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April 7, 2004

Mossberg Kvells Over Verizon Wireless's 1xEvDO

By Glenn Fleishman

The Wall Street Journal’s personal tech guru Walt Mossberg loves Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess 1xEv-DO service: He had no problem configuring and using it, and thinks the price is high—$50 a month instead of $80 a month seems like a better rate. He’s concerned about the tragedy of the commons—or common carrier in this case—but offers tentative acceptance of Verizon Wireless’s claim that they can maintain a minimum data rate in the face of broad adoption.

Mossberg tested AT&T Wireless’s EDGE and achieved 82 Kbps, a speed above what seems to be typical of most of the users we’ve heard from or read about. But he hit 500 to 700 Kbps in his D.C. area with Ev-Do. Mossberg mentions the only real downside: 40 to 60 Kbps upload speeds, which we started discussing in this space a few days ago.

The asymmetric upstream/downstream speed may be a function of the technology, but with the extent that cell companies are trying to turn consumers into producers with Web cameraphones, streaming video uploads, and other bandwidth-sucking tools, 40 to 60 Kbps won’t cut it for long.

Posted by Glennf at April 7, 2004 7:27 PM

Categories: 2.5G and 3G

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