Technical Questions of EVDO

Ghost~Town · EVDO Newbie Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Texas

Howdy all,

I have some specific questions on EVDO and Im hoping you guys can answer them. I work with mobile data in a public safety enviornment and we have recently migrated from CDPD to GPRS/EDGE. Im not unhappy with this decision as its working well for us. However, our current provider, Cingular/ATT is having serious network issues that are causing drop outs, dead connections etc. and there doesnt seem to be any solution forthcoming. Right now, as the project manager, Im looking to have a fall back plan and I want to consider EVDO. I want to ask a couple of questions:

Is it a static or dynamic IP? I require static IP for proprietary reasons on our network.

To have a large number of users, is a frame relay or other type of dedicated infrastructure required?

Is anyone here using EVDO in a public safety enviornment such as in patrol cars? If so, how well is it working? Do any modem manufacturers produce an EVDO model that is trunk mounted for vehicles?

I dont care about speed per se, but reliability is a huge factor. We did not know at the time that Cingular and ATT were merging or we would have never gone with them due to the unforseeable issues that can (and have) come up.

As I understand it, EVDO is similar to CDMA? EVDO, being a data only technology, does it suffer any losses or slowdowns if voice spectrum of CDMA is saturated?

We are from the San Antonio area and I would be interested in hearing from SA residents that are using EVDO as to the extent of actual coverage areas. We require county wide coverage.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers.

Ghost Town

Michael · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 9:58 am Post subject:

I will answer a few questions here....

You can get a Static IP Address from Verizon, normally it is dynamic. When you order service, we have an option to get someone a static IP, but there is a one time charge of $500 per card to get a static IP.

We have sold booster antennas to a few police departments, SO you would not be the first to use EVDO in a police car.

Different manufacturers make "ruggized EVDO modems", usually the EVDO modems get inserted in the PC Slot and I am guessing the laptop is in the front of the car.
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Ghost~Town · EVDO Newbie Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Texas

SL10 · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 11:49 am Post subject:

$500 per card for a static IP? Geesh! I know VZW is money hungry but dam. I do know Sprint doesn't offer static IPs so that would kill your options with them. Btw, Ghosttown EVDO is part of the CDMA platform, but has its own carrier and freqency that is separate from voice.
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brendanhoar · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 09 Jun 2005 Posts: 140

I suspect with a potential 150 user contract, there's an opportunity for negotiation on things like price per IP address, etc.

-brendan

Ghost~Town · EVDO Newbie Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Texas

Yes, price per IP through Cingular is $3.00

Polaro · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 3:06 pm Post subject:

I bet you can negotiate bulk pricing for 150 static IPs. I would bet Verizion or Sprint would work with you on pricing for a Muni. It is a great application for this technology.

EVDO reliability sucked at first. I had constant problems in Atlanta that I have decided were part of Verizon's learning curve with the network. It has gotten much better. Although I am no longer in Atlanta the reliability in Denver and Chicago is good.

I do not believe EVDO shares bandwidth with voice, but you are sharing the bandwidth with other data users on the same cell. As far as the uplink from the cell to the Internet I would yield to one of the more knowledgeable guys on this forum (and there are several), but I do not think they share the T1's between voice and data as a QOS issue, but on this I could be very wrong.

I would certainly pilot one car in your area first with EVDO. In a public safety application I would not risk it without a pilot.

I would also let Cingular know you are unhappy and looking at EVDO. That might get you what you need without changing. Your story is an intersting one that I'm sure could make a vendor look very good or very bad depending on how it plays out.
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Ghost~Town · EVDO Newbie Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Texas

Thanks for the reply, Victor.

I would never consider any kind of a change of technology without an extensive field test. Of course, that doesnt always tell you what you want to know as we tested GPRS extensively in the field. Only after ATT and Cingular merged did the problems become apparent. Had we known they were going to merge, we would have went with another vendor. The problem with them seems to be that we, the customers, know they have a problem on their network and they like to play dumb and pretend like everythings fine. I know its not me because another large customer down this way is having the same exact problems. Appeals to their support network are wasted because their troubleshooting procedures are ridiculous and not very practical.

For instance, if I call and tell them that I have a vehicle thats not able to connect, they want to know the exact block number of the street where this is happening. These are patrol cars..they move around. Constantly. Its impractical to give them this information. Im surprised, from a troubleshooting aspect, that they cannot track the connectivity of a particular IP address to see when it connects, disconnects, how its passing data etc.

Things seem to be improving, however, so Im doing the research on EVDO as a fallback for now. I may actually roll this out sometime in the future for smaller projects so that we see what it can do.