Actually cell phones are only prohibited in US and maybe a few others airspace! There's a fully Boeing/airbus supported and tested solution called aeromobile and on air in which a gsm pico cell is on board and connected to a satellite. There is also mobile data although this is only edge speeds at the moment. BA and Virgin Atlantic have it on some aircraft over the Atlantic and the system is auto shutoff during taxi takeoff and in and near us airspace. It is essentially an international gsm roaming service and the only us Sim cards supported are at&t and T-Mobile.

Yup I plan on doing the same! ;-) Nothing like FREE gear from the FCC! LMAO.

Yep basically the data-center/cloud computing model for the cell site architecture. The only thing in the public is a small antennae back-hauled to the operators CO/data-center via fiber/fibre optics (single pair at most with optical compression and algorithms) and all the signal processing is centralized at a few sites in the operators data center. This dramatically reduces costs instead of doing the cellular signal processing at the remote cell site. Advantages: Everything in the outdoor element is removed except for the small antennae and everything else of the architecture is moved to the operators data-center dramatically reducing costs. Disadvantages: We won't see this in rural areas (urban/metro first) because of fiber availability. This is applicable to rural areas but it requires high capacity microwave back-haul. TDM/T1/copper just doesn't cut it anymore. Yay cloud computing in the cellular architecture! Who'd what have thought!? Note: They are doing this for macro-cells finally, the same big-ass antennae you see outside. They are MOVING ALL THE SIGNAL PROCESSING TO THE OPERATORS DATA-CENTER! The only thing outside is a simple antennae, low power usage and back-hauled via fiber-optics (single pair at most with optimization). They are just moving the processing from the remote site to the data-center.

Ugh the majority of their urban markets and where they have deployed 3G is WCDMA/UMTS/HSPA+ and fiber back-haul (or being moved there ASAP). This has more to do with network engineering than the technology and AT&T is finally catching up with Verizon in that regard...

You really can't compare bet-ween countries with different wages, standards of living, etc. Also there is IP transit costs and a shit-load of network engineering things. Yes you can get 100Mbps in Japan but the majority of content consumer by the Japanese is WITHIN JAPAN with the packets never leaving the country. Everything is available for a price, that's the beauty of capitalism with smart gov't support...

Yes yes and yes depending on peering/IP transit and traffic engineering. But mostly yes especially with the CDN caches (Akamai, Limelight, et al.)

They have fiber, it's just not for residential users. That fiber is is probably for the hospital with a multi-gigabit connection. Do you even KNOW how much is costs to terminate a fiber connection (I mean not the FiOS consumer, stuff enterprise data-server DSLAM level)? Yeah, you will have U-verse soon with GbE (1Gbps Gigabit Ethernet carrier grade) back to the CO soon...

I don't have the fucking time to descibe the protocol differences of 3GPP and 3GPP2 and protocol fail of LG and their shitty drivers. The UML290 model doesn't have this problem and uses a newer Qualcomm chipset.

Try getting 35+Mbps down and 5-8Mbps up on Sprint when their WiMAX capacity is under-engineered on average. VZW has all their LTE cell sites on FIBER with a shit-load of capacity.

What? You're EVDO should improve and maxing it out. Areas where the cell towers have LTE deployed have fiber back-haul deployed on the RAN with GigE or higher. LTE has more capacity per sector than cable DOCSIS-2.0 in Verizon's configuration and the same as DOCSIS-3.0 if VZW doubled the spectrum like the European carriers have (e.g. TeliaSonera). You will get 5-35+Mbps and 5-8Mbps up and pings of 30ms within the RAN and 45-100ms to the internet if it's peered/transit is good. Seriously yes there's bandwidth limits. But I'd rather have bandwidth limits and good pings and performance (cable modem/fiber link) than shitty Clear and under-engineered network where it's slow as molasses since they don't have enough backhaul everywhere.

NO only switching between EVDO rA and LTE. They are COMPLETELY TWO SEPERATE technologies on the BACKEND with different authentication though supposedly with ALU and Ericsson VZW integrated the network cores with the new EPC (Evolved Packet Core)... This is a DRIVER PROBLEM with the LG VL600. The UML290 by Pantech uses a newer Qualcomm chipset and DOESNT HAVE THIS PROBLEM. More of an OEM problem than a network problem... As to the costs... Network building COSTS MONEY. EVERY SINGLE CELL SITE (99.99%) is back-hauled by fiber. Or Microwave of similar capacity if they can't get the fiber at the moment. You want high bandwidth? Pay for the network buildout and fiber backhaul! VZW is doing it right for once.

It's not a driver problem, it's a software problem. If you don't want to use VZAccess you don't have to, you just don't get any support. Anyways if you understand the engineering fundamentals and the technical specifics read this: http://community.vzw.com/t5/4G-Discussion/4G-LTE-Data-stick-Mac-Linux-Windows-other-authentication/td-p/347794 The LTE UML290 card supports standard GSM 3G/4G/LTE stack and works just fine with Apple's generic dialer or the Windows connection thing in Win7 or Linux. The VZAccess support is for the plebs and not developers... You have to run it ONCE in VZAccess though on Windows atm (coming soon for Mac) for authentication and the SIM card programming...

Verizon's LTE implementation as of now is 10+10MHz with 2x2 MIMO. This is 76Mbps down/36Mbps up per sector. In most cell-phone towers in Urban, Sub-urban and Metro areas they have deployed 3-6 sectors. So the max LTE cell-phone tower (eNodeB if you want to get technical) VZW has is 76x6=456Mbps down shared and 36x6=216Mbps up shared per cell site. VZW is using GigE/OC-X SONET fiber back-haul onto their IP-RAN so they can support all the 4G LTE high-speeds. I bet once VZW notices how efficient their new 4G network is since it's ALL-IP they will improve the caps to probably $50/month for 10-20GB usage per month or something like that. People this just launched the other day, you gotta wait over the next few weeks while they notice how the technology scales over time (probably Q1 2011). The data card speeds are INTENTIONALLY being capped to 8-12 with bursts up to 50Mbps down and 3-5 with bursts up to 10Mbps up when there is capacity. If VZW sold you a LTE USB data card and had the SIM provisioned with uncapped like the engineers have then you would take ALL THE BANDWIDTH of the WHOLE TOWER instantly. Obviously VZW with smart network engineering doesn't want that. They want to sell end-users equal bandwidth. The TeliaSonera implementation is double the frequency so double the bandwidth. VZW can do that too if they bought more spectrum from the FCC which they will probably do over time. Happy Holidays all! ;-) PS, for you rural users they still have to run FIBER to the rural cell-site. The caps will dramatically increase over time. Trust me.

Verizon's LTE implementation as of now is 10+10MHz with 2x2 MIMO. This is 76Mbps down/36Mbps up per sector. In most cell-phone towers in Urban, Sub-urban and Metro areas they have deployed 3-6 sectors. So the max LTE cell-phone tower (eNodeB if you want to get technical) VZW has is 76x6=456Mbps down shared and 36x6=216Mbps up shared per cell site. VZW is using GigE/OC-X SONET fiber back-haul onto their IP-RAN so they can support all the 4G LTE high-speeds. I bet once VZW notices how efficient their new 4G network is since it's ALL-IP they will improve the caps to probably $50/month for 10-20GB usage per month or something like that. People this just launched the other day, you gotta wait over the next few weeks while they notice how the technology scales over time (probably Q1 2011). The data card speeds are INTENTIONALLY being capped to 8-12 with bursts up to 50Mbps down and 3-5 with bursts up to 10Mbps up when there is capacity. If VZW sold you a LTE USB data card and had the SIM provisioned with uncapped like the engineers have then you would take ALL THE BANDWIDTH of the WHOLE TOWER instantly. Obviously VZW with smart network engineering doesn't want that. They want to sell end-users equal bandwidth. The TeliaSonera implementation is double the frequency so double the bandwidth. VZW can do that too if they bought more spectrum from the FCC which they will probably do over time. Happy Holidays all! ;-)