Preorders Have Started. (Previously named starts in two hours)


Grench said:
And you're all forgetting the fifth hand. The US mobile phone industry was 'first' and grew organically, in parallel, with multiple companies with competing standards. Europe was then able to say, "Fuck that's messed up!", and created a third set of standards that their quasi socialist governments were able to codify. For the US to switch to the same standards as the rest of the world would be insanely expensive. Those bands would have to be bought back, all devices replaced, other packet radio spectrums dissencumbered, etc. We'really not going to fix it.
Click to expand...

I began writing this thinking your statement was mostly bullshit, after reading up on it, I see what you mean, though I don't agree with your simplification of the reasons why the GSM committee was formed.

Eh, well...
The US was definitely first with wireless/radio/0G phones, and most of the western world developed or bought similar systems and this organic growth happened out in most of the western world. In short most nations in Europe had the same multiple-companies with competing standards problem.
However what with 1G becoming a thing, I know the launches of NMT (1981) predates TACS(1983) and AMPS(1983) (As does Japans NTT (1979) ). So if you want to look at it that way, the US looked at Japans and the Nordics aim to have one standard and say "Fuck that's messed up!" and create even more competing standards. (Yes these where developed concurrently so that is a very inaccurate and unfair statement)
NMT was developed to expand the capacity of, and unify the currently existing 0G systems OLT, MTD, ARP in one cellular network and enable what later got named roaming (in the GSM standard).
A year or so later the GSM committee was formed, in part because of issues raised as far back as 1975 and took inspiration from (among others I'm sure) NMT, especially it's automatic roaming abilities, which I think was unique at that point in time and expanded on that.
Im sure, the fragmentation of the US market had some weight in the discussions leading up to the formation of the GSM committee as well as afterwards, but the main reason was the fragmentation within Europe itself as well as to meet the growing needs that analogue systems simply could not deal with.

As far as I can tell, there have been at least three points in time when the US could have standardized on one standard without any greater cost.
1. The transition between Radio phones to cellular networks,
2. The transition from analogue cellular networks to digital cellular networks.
3. The transition away from CDMA

But as of right now? You are probably right about the cost, perhaps if 5G is different enough and attractive enough it might be part of a single standard solution.

All in all, thanks for engaging me on this quest for knowledge :) I leave this post rather than just not post since someone else might find it interesting,
 
Must be more than 500. around 550 including the pre-pre-ones.

Yes. I think he meant cash for 700. He mentioned earlier, that because the 4G-Units are doing well, less is needed for initial run.
 
Dimacus said:
As far as I can tell, there have been at least three points in time when the US could have standardized on one standard without any greater cost.
1. The transition between Radio phones to cellular networks,
2. The transition from analogue cellular networks to digital cellular networks.
3. The transition away from CDMA

But as of right now? You are probably right about the cost, perhaps if 5G is different enough and attractive enough it might be part of a single standard solution.

All in all, thanks for engaging me on this quest for knowledge :) I leave this post rather than just not post since someone else might find it interesting,
Click to expand...

Thank you for taking the time to dig into it - I'm glad you were able to lay those pieces of the puzzle out so well.

There are additional costs that you're likely not including in the three potential conversion points though. There are two basic origins for these; technology asset finances and spectrum allocation.

The individual technologies are patented and licensed. There is no 'free' wireless technology to switch to. For a company to switch from their in-house wireless technology to another standard means realizing a loss on their in-house technology - which was likely included in their company finances as an asset. It gets worse from their perspective, because as their writing down what had been claimed as a multi-million dollar asset they will in turn need to pay millions in licensing fees for the 'standard' that they are switching to - with those fees potentially going to a direct competitor.

The US radio spectrum is very crowded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_allocation
Oddly enough I was not able to find a public commons graphic equivalent for the EU.

Within the US frequency allocations, though, several of the bands that Europe uses for mobile phones have been sold for other purposes - often on a region by region basis. Those purposes could vary, but might be as simple as a local wireless broadband provider or police, fire or a hospital's wireless intercom. To displace all of that to then re-allocate the spectrum such that it reflects another standard would mean making billions of dollars in existing equipment obsolete - and in effect illegal to operate. In theory, they could move to a common licensed protocol without incurring this expense, but phones for one region won't work in another without it.
 
This graph is starting to plateau a lot earlier than I expected. I wonder how long it'll take for us to reach this goal, and is that a minimum before the order can be placed?

Would be nice to get an update on what's all left before the mass production can start. Maybe a spreadsheet (google drive?) that has the items left, and a % complete. I've seen other projects doing this with pretty decent success.
 
adding support for more freqs and maybe more variants of protocols to a chip isn't as straightforward as you'd think; given the push of software defined radio in research and stuff, you'd think you could apply a lot of that to real application and just change a couple params and bam we're done, but based on what professors were showing us as far as LTE went for consumer electronics, you definitely still have specialized hardware (viterbi decoder, antennas, whatever), so variations make cheap efficient implementation non-trivial. This is assuming all we care about is ppl using some specific like, TDD LTE transmit specification.
 
TDT said:
This graph is starting to plateau a lot earlier than I expected.
Click to expand...
It's going way better than I expected considering that most people in this graph are from this board and proper PR hasn't even been done yet.
 
I still have not put in my preorder yet. I will be another tick on the mobile US count.

I tried to order today, but my bank canceled the transaction. I will call them later or perhaps try to go the route of voucher/paypal.
 
Klumpen said:
It's going way better than I expected considering that most people in this graph are from this board and proper PR hasn't even been done yet.
Click to expand...

That's true, nevertheless it seems to be slowing down quite a bit. A good video could answer a lot of important questions and bump up pre-orders even further. For instance, I know the colour is not final, but I would hate it if it would end up with this red colour.
 
That'll be most of those, who were going to order one anyways. Next is to enlighten those, who don't know yet, that they're going to order. (With ED's press kit - not sooner than when it arrives, of course.)
So kick back and relax.
 
Grench said:
Thank you for taking the time to dig into it - I'm glad you were able to lay those pieces of the puzzle out so well.

There are additional costs that you're likely not including in the three potential conversion points though. There are two basic origins for these; technology asset finances and spectrum allocation.

The individual technologies are patented and licensed. There is no 'free' wireless technology to switch to. For a company to switch from their in-house wireless technology to another standard means realizing a loss on their in-house technology - which was likely included in their company finances as an asset. It gets worse from their perspective, because as their writing down what had been claimed as a multi-million dollar asset they will in turn need to pay millions in licensing fees for the 'standard' that they are switching to - with those fees potentially going to a direct competitor.

The US radio spectrum is very crowded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_allocation
Oddly enough I was not able to find a public commons graphic equivalent for the EU.

Within the US frequency allocations, though, several of the bands that Europe uses for mobile phones have been sold for other purposes - often on a region by region basis. Those purposes could vary, but might be as simple as a local wireless broadband provider or police, fire or a hospital's wireless intercom. To displace all of that to then re-allocate the spectrum such that it reflects another standard would mean making billions of dollars in existing equipment obsolete - and in effect illegal to operate. In theory, they could move to a common licensed protocol without incurring this expense, but phones for one region won't work in another without it.
Click to expand...

Some of it was part of my thinking, on a national level it wouldn't have mattered if one company made a loss and another an equally large profit, but I realize that individual companies would have mattered more in the US.
I would however have though some sort of standards body would have been created by the major players (themselves rather than a government body) when it looked like it would be a very expansive industry, I also didn't realize the spectrum divided up and actually sold, here in Sweden they are leased on long term contracts.
As for for frequency allocation, I don't think there is one for the EU as a whole, Sweden at least has it's own, a list from 2005 can be reached here : https://www.pts.se/upload/Documents/SE/frekvensplanen2005_4.PDF ( a very long list ) and as the in the US it's quiet crowded.
 
Just in case anyone is still interested in the PLS8-X and -V:

To get the official documentation for the PLS8-E and PLS8-US, I searched a lot on the internet just to find a few leaks of confidential documents, and these were only outdated versions for the PLS8-E. The US version, which was used in less products and therefore has less potential leakages, seemed almost nonexistant, the only way to get the documents is to download them from the manufacturer after being approved by them. While this approval can be circumvented, it wouldn't be anywhere close to being legal and they could easily write a cease and desist letter if they'd find out about software being produced this way, possibly even worse. But I'll be looking into getting these documents in some legal way.

To get back to the main topic, the PLS8-X and -V are a whole different story: Like with the -US version, there's pretty much no leaked information out there, but unlike it, the datasheets are not on the Gemalto developer page. I have no clue at all how to get them, but I assume you could get them by Verizon as these chips were specifically produced fo them But not only do they not release any previews of their documents, their "open development device certification process", as they call it, is completely ridiculous compared to anything similar by other companies. At least I think that's what you need to get their documents. I'd guess it's borderline impossible to get in there as a small manufacturer like OpenPandora GmbH. Also, fun fact, if your search for "Verizon PLS8" on Google Germany, this exact topic, which doesn't even exist for a week, is on the first page of results. That's how many people seem to use these two chips.

Sorry if this all is a bit off topic, I just thought there might be a few people who'd still like to know all this.

tl;dr: I can finally understand why so many Americans hate Verizon and sadly guess it will never be possible for the Pyra or any similar niche device to support their frequencies.
 
Caine said:
That's true, nevertheless it seems to be slowing down quite a bit. A good video could answer a lot of important questions and bump up pre-orders even further. For instance, I know the colour is not final, but I would hate it if it would end up with this red colour.
Click to expand...
Dark Red and Black imo. If further colours can be added then great. Black should cater for those that like the generic black I think.
 
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