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articles relating to the property market in Thailand and
Bangkok for the 'Your Money' section of the Bangkok Post.
He is a co-director of Property Bangkok. |
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| Which generation will it be? |
Which generation will it be?
This article has been included within our articles section
Is 3G a tried and tested mature technology that can provide cheap last-mile access to bridge the digital divide or is it a 20th century anachronism that certain vendors want to sell to ignorant telcos (or those that feign ignorance)?
Is WiMAX really the next best invention since sliced bread, or is it an untried, little supported quirk that, as our previous ICT Minister once predicted to be the first attempt at 4G, which failed?
In the space of two weeks, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Nortel, Motorola, Qualcomm and a couple of analysts have approached me for an interview to put their point of view on the future of Thai telecommunications forward as it is clear that Thailand has to make a decision on 3G soon, and obviously all these vendors want to influence the decision-makers as much as they can. Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent also invited me, but there is only so much time each day.
Generally, the vendors seem to be divided into two camps. On the one hand, we have Nokia-Siemens Networks and Qualcomm coming out pro-3G, saying that the technology is mature, proven and that it can help bridge the digital divide by provide wireless broadband access to the masses . The two are also generally anti-WiMAX, but more on that later.
Motorola, Nortel and to some extent Gartner Research, on the other hand are generally anti-3G either in the sense that the technology is old and expensive to run, the investment window has gone, or that without the 2.1GHz WCDMA band, the lack of devices just does not make sense.
The Pro-3G camp say that 3G is now a very mature technology while LTE (Long Term Evolution) is still years away and WiMAX is unproven. Unlike the early 3G networks rolled out in Europe that ran at 384Kbps, today Thailand is looking at the possibility of launching its first 3G at 14.4Mbps, which is a different game entirely. Rather than talk about (the largely failed concept of) video calling and other things one can do at 384Kbps, today vendors are talking about the amount of bandwidth that puts 3G on par with today's fastest wired broadband.
Obviously, if you have the choice between a creaky 512Kbps copper connection or a 14.4Mbps wireless one that works anywhere for a similar price, the choice is clear. The 3G vendors say that this level of 3G, not the old creaky 384Kbps networks that were launched in the West, are a direct competitor to copper, to WiMAX and are a great solution for getting more and more people online.
Upgrading copper lines, shortening the length of copper to new DSLAMs is much, much harder than doing something with radio, and it may well be the ADSL vendors (or vendor, singular) that suffers the most with new radio technologies.
That level of speed also puts it smack bang into the speed of the range promised by the first generation of WiMAX. The main benefit of 3G, the vendors say, is a level of maturity in technology and lower operating frequencies. Dtac is talking about WCDMA 850 and AIS seems to be dithering between WCDMA 900 (now launched in Chiang Mai), 1900 and 2100 depending on which side the boss gets out of bed each day. A 850 or 900MHz carrier would give a much larger cell site and much better building penetration compared to the 2.5 or 3.3GHz WiMAX.
Indeed, it has been building coverage that seems to have been the Achilles' heel of WiMAX so far, with coverage in built-up areas ranging from a challenge to a joke, depending on who you ask.
The pro-WiMAX camp talk of how 3G is so yesterday's technology with low spectral efficiency (2.5 to 3.5 bits per second per hertz compared to 0.8 for WCDMA) and is based on circuit switched technology rather than IP. The cost of running a 3G network backbone seems to be anything from 30 to 300 per cent higher than an IP network. Being based on legacy telco technology, 3G equipment has E1 or ATM connectors in the back, while WiMAX has only an Ethernet port, so they say.
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