005 09:27

Well done guys - your discussion made it to the mainstream media.

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