Wireless Broadband Getting Closer

robertth writes "Wireless broadband is coming to offices and homes using a two-way point-to-multipoint implementation of the cable industry's DOCSIS platform. See the Broadband Week story ." This technology offers an interesting possibility: Building a cable modem-speed infrastructure without getting into the right-of-way hassles that have led to our current local cable TV (hence cable modem) monopolies - and may also offer a rapid way to bring Internet (and telephone, with voice over IP) service to remote areas.

Comments

Not a waste at all

[Brian Knotts]

Some of us will *never* get broadband without wireless. I need this now!

You forget that not everyone lives in an area served by numerous connectivity options.

New XFMail home page

Re:First nude post

[dattaway]

This ascii picture representing a beautiful female is impressive and was striking the first time, but may I ask that these pictures be posted in a more appropriate location?

Three people where I work have their necks on the chopping block (their computers are gone) for downloading masses of porn last week. Images like this can cause problems in a workplace where both genders work. I enjoy reading technical forums, but I can do without being the subject of a witch hunt when nude images are found.

Say What?

[Bruce Perens]

the spectrum is infinite in both directions

Huh? There is 10 KHz of bandwidth between 10 KHz and 0 KHz. There is room for expansion in the high-frequency direction only if you consider the propogation characteristics. When you get really high in frequency the atmosphere becomes more opaque. All of the frequencies we are talking about here are line-of-sight only.

Bruce

Re:Say What?

[Mister Attack]

I also realize that to a certain degree (not sure to exactly what degree) higher frequency waves are capable of traveling less distance through air, but as I said, all that is required if you desire greater bandwidth are more receivers, or more powerful ones.

And at some point, when you're trying to increase frequency, you run smack into a wall - the atmosphere is quite opaque to most of the EM spectrum. Only a few small bands (like radio) are at frequencies where the atmosphere is reasonably transparent. The cost of trying to push anything on a frequency where the atmosphere isn't almost completely transparent would be astronomical. Trust me, the spectrum itself may be infinite, but the usable portion of the spectrum is very finite and going fast.
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EM spectrum

[jabber]

The EM spectrum is far from infinite, especially if you're interested in the portion that's referred to as RADIO.

The RF range is relatively narrow, compared to the other sections of EM, but it's characteristics are such that it's very useful. Omnidirectional transmission, and the ability to propagate the signal through solid objects is of great benefit. Unfortunatelly the data carrying capacity of RF is relatively small.

The amount of data that can be crammed into EM is proportional to the frequency, and if you jack up the freq, you lose the neat properties of RF. You go unidirectional, and you start cooking whatever meat you transmit through. Yes, that's right, the high side of RF is called microwave. Then there's X-ray, gamma radiation.. You really want that beaming your data into your house?

Along with the adverse effects of high-freq EM comes the energy considerations. It takes a lot of power to push high freq signals, and they tend to dissipate in water vapor, so distance transmissions via air become a problem.

In order to push a large amount of data through RF you need to spread the signal across sevaral frequencies. These frequencies must be relatively discrete. This improves your thruput, but it fills the medium more quickly, and as far as communication is concerned, air is the wire. Lots of collisions in a spread RF area.

So, radio is of fantastic use where better options are not available, and for short and bursty traffic, but as far as web-browsing... Man, banner ads alone would kill the airwaves.

no broadband in NYC

[Evro]

My home's in Queens, about 10 miles from Manhattan -- and there is no broadband there! Supposedly Time Warner will have cable modem eventually, and BA is promising DSL, but this is already several months old. I just tried searching again, here's what it said (and has said for at least the past six months)

We're sorry. Infospeed DSL is not available in your area at this time. The good news is that it should be available in your area in the next six months. If you'd like us to contact you when your number qualifies for Infospeed DSL, click here to be placed on our notification list. We will only contact you if Infospeed DSL becomes available to you.
Note: In some cases, Infospeed DSL may become available in an area, but not be available to your home due to technical limitations. The technology is improving rapidly, so if you are affected by this situation, we will keep your name on our list and notify you if Infospeed DSL becomes available to you.

This is not some boondocky place, this is within the New York City limits!!! Now I don't know if wireless is the solution to this problem, but the assumption that everybody has access to DSL or Cable is wrong.
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Re:no broadband in NYC

[Evro]

hm, well, according to this, we have cable modem now (little neck), so I guess I was wrong about near my house, but look down by hillside and springfield gardens -- spring of next year. So the point is still somewhat valid... lots of people don't have it yet. Even parts of Manhattan still don't have it.
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Re:Who cares?

[voop]

Who Cares? It's in the 5Ghz+ band. That is useless spectrum for anything but line of sight things like this. The more access options the better!

Well, I have a past (and to some extend present) in ham-radio (amateur radio). At a cirtain time a long long time ago the VHF and later UHF-bands were assigned exclusively for ham-usage (at least in my regions) because "those very high frequencies are an useless spectrum for anything"......now, how many services have migrated from the HF-bands and lower to VHF and higher bands?

History (also from within our own field of computers) should have tought us not to deem anything "useless for anything but " - sooner or later they will become usefull for a lot more than originally envisioned.

While I agree on "the more access options the better", I also have to agree with those who point out that it makes more sense to pull a fiber to each house and use low-power, local-area wireless lan in-house, than it does to provide a global (or at least nation-wide) wireless system.

For those who complain about wasted spectrum

[cameldrv]

This is not a waste of spectrum. This is 5Ghz+, which only works for line of sight communications. It will not pass through anything. This is above even the microwave band. Therefore, applications like this are really the only way to use such small wavelengths.

What a waste!

[Mister Attack]

Wireless to people's homes would be a monstrous waste of our precious radio spectrum. We will eventually need every bit of that wireless bandwidth for mobile applications. Why use it on applications for which fiber optics would work just as well, if not better? Yes, the cable companies currently have a stranglehold on the market for broadband to your house (xDSL just isn't there yet for most people). The solution, however, is not to go wasting our radio spectrum on wireless broadband! Lay fiber-optic cables. The initial investment is big, but it will pay off big-time when the rdio spectrum starts filling up and peole want something faster than cable modems.
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The "Underground" will be born here.

[Jacques Chester]

We've all been jumping up and down about the Deep Dark Corporate future for the Internet. Some people have declared that there will be a revolution, whilst others have confidently restated old homilies. Most popular of these is "The Internet perceives censorship as damage, and routes around it."

I don't think there's much a government or a corporation can do about you or me. Where they exert real leverage over the net is in unified, single-point services. AOL, for example, controls enormous swaths of the Internet. This makes it a high-profile target for laws hostile to Internet freedoms. The Australian experience is that yes, Governments will go after big targets.

Wireless broadband is the backdoor out. Not necessarily the "transmit to base" kind advocated for wireless access companies, more the "point-to-point" kind which l0pht (amongst others) have tinkered with.

If people are determined to keep the Internet free, than the key is to have free tubes. Cheap, personal point-to-point networks can form small areas where Free cells can survive and even prosper. As these grow, they can link up, eventually providing uncontrolled tubes for the Internet to route uncensored material into.

Of course, it can be argued that such devices can be regulated. Of course they can, but not in the same easily-policed fashion as a single-point provider. If twenty million people have personal point-to-point, it won't be very practical to regulate them. Examples have been given where the FCC gave up on certain kinds of CB radios.

We shall see. If nothing else, somebody cursed the 21st century. These truly are interesting times ...

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