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> And the rest of the world could soon behave a lot more like the Finns do. The core issue here is the lack of fiber-connected base stations. The vast majority

> And the rest of the world could soon behave a lot more like the Finns do. The core issue here is the lack of fiber-connected base stations. The vast majority of them globally are connected with microwave connections that will not be able to handle 1gbps speeds for multiple users at once. This is a rather significant issue, as laying fiber from the backhaul (sometimes even backbone) network requires a lot of earthwork, the fiber needs to be laid underground and active infrastructure also needs to be deployed. I don't see this happening anytime soon.

dogma1138 10y ago
Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering and it's not like this service is available everywhere across Finland. Having a small population and only a few highly populated metropolitan areas make it easy. Providing 1gbps cellular connection in NYC isn't really possible, Helsinki on the other hand is doable. As for the rural areas they aren't covered in Finland and even if a few are the size of the country also plays a role because good luck getting 1gig cell towers across Nebraska.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering Except the excuse you hear from Americans in every single thread about mobile tech is "Oh but the US has such a low population density! Obviously our service must be crap and cost a shitload!"
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Population density is misleading because it's usually calculated based on total land area, total private land area, total resdential build up etc. Overall the US is in an odd position where tha large cities are too populated and the suburban metropolitan areas tend to be considerably less dense due to primarily single family housing over fairly large land plots. Combine that with NIMBY mentality and the overall geographic scale and you don't get the best environment for rapidly deploying infrastructure.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      The problem is all regulatory. You have other countries with really insane population distributions like Australia, but they have some vague semblance of competition (I'm definitely not claiming the Australian market is sane by any stretch) so people who need rural coverage get the expensive but very high quality Telstra network, but people who never leave the cities can get unlimited data on more focused carriers. The US get the worst of all worlds.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Could be, but then again Finland has like what 2 carriers? Elisa and Tellia something. Elisa is effectively the BT/AT&T/BELL of Finland.
        Jommi 10y ago
        Elisa, Sonera, DNA + regional ones. Elisa has the widest coverage, they havebeen buying out regional ones.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Sonara is Telia, didn't knew about DNA I know that some of the islands and the more remote areas have had setup coop telephone/internet companies but overall there isn't much "competition" as far as number of companies go. If you exclude MVNO's most countries have pretty similar number of mobile and broadband providers.
        ptaipale 10y ago
        I disagree about that lack of competition: Finland was actually a pioneer in deregulation of telecom services in 1980's-1990's and that was a partial reason for the great success of Nokia since that. The company learned how to deal with operators that are competing on a market. Deregulation followed later in many European countries and throughout the world. There are three physical countrywide LTE/3G/GSM networks in Finland: Telia/Sonera, Elisa and DNA. They then carry some MVNOs so there are more places where you can actually buy a SIM card than just these three. Most people buy their phone here separately from the operator contract, so there are much fewer contract phones than e.g. in the U.S. Thus there is competition for phone sales, and competition for operator contracts, separately. Telia/Sonera is the former state monopoly, Elisa grew out of Helsinki telephone association/company, and DNA is a merger of small countryside operators. Sonera has the best coverage throughout the country, DNA curiously enough has the best coverage in urban areas. Of course, we can still always say that there is not enough competition between operators, as their prices tend to converge. Consumer advocates usually have only two kinds of messages: either all prices are nearly the same ("competition is not working!") or there are large disparities in prices ("competition is not working!").
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- pavlov 10y ago
  Finland is 1.7x larger geographically than Nebraska, and its population is 2.8x larger. So while Nebraska is certainly somewhat more sparsely populated, the difference isn't huge.
- legulere 10y ago
  I can't talk about Finland, but in Sweden I was really surprised how far I could wander from civilisation and still get 4G, Edge was pretty rare. Much better than what I get here in Germany and also cheaper. (I shouldn't complain though, I'm using heavily throttled internet for free)
  - kiiski 10y ago
    > I can't talk about Finland Here's a map for the carrier in question: https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/ https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/
- Maakuth 10y ago
  As a Finn I generally get decent connectivity mostly anywhere. The rural town I live in has 7000 residents and all the three networks have decent 4G coverage here. Certainly not 1Gbps, but always tens of Mbps. Pretty much wherever I go, I have at least 3G connectivity from maybe 2Mbps upwards. This basically anywhere except some areas of Lapland wilderness, where nobody lives. This costs around 20€/month, 30€ if you want unlimited calls and sms.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    That ain't that different than most rural US. And I'm not sure 7000 is considered very rural in Finland, Vaala is probably less than half than that and I'm not sure how "rural" in the grand scheme of things that it is, it's not Iceland where you can have 50 people and be considered a town.
- martinko 10y ago
  Yeah, this is what 5g 'promises' to solve (I've heard about applications in Singapore and NY), despite the fact that no one has actually defined what 5g is.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    I don't see how exactly is that solvable, sure it would help but by how much? 3g/4g/5g is pretty nonsense, you can have 3.5g HSDPA/HSUPA providing considerably higher speeds than 4g it's all circumstantial. Covering a large metropolitan area is hard, tons of people, tons of high buildings and abstraction that make LOS pain in the ass, tons of shadows and reflections due to glass/steel construction and almost impossible to do large infrastructure project because opening a main road in a central city is a huge PITA, add to that all the people that do not want transmitters on their property, in LOS of them, near the school, near the hospital, near the playground and you get a pretty shitty situation. Sure there are things that some better regulation or incentives might solve but in the grand scheme of things not everything is scalable when you take it from a city of 500,000 to a city of 12M.
- dboreham 10y ago
  Nobody is providing a 1Gbps cell connection anywhere -- this article is marketing hype. They didn't provide 1Gbps "in Finland", they provided it "in their lab" (which could as well have been in NYC). Population density is a red herring -- deliverable service speed has much more to do with the amount of money the carrier wants to spend on provisioning service than the population density. fwiw: I travel quite a bit and the fastest LTE service I've tested has been in Tokyo (high population density) @ 52M/23M. meanwhile, here in Montana (low population density) I usually see around 20M/15M.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    The fastest LTE service I've seen was in Kempsey, Australia (Pop. 28,000) where I clocked 130 MBit/s down on a prepaid SIM
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  Here in Lithuania the population is also very sparse outside the big cities, but I have no issues getting a full 4G signal even in remote countryside. The land here is rather flat which obviously helps, but the country also has the highest FTTH percentage in Europe so they must be doing something right :-)
jpeg_hero 10y ago
What kind of fiber could you even provision to the base station? 50gbit? 100gbit? Is that even possible?
- detaro 10y ago
  10, 40 and 100 Gbit/s are common fiber speeds (as in, you can buy standardized parts from multiple vendors), but at least 100GbE is properly expensive (something in my brain says +100k€ per interface, but that figure probably is a few years old). And that's per individual fiberpair & wavelength, so it is easy to bundle up multiple channels. I assume the quoted wireless speeds are for a single client under perfect conditions, what summed up bandwidth can a single tower support with multiple clients? 10 or 40G probably go a long way already.
  - X-Istence 10y ago
    100 GbE isn't that expensive. Transceivers for 100 GbE are in the $800 per port or so. CDW sells Proline 100 GbE transceivers for $300 a pop. It's a standard QSFP28 interface that is used for most of them. It carries 4x 25 GbE across the fibres. They also make 100 GbE DAC cables. Longer distances do cost more... Just looking around I found some 100GBASE-LR4 transceivers going for $6k a pop from Finisair... but at least you get to continue using your single mode fiber ;-)
- runeks 10y ago
  If you're digging in the ground anyway, why not multiple fiber strands, and as many empty tubes as you can fit in there too? The digging is what costs (at least here in Denmark), not the materials.
- tbihl 10y ago
  I'm not arguing that we should use submarine style cables for base stations, but so you know what's possible: those cables (about 1 inch diameter) routinely do terabits per second.
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  You can get 10G Ethernet SFP+ modules using OM3 fiber for $100 these days. 12 strand outdoor fiber sells for $0.33/ft. Yes, neither of these is what you'd use as a backhaul link between cell sites, but it gives you an idea when you can do 60G over 300m distance for under $1,500 all in (assuming you already have SFP+ capable hardware at both ends). As others have stated, LR grade hardware has came way down in price just like the SR stuff has.

dogma1138 10y ago

Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering and it's not like this service is available everywhere across Finland. Having a small population and only a few highly populated metropolitan areas make it easy. Providing 1gbps cellular connection in NYC isn't really possible, Helsinki on the other hand is doable. As for the rural areas they aren't covered in Finland and even if a few are the size of the country also plays a role because good luck getting 1gig cell towers across Nebraska.

kalleboo 10y ago
> Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering Except the excuse you hear from Americans in every single thread about mobile tech is "Oh but the US has such a low population density! Obviously our service must be crap and cost a shitload!"
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Population density is misleading because it's usually calculated based on total land area, total private land area, total resdential build up etc. Overall the US is in an odd position where tha large cities are too populated and the suburban metropolitan areas tend to be considerably less dense due to primarily single family housing over fairly large land plots. Combine that with NIMBY mentality and the overall geographic scale and you don't get the best environment for rapidly deploying infrastructure.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    The problem is all regulatory. You have other countries with really insane population distributions like Australia, but they have some vague semblance of competition (I'm definitely not claiming the Australian market is sane by any stretch) so people who need rural coverage get the expensive but very high quality Telstra network, but people who never leave the cities can get unlimited data on more focused carriers. The US get the worst of all worlds.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Could be, but then again Finland has like what 2 carriers? Elisa and Tellia something. Elisa is effectively the BT/AT&T/BELL of Finland.
      - Jommi 10y ago
        Elisa, Sonera, DNA + regional ones. Elisa has the widest coverage, they havebeen buying out regional ones.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Sonara is Telia, didn't knew about DNA I know that some of the islands and the more remote areas have had setup coop telephone/internet companies but overall there isn't much "competition" as far as number of companies go. If you exclude MVNO's most countries have pretty similar number of mobile and broadband providers.
        ptaipale 10y ago
        I disagree about that lack of competition: Finland was actually a pioneer in deregulation of telecom services in 1980's-1990's and that was a partial reason for the great success of Nokia since that. The company learned how to deal with operators that are competing on a market. Deregulation followed later in many European countries and throughout the world. There are three physical countrywide LTE/3G/GSM networks in Finland: Telia/Sonera, Elisa and DNA. They then carry some MVNOs so there are more places where you can actually buy a SIM card than just these three. Most people buy their phone here separately from the operator contract, so there are much fewer contract phones than e.g. in the U.S. Thus there is competition for phone sales, and competition for operator contracts, separately. Telia/Sonera is the former state monopoly, Elisa grew out of Helsinki telephone association/company, and DNA is a merger of small countryside operators. Sonera has the best coverage throughout the country, DNA curiously enough has the best coverage in urban areas. Of course, we can still always say that there is not enough competition between operators, as their prices tend to converge. Consumer advocates usually have only two kinds of messages: either all prices are nearly the same ("competition is not working!") or there are large disparities in prices ("competition is not working!").
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
pavlov 10y ago
Finland is 1.7x larger geographically than Nebraska, and its population is 2.8x larger. So while Nebraska is certainly somewhat more sparsely populated, the difference isn't huge.
legulere 10y ago
I can't talk about Finland, but in Sweden I was really surprised how far I could wander from civilisation and still get 4G, Edge was pretty rare. Much better than what I get here in Germany and also cheaper. (I shouldn't complain though, I'm using heavily throttled internet for free)
- kiiski 10y ago
  > I can't talk about Finland Here's a map for the carrier in question: https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/ https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/
Maakuth 10y ago
As a Finn I generally get decent connectivity mostly anywhere. The rural town I live in has 7000 residents and all the three networks have decent 4G coverage here. Certainly not 1Gbps, but always tens of Mbps. Pretty much wherever I go, I have at least 3G connectivity from maybe 2Mbps upwards. This basically anywhere except some areas of Lapland wilderness, where nobody lives. This costs around 20€/month, 30€ if you want unlimited calls and sms.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  That ain't that different than most rural US. And I'm not sure 7000 is considered very rural in Finland, Vaala is probably less than half than that and I'm not sure how "rural" in the grand scheme of things that it is, it's not Iceland where you can have 50 people and be considered a town.
martinko 10y ago
Yeah, this is what 5g 'promises' to solve (I've heard about applications in Singapore and NY), despite the fact that no one has actually defined what 5g is.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  I don't see how exactly is that solvable, sure it would help but by how much? 3g/4g/5g is pretty nonsense, you can have 3.5g HSDPA/HSUPA providing considerably higher speeds than 4g it's all circumstantial. Covering a large metropolitan area is hard, tons of people, tons of high buildings and abstraction that make LOS pain in the ass, tons of shadows and reflections due to glass/steel construction and almost impossible to do large infrastructure project because opening a main road in a central city is a huge PITA, add to that all the people that do not want transmitters on their property, in LOS of them, near the school, near the hospital, near the playground and you get a pretty shitty situation. Sure there are things that some better regulation or incentives might solve but in the grand scheme of things not everything is scalable when you take it from a city of 500,000 to a city of 12M.
dboreham 10y ago
Nobody is providing a 1Gbps cell connection anywhere -- this article is marketing hype. They didn't provide 1Gbps "in Finland", they provided it "in their lab" (which could as well have been in NYC). Population density is a red herring -- deliverable service speed has much more to do with the amount of money the carrier wants to spend on provisioning service than the population density. fwiw: I travel quite a bit and the fastest LTE service I've tested has been in Tokyo (high population density) @ 52M/23M. meanwhile, here in Montana (low population density) I usually see around 20M/15M.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The fastest LTE service I've seen was in Kempsey, Australia (Pop. 28,000) where I clocked 130 MBit/s down on a prepaid SIM
lucaspiller 10y ago
Here in Lithuania the population is also very sparse outside the big cities, but I have no issues getting a full 4G signal even in remote countryside. The land here is rather flat which obviously helps, but the country also has the highest FTTH percentage in Europe so they must be doing something right :-)

jpeg_hero 10y ago

What kind of fiber could you even provision to the base station? 50gbit? 100gbit? Is that even possible?

detaro 10y ago
10, 40 and 100 Gbit/s are common fiber speeds (as in, you can buy standardized parts from multiple vendors), but at least 100GbE is properly expensive (something in my brain says +100k€ per interface, but that figure probably is a few years old). And that's per individual fiberpair & wavelength, so it is easy to bundle up multiple channels. I assume the quoted wireless speeds are for a single client under perfect conditions, what summed up bandwidth can a single tower support with multiple clients? 10 or 40G probably go a long way already.
- X-Istence 10y ago
  100 GbE isn't that expensive. Transceivers for 100 GbE are in the $800 per port or so. CDW sells Proline 100 GbE transceivers for $300 a pop. It's a standard QSFP28 interface that is used for most of them. It carries 4x 25 GbE across the fibres. They also make 100 GbE DAC cables. Longer distances do cost more... Just looking around I found some 100GBASE-LR4 transceivers going for $6k a pop from Finisair... but at least you get to continue using your single mode fiber ;-)
runeks 10y ago
If you're digging in the ground anyway, why not multiple fiber strands, and as many empty tubes as you can fit in there too? The digging is what costs (at least here in Denmark), not the materials.
tbihl 10y ago
I'm not arguing that we should use submarine style cables for base stations, but so you know what's possible: those cables (about 1 inch diameter) routinely do terabits per second.
jsjohnst 10y ago
You can get 10G Ethernet SFP+ modules using OM3 fiber for $100 these days. 12 strand outdoor fiber sells for $0.33/ft. Yes, neither of these is what you'd use as a backhaul link between cell sites, but it gives you an idea when you can do 60G over 300m distance for under $1,500 all in (assuming you already have SFP+ capable hardware at both ends). As others have stated, LR grade hardware has came way down in price just like the SR stuff has.