Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

More O2 LTE trial datapoints – very impressive upload times

Continuing with the day’s theme of the O2 LTE (4G) trials I found myself back in the Devonshire Arms with Cliff Saran of Computer Weekly. I’ll leave most of the story to Cliff and his column but I herewith provide you with the video footage of 4 more iPlayer streams – we could have streamed more but screen size becomes an issue.

At the Piazza in Covent Garden I uploaded a 298MB video in eight minutes at 9Mbps uplink speed. O2 LTE 4G upload speeds at the Piazza in Covent Garden
In the Devonshire Arms I videoed the process of setting up the iPlayer streams and then uploaded that video again to YouTube so that we could compare performance with the Covent Garden upload.

This time the file size was 795Megabytes

Categories
broadband Engineer

FTTC Broadband Trials (80 Meg) Pretty Much Over – The Apps Will Come

screenshot of speedtest from 80Megs FTTC trial - Fibre broadbandThe FTTC broadband 80Meg trials are now more or less over with production launch of the faster service currently due on 12th april. FTTC80 was the version of the 40Meg FTTC but using a different baseband frequency that results in a doubling of its overall speed performance.

You can see from the small pic inset that this user saw an impressive 75Megs down though he didn’t see much change in the uplink. The ping time at 14milliseconds is also pretty good. it’s just the way ahead. Waiting for an onscreen response when using the internet is just not acceptable. It needs to be instantaneous.

It doesn’t matter that no application has an use for this kind of speed. Now that we have built it the applications will come.

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

I have seen the future… (mystic waily voice) #4G #digitalbritain #O2 #iPlayer

speed test using a 4G dongle from O2 shows 38Meg down 27Meg upAs I gaze into my crystal ball the mists are swirling, swirling.  Now they are disappearing. Ah, it is all clear.  I can see blue skies. I can see people dancing, holding aloft their smartphones and tablets. Waving. Everyone is happy. Where is this mythical land where the rivers flow with champagne/beer/cappucino (delete as appropriate)?iPlayer streaming Frozen Planet in HD to a laptop through an O2 4G dongle

It is here, where you and I live. In Blighty. Home.

I have just come back from O2’s offices in Slough where I had a play with 4G on a laptop. The jpg in the header photo shows the download and upload performance. The speed varies but does go as high as 80 – 85Megs down.

The laptop I was using only needed 7Megs worth of bandwidth for its day to day activities – email, streaming HD etc so there is plenty of headroom when considering personal use. It is easy however to imagine this service being used as a replacement for fixed line bandwidth where a family would certainly use up all the bandwidth available. Also who knows what bandwidth hungry applications are round the corner. They will come.

The demo is impressive. The photo inset was taken from my Samsung Galaxy 2 so isn’t a screenshot and the quality could be better. It doesn’t matter. I watched Frozen Planet streaming in HD on iPlayer – no buffering, perfect quality.

O2 has recently announced 4G trials in an area of London between Kings Cross and the City. I am taking part. Watch this space for up to the minute information on 4G.

I have seen the future. The future is 4G.