UFB Vs LTE

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crackrdbycracku

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Topic # 123175 27-Jun-2013 10:43

OK, please forgive me if this is the stupidest question ever posed on Geekzone but here goes.

The UFB project aims at 100 mbit/s speed and requires the digging up of most of the country to lay cables which is very difficult because of the geology and geography.

An LTE (often called 4G) network aims to deliver 100 mbit/s speed down and 50 mbit/s up and requires the building of towers which sit above the ground.

Both networks probably deliver the 100 mbit/s when you switch them on due to the number of people on the network and a lot of other reasons.

So, why are we, as in the government funded by tax payers, building a UFB network and not an LTE network? Or a bit of both?

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johnr

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Reply # 845972 27-Jun-2013 10:45

Put all internet users in the country on 4G and see what happens

crackrdbycracku

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Reply # 845975 27-Jun-2013 10:47

OK, but all internet users won't be on UFB until 2020 and surely it is a matter of how much you spend, right?

Is it a better bang for buck with UFB?

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trig42

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Reply # 845977 27-Jun-2013 10:47

I think there is a bit of both isn't there?

myopinion

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Reply # 845988 27-Jun-2013 11:01

Connect 4G towers with fast as fibre?

antoniosk

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Reply # 845989 27-Jun-2013 11:03

4 people support this post

crackrdbycracku: OK, please forgive me if this is the stupidest question ever posed on Geekzone but here goes.

The UFB project aims at 100 mbit/s speed and requires the digging up of most of the country to lay cables which is very difficult because of the geology and geography.

An LTE (often called 4G) network aims to deliver 100 mbit/s speed down and 50 mbit/s up and requires the building of towers which sit above the ground.

Both networks probably deliver the 100 mbit/s when you switch them on due to the number of people on the network and a lot of other reasons.

So, why are we, as in the government funded by tax payers, building a UFB network and not an LTE network? Or a bit of both?

Radio networks are shared by all users in the coverage area, and a typical radio segment could have up to 2000 users registered at any one time. The airside speed could burst to 100mbps with LTE for example, but if everyone in the area hammered on the cell you would get a lot less than 100mbps.

UFB Fibre as being deployed now (using the mature GPON technology) means each connection can jump to 100mbps, but the constraint occurs further - the first place where all fibres are connected together, then the junction of all the junctions and so on. In theory if you make the backhaul transmission large enough all along the way, then all the fibres would get increased bandwidth. This doesn't happen on radio as it's being deployed, and is just not economical to scale to the levels of wired networks.... not least of which the amount of antenna's and base stations that would be required would be a proper planning nightmare.

In practise UFB also has constraints built into it, which is the CIR (Committed Information Rate), set at about 2.5mbps. This applies when there is congestion. But neither LTE or UFB are congested yet - 'empty network syndrome' - so speeds are rocking by comparison

That's the nature of radio; the constraint occurs in the pure access layer, although it is improving with every release of technology.

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maverick

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WorldxChange

Reply # 845990 27-Jun-2013 11:03

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mmhhh , how about the cost of the data

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johnr

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Reply # 845993 27-Jun-2013 11:04

The Vodafone 4G network is CAT4 151 DL and 51 UL most devices are CAT3 100 DL

Klipspringer

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Reply # 845994 27-Jun-2013 11:05

Latency.

Willing to bet that the latency on LTE will never come close to matching UFB, it probably won't come close to a good ADSL connection either.

antoniosk

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Reply # 845999 27-Jun-2013 11:14

johnr: The Vodafone 4G network is CAT4 151 DL and 51 UL most devices are CAT3 100 DL

Awesome, got faster while i was typing!

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Zeon

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Reply # 846065 27-Jun-2013 12:21

You may be able to get a 10GB datacap with LTE but a 10TB datacap with UFB. The speed is there with LTE but not enough radio spectrum to allow constant data usage like you can get with UFB.

coffeebaron

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Reply # 846080 27-Jun-2013 12:40

You can sit 100 fibre cables along side each other, each with their 100Mbps (assuming unlimited backhaul). You can not sit more than one LTE tower next to the other sharing the same spectrum pumping out 151Mbps each. The air space is finite, fibre is not.

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