Evolution of Mobile Data Services

Imagine your Internet Connection and what you do on it and then imagine you mobile phone and along with your connection speed on it and you can see the potential of wireless data services.

Besides transmitting our voice, mobile devices are becoming increasingly powerful in terms of transmitting data. Mobile phones can surf the internet, stream music and videos, and download them. Anyone and everyone can go on the Internet without a fixed telephone line.

Voice and data transmission go hand in hand, as in digital frequencies data transmission sandwiched between voice transmissions. Broadband digital frequencies broadcast in eight data pipes, the data and voice transmission are split between the eight pipes.

Data transfers have since become the increasingly powerful with the ever increasing data rate speeds over the airwaves. Pretty soon, data services would have connections that are just as powerful as fixed line broadband.

Wireless data connections have since started from 2G from basic data transmission to MMS to live video updates on your mobile. Here we look at the evolution from the 2G standard to modern 3G services and beyond.

2G
Mobile data services, first developed for the GSM standard is CSD (Circuit Switch Data). Prior to CSD, mobile devices rely from modems either built on the phone or it is external, making the phone extremely unpractical. The data transfer speed has a dedicated sub-time slot which is 16Kbit/s is allocated from the base station to the transcoder, and finally another time slot 64 Kbit/s is allocated from the transcoder to the Mobile Switching Centre(MSC). CSD can deliver up to 9.6Kbit/s through a single time slot.

The next generation CSD is called HSCSD (High-Speed CSD) which provide up to four slots of speed. A 50% improvement through in throughput, due to numerous improvements of the data pipes. HSCDS is comparable to the speed of dial-up modems for fixed line networks.

Other 2G data transfer methods include GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). Often regarded as 2.5G because of its moderate data transfer rates. GPRS also boasts communication speeds of up to 115 Kbit/s a second, a vast improvement over the GSM standard of 9.6Kbit/s a second. The data transmission has similar speeds with HSCSD but it is slightly more efficient because packet switching data transmission. GRPS allows multiple users to share a transmission channel by opening the transmission for transfer only when each individual user needs it. Video streaming can still be accomplish however such continuous streams of data usually require the user to wait a bit longer for such data transactions to take place.

EDGE (Enhanced Data Evolution for GSM Evolution) was implemented to as a bolt on enhancement to GRPS networks making it for GSM carries to upgrade to it. It is a 2.75G transmission technology- EDGE can carry data speeds up to 236.8Kbit/s for 4 timeslots in packet mode. EDGE serves as a portmanteau between 2G and 3G, due to its variability and upgrades.

3G
This section covers 3G (Third Generation) data transfer services, which is considered the modern data service standard. The services associated with 3G include wide-area wireless voice telephony and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment. 3G data transfer in general has moderate transfer speed and lack of mobility. An increase of data speed means new communication formats, and video calls were considered the killer app for 3G. The first country that commercially introduced 3G was Japan by home-grown major telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo.

First off, we introduce both UMTS and FOMA which are based on the W-CDMA transmission protocol. W-CDMA was initially developed by NTT DoCoMo as the air interface for their 3G network FOMA. FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access) deployed in the 2GHz frequency band, uses packet transfer speeds ranging from 64 Kbps to 384 Kbps.

Later, W-CDMA was selected as the air interface for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System), the 3G successor to GSM. It was also marketed as 3GSM to serve as both 3G technology and the GSM data standard it is designed to replace. UTMS supports up to 384 Kbps data transfer and has similar speed to the FOMA standard.

CDMA based EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimised) made its debut in 1999. It was developed by Qualcomm and has a data transfer of up to 600Kbps. The biggest obstacle to implementing high speed wireless networks is the lack of bandwidth. Just as only so many radio stations can be squeezed onto FM dial, only so much data can be transmitted across the available bandwidth. EVDO is an advanced CDMA technology developed by Qualcomm to deal with this limitation.

WAP
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is an open international communication protocol standard for applications that use wireless communication. The WAP specifications define a set a protocols in application, session, transaction, security and transport layers. Simply put, it serves as an application which allows mobile devices to access the Internet. The WAP was developed by the WAP Forum, a consortium of device manufacturers, service providers, content providers and application developers. WAP bridges the gap between the mobile world and the Internet. A WAP browser is to provide all of the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone. WAP is now the protocol used for the majority of the world’s mobile Internet sites, known as WAP sites. The Japanese has their own wireless web protocol knows as the i-Mode system, it is also the only competing web protocol.

3.5G, Broadband and beyond
The future of mobile data transfer is referred to as 3.5G, wireless broadband and 4G.

There are a collection of mobile telephony protocols that extend and improve the performance of existing UMTS called High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). They are high speed transmission protocols. Two standards HSPDA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) have been established.

HSPDA promises a data download speed of up to 14Mbps and an upload speed of up 1.8 Mbps whilst compared to current 3G network now offer 384Kbps and 63Kbps. HSPDA is 3.5, its high speed download packet is now supported in 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Mbit/s.

HSUPA is yet another leap in the 3G market, which serves as 3.75G data transfer standards. Its purpose is to provide faster upload speed to the Internet. A further standard HSOPA (High Speed OFDM Packet Access) is being proposed. It is a standalone network which is not based on CDM.

Other wireless standards include WiMAX and WiBro, which serves as a stationary wireless booster for mobile devices. First off, WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is designed as a long range wireless broadcast. WiMAX can deliver up to several kilometres of connectivity. Some have even broken records and has the ability to broadcast up to an excess of 200 kilometres.

WiBro (Wireless Broadband) is the Korean equivalent of WiMAX. WiBro is based on the standard as WiMAX, but is designed to maintain connectivity on the go. It can maintain connection up to 60 km/h, you could drive (albeit slowly) and surf the Internet with your mobile at broadband speeds. Korean KT, SK Telecom and Hanaro Telecom were awarded licenses by the South Korean government to provide WiBro commercially. Samsung has also shown great interest in providing devices with WiBro capability.

Meanwhile the next step is 4G technology, which hopes to combine the broadband speeds, widespread coverage and mobility in mobile devices. It remains in development phase and hopes to solve several problems that are inherent within wireless connection. One of the announced 4G technologies is the UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) which claims to be able to provide broadband speed with full mobility. It has yet to be implemented although UMB claims to be able to provide up to 275M/bit for downstream and 75M/bit for upstream. The UMB standardisation is expected to be completed in mid 2007, with commercialisation taking place around mid-2009.

Local Telco’s Malaysian Telco’s data transmissions are in between 3G and 2G with the likes of Celcom and Maxis in the 3G arena and Digi using EDGE data services. Here we summarise the Malaysia’s the rates for our three main telcos Digi, Celcom and Maxis. For Celcom, they charge 10sen for 10kb and have staple packages for RM99 and RM120.

Meanwhile, Maxis charge 1sen per kb and half a sen for off-peak hours. While unlimited services cost around RM120. Finally, Digi EDGE data service charges 10sen/10kb and subsequently become cheaper when you spend up to RM30. After spending RM149 it becomes free.

Limitless potential
Data services has exponentially increase since its inception in 2G where we could only SMS to video calls to mobile Internet surfing. Data services have come a long way since then. However, many of us have a hard time embracing 3G, for all their advantage- perhaps there’s no practical usage for the services. The lack of mobility has also turned potential users to their Internet connections at home. Perhaps the introduction of 4G which promises mobility and high-speed might solve this practical problem.

However, the future does look bright for data services. With future wireless technologies promising better mobility and reliable speeds and connections, there is no reason why data services won’t pick up for mobile devices.