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| $50 Minimum For German Rural LTE |
| Written by Dave Burstein |
| Monday, 06 September 2010 19:27 |
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Vodafone is unveiling LTE service in 1,000 small towns in Germany at €39.99 ($51) They are offering "up to" 50 meg down with a 30 gig cap for €69.99. Since the total bandwidth at the edge of many cell sites is likely to be about 30 megabits, only those close in are likely to get the higher speeds. Good fixed antennae should make a significant difference. Download is likely half the upload speed.
This is better than today's satellite offers but more expensive and limited than DSL. The caps are low if you regularly watch video, plausible if your net use is light. That's probably the long run expectation of LTE and LTE advanced: moderate but not terrible speeds, not enough capacity for many to watch quality video, (30 gig is less than 90 minutes a day.) This is a reasonable but not great offering for the last few percent that are expensive to reach with landlines. Germany is reaching these towns at no direct cost to the government, a model that makes sense in the U.S. and Britain as well. The spectrum is licensed on the condition that the "unserved" rural territories get service before the carrier can use the spectrum in the more profitable denser areas. While in theory that cost would be reflected in the auction price, there's every reason to believe this is a much cheaper way to get to territory than any of the likely "universal service" subsidies. Real world USF typically spends 2-4 times more than an efficient carrier because of the failure of incentives or control. Australia has decided to use wireless for at least half of the last 7%, supplemented by NBN satellites.The U.S. is doing similar, for a limited number. The new generation of satellites is designed for 5-10 meg connections, but like wireless is shared and limited in total throughput. Canada made the opposite decision about how to spend the money for rural coverage, ordering Bell to extend landlines. Most of us are optimistic results like this will be common in rural areas and prices come down. But no one is sure until we see results on networks with many subscribersVodafone is unveiling LTE service in 1,000 small towns in Germany at
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