Telecom Italia is well-known to manage noteworthy pilot projects.
But the company often fails in making these excellences the norm.
For the mobile network:
- the coverage of 4G is ... scarce
> In Italy, almost all of the population can benefit from mobile Internet connectivity services over the 2G network, namely Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates For GSM Evolution). Next to the full coverage is HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, while the implementation of HSPA + (HSPA Evolution) and 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) solutions is still to be completed.
[https://www.sostariffe.it/news/copertura-rete-mobile-in-ital...]
- the practice of trying to force users into accepting bundles that include online streaming of music and/or movies, subscriptions to the fixed network, newspapers, movie tickets, various amenities is hated by many. [https://www.tim.it]
- not having a internet-dedicated monthly fee is a lack, especially given the exaggerated costs in exchange for a low data threshold
For the fixed network:
- having a guaranteed minimum bandwidth is a utopia and the real upload bandwidth is around 20% of the declared
- the depeering has been dictated by anti-competitive strategies rather than technical reasons [http://blog.bofh.it/id_432]
> For the fixed network: - having a guaranteed minimum bandwidth is a utopia and the real upload bandwidth is around 20% of the declared
Source? That's a rather bold claim. Are you talking about guaranteed bandwidth, or rather connection speed? What's usually really bad here is the "last mile".
In my (little) experience the upload bandwidth (connecting at 15M/768k) has always been respected (Source: running an e-commerce business for 12 years). Of course YMMV.
"YMMV" Indeed! As far as I know the business traffic is prioritised. That doesn't mean it's the average for home connections (the majority of users/customers).
> The transmission speed is up to 7 Mbps in download and up to 384 Kbps in upload. Pursuant to Article 7, paragraph 4 of AGCom 244/08 / CSP Resolution, the value of the minimum download speed for download of the service is 6.4 Mbps. This value derives from measurements made in the second half of 2012 on lines (1) which are between 1000 and 1500 meters from the central station. It should be noted that this value refers to the exclusive use of the ADSL connection for Internet access without the simultaneous use of VoIP or IPTV services. In any case, the value of the minimum transmission speed in download that represents the target value on which Telecom Italia contractually contracts is set at 2.1 Mbps. For the lines located in the areas included in the Anti-digital divide project (see www.telecomitalia.it in the Info Consumers section - Anti-digital project divides the list of municipalities with a rated transmission speed of 640 Kbps download and 256 Kbps in upload ) Contract engagement is set at 300 Kbps in download and 100 kbps in upload. For details, see the contractual terms. [https://www.tim.it/offerte/fisso/internet-voce-e-timvision/a...]
"Are you talking about guaranteed bandwidth, or rather connection speed?" The upload bandwidth I normally have is the guaranteed minimum. Whether it's because of the last mile or the network congestion, I do not know.
Now, we are in the cloud era, suppose you try to upload an hd picture, or a long document somewhere (side note: this is an average use case, not something you should expect from a power user). For a file size of 10MiB [83886.08 Kb] (again, nothing exaggerated) at a transfer rate of 100kbps the transfer will take 838s: just slightly under a quarter of an hour !!! IMHO this is totally unreasonable.
My position is that the company is what remains of a former state monopoly, which still holds a dominant position in the telecommunications market. Unfortunately for the users, this is why there has been no incentive to improve the network over time (for everyone, doing some localised research project is insufficient), and today the situation is not the best.
Telecom Italia is not a company like the others: it's allowed to do many things that others cannot do, including harassing people at every hour of the day for selling their new snake oil with a crazy new discount (taking the money spent on the salaries of the people workin in the call centers and investing them in improving the network is the first thing to do).
The 20% is what I'm experiencing in one of my connections, but you do not have to take my word for it, a quick web search is going to show you relevant results:
This is neat and all, but no LTE standard has been tapped for 5G. LTE Advanced Pro (the third generation of the LTE spec) is the closest to having a spec that can work for 5G, but has not yet been chosen for that.
In addition, it is implied that 5G will require usage of 28, 37, and 39 GHz, which LTE Advanced Pro does not currently have profiles for.
What San Marino is doing is building a current gen 4G network (ie, 4.9G or whatever they're calling it), allowing as many feature of LTE Advanced as possible (including complex MIMO), so in a few years most cell phones will have caught up to make effective use of it.
Also, as a side note, LTE Advanced Pro was introduced in 3GPP release 13 (early 2016), and anything that meets the requirements for 5G will not be until release 15 (most likely next year).
This looks like a really cool testbed for 5G. No tall buildings for you to put in 5G repeaters / femtocells. No bureaucracy for you to jump hoops. Small enough that deployment wouldn't be that big of a problem. Large enough to actually do real world tests with phones. Is Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent) doing the deployment because I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
I agree that this is a good test for 5G, but it's even more important that 5G work well in dense urban areas where there are tall buildings, and hundreds (if not thousands) of users connecting to each cell.
This is true 5G. Not the fake ATT 5G. I saw neowin.net taking a stance against fakes by labelling ATT 5G as "fake 5G" clearly in their title. I hope we all do the same until ATT & co stop misleading their customers leading to eventual confusion for everyone.
Readit News
For the mobile network:
- the coverage of 4G is ... scarce
> In Italy, almost all of the population can benefit from mobile Internet connectivity services over the 2G network, namely Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates For GSM Evolution). Next to the full coverage is HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, while the implementation of HSPA + (HSPA Evolution) and 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) solutions is still to be completed. [https://www.sostariffe.it/news/copertura-rete-mobile-in-ital...]
- the practice of trying to force users into accepting bundles that include online streaming of music and/or movies, subscriptions to the fixed network, newspapers, movie tickets, various amenities is hated by many. [https://www.tim.it]
- not having a internet-dedicated monthly fee is a lack, especially given the exaggerated costs in exchange for a low data threshold
For the fixed network:
- having a guaranteed minimum bandwidth is a utopia and the real upload bandwidth is around 20% of the declared
- the depeering has been dictated by anti-competitive strategies rather than technical reasons [http://blog.bofh.it/id_432]
Source? That's a rather bold claim. Are you talking about guaranteed bandwidth, or rather connection speed? What's usually really bad here is the "last mile".
In my (little) experience the upload bandwidth (connecting at 15M/768k) has always been respected (Source: running an e-commerce business for 12 years). Of course YMMV.
> The transmission speed is up to 7 Mbps in download and up to 384 Kbps in upload. Pursuant to Article 7, paragraph 4 of AGCom 244/08 / CSP Resolution, the value of the minimum download speed for download of the service is 6.4 Mbps. This value derives from measurements made in the second half of 2012 on lines (1) which are between 1000 and 1500 meters from the central station. It should be noted that this value refers to the exclusive use of the ADSL connection for Internet access without the simultaneous use of VoIP or IPTV services. In any case, the value of the minimum transmission speed in download that represents the target value on which Telecom Italia contractually contracts is set at 2.1 Mbps. For the lines located in the areas included in the Anti-digital divide project (see www.telecomitalia.it in the Info Consumers section - Anti-digital project divides the list of municipalities with a rated transmission speed of 640 Kbps download and 256 Kbps in upload ) Contract engagement is set at 300 Kbps in download and 100 kbps in upload. For details, see the contractual terms. [https://www.tim.it/offerte/fisso/internet-voce-e-timvision/a...]
"Are you talking about guaranteed bandwidth, or rather connection speed?" The upload bandwidth I normally have is the guaranteed minimum. Whether it's because of the last mile or the network congestion, I do not know.
Now, we are in the cloud era, suppose you try to upload an hd picture, or a long document somewhere (side note: this is an average use case, not something you should expect from a power user). For a file size of 10MiB [83886.08 Kb] (again, nothing exaggerated) at a transfer rate of 100kbps the transfer will take 838s: just slightly under a quarter of an hour !!! IMHO this is totally unreasonable.
My position is that the company is what remains of a former state monopoly, which still holds a dominant position in the telecommunications market. Unfortunately for the users, this is why there has been no incentive to improve the network over time (for everyone, doing some localised research project is insufficient), and today the situation is not the best.
Telecom Italia is not a company like the others: it's allowed to do many things that others cannot do, including harassing people at every hour of the day for selling their new snake oil with a crazy new discount (taking the money spent on the salaries of the people workin in the call centers and investing them in improving the network is the first thing to do).
The 20% is what I'm experiencing in one of my connections, but you do not have to take my word for it, a quick web search is going to show you relevant results:
http://forum.telefonino.net/showthread.php?t=402839https://www.tomshw.it/forum/threads/telecom-upload-basso.247...http://www.evilripper.net/adsl-telecom-italia-1-megabyte-in-...https://www.tomshw.it/forum/threads/banda-in-upload.69639/http://forum.telefonino.net/archive/index.php?t-402839.html ... and many others ...
In addition, it is implied that 5G will require usage of 28, 37, and 39 GHz, which LTE Advanced Pro does not currently have profiles for.
What San Marino is doing is building a current gen 4G network (ie, 4.9G or whatever they're calling it), allowing as many feature of LTE Advanced as possible (including complex MIMO), so in a few years most cell phones will have caught up to make effective use of it.
Also, as a side note, LTE Advanced Pro was introduced in 3GPP release 13 (early 2016), and anything that meets the requirements for 5G will not be until release 15 (most likely next year).
ISTR it suffered from somewhat high latency though.