Thanks to Youtube and it's damn compelling video clips (I know they are compelling if a cynic like me can start chomping thru my data plan) you know its gotta be pull technology at its finest.
but here in NZ, at the bottom of the Pacific, is any discussion about bandwidth meaningful at all?
Case in point:
the Vodafone site tells you that the wondrous 3G will give you 800kb – 1.4mbit/s
Well that sounds pretty good for a mobile phone when I was happy a few years a go with Woosh Wireless's definition of broadband at 1mb/s, 20x the old dialup speed. Not super fast, but quite usable.
Even Telecom only claims 500k-2mbit/s on its 3G XT network. Supposedly Telecom is quite a bit faster but individual experiences seem to vary so much any comparison is a bit moot.
However Vodafone seems to have a few tricks up its sleeve like dual-carrier , whatever that is (one visualises the Auckland motorway versus secondary touring routes, does one not?) It certainly seems to work, if the quoted 8-20mb/s speeds are credible.
Those speeds look seriously usable.
And 4G is not far off it seems, which will provide lower latency (response), 5-75mb/s up, 100-300mbit down – Telecom is about to conduct a 4G trial, purportedly on its existing frequencies (1800 and 2500 mhz)
which suggests it is keen to beat Vodafone to the punch, that being 2014, , when the current 700mhz analogue tv frequencies get relinquished, where they will provide a longer-range and more penetrative basis for 4G.
There seems to be some debate as to whether LTE is even 3G or 4G, but with those sorts of performance gains I don't really care!
But what does it all mean for the user? Those Woosh speeds I quoted become pedestrian with todays web sites, overloaded as they are with ajax and flash whizzy-bangery.
Modern sites also often carry a huge javascript payload to drive that ajax, and THAT manifests itself not so much as download payload, but even more as cpu workload for your own pc or phone's browser to handle. I suspect that the bandwidth may be a minor issue as your browser grinds away rendering the page.
Also don't forget that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link – Its no use having blazing speed to your doorstep if the page you are downloading is on an overloaded server in New York – or even some little guy's basement in Hong Kong – thats the nature of the web. (do they even have basements in HK? But I digress.)
For example my own modest internet connection gives me 3-6mb/s over a Wimax connection – but If I do the same speedtest off a server in the States, 1mb/s is the norm.
Makes all this 3G/4G hoo-ha look a bit academic, doesn't it?
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