On 30/May/18 19:10, K. Scott Helms wrote:
Mark,
A couple of things, first that kind of utilization isn't feasible once penetration rates in dense areas reach certain levels. There's a reason that NTT Docomo moved more than 70% of their data traffic to the 3.5 GHz band and that reason is that there's not (nor will there be) enough wireless spectrum to meet the needs of everyone with licensed space. (That same use case is why all the big North American providers are looking at CBRS.) Further, 4G/5G is going to have trouble scaling to the kinds of network demands going forward, again especially in dense areas. While it's certainly possible today to stream unicast video over LTE and will (for a while) even more feasible over 5G the physics simply aren't with the wireless world.
I don't disagree - fundamentally, one can't argue with the scalability of wired media vs. any kind of wireless media. In (South) Africa, two things are happening to scale out 4G: * Getting the regulators to issue new spectrum to MNO's. This is also aided by the country's migration plans from analog to digital for free-to-air TV, which will make new spectrum available for the MNO's. However... * ... the above isn't moving at the pace the MNO's would like, which is why they have become some of the most efficient mobile operators in the world by re-farming existing spectrum and scaling that way.
I'd say that your example of poor DSL performance isn't unique, it happens in some spots in the US,
As with the Internet, the technology is the technology regardless of where it's applied in the world. ADSL scaling properties suffer in Africa the same way they do in any other continent.
but in general wired performance has much higher individual and even higher aggregate capacities /when correctly deployed./
No argument from me there. I use 3G/4G for data when I travel within the country, as I mentioned before. When I'm at home, my FTTH service does the job. When I'm in the office, my backbone does the job. Wireless will never meet the demands, long-term, be it on 5G or 802.11ax. But for now, 3G/4G/LTE is the most appropriate technology for, pretty much, all of Africa. And to be fair, it is not doing a half-bad job, across the board.
/ /I doubt your hotel example is a poor deployment though, it's more likely that the hotel owners are under paying for both the WAN connection and the WiFi infrastructure.
I'm a network engineer - I can tell when the issue is a pretty bad wi-fi setup, a pretty bad LAN switch, a pretty bad NAT44 translator, or a pretty bad ISP. I was in Paris in March for a conference, and I couldn't get the hotel staff to understand that the problem with the hotel Internet was both a combination of poorly deployed wi-fi on each floor + insufficient capacity from their ISP. Their solution to me was, "Reboot your laptop and check again". I don't have the luxury of data roaming when I'm outside of South Africa. When I'm in South Africa, tethering always works better, even when the hotel wi-fi has moments of being decent. Mark.