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2.4 Megabit Cellular Modem

Posted by timothy on from the dream-the-impossible-dream dept.

lew writes: "Ars has a review of a cellular modem that provides 2.4 megabits / second downsteam and 153 kilobits / second upsteam... and it works! Check it out" How much for unmetered service on such a system? :)

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Metered service by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hang on...not everything should be flat-rate.

    When my girlfriend and I lived in separate states, our long-distance bill was huge...but we expected that. We were able to minimize it by using calling cards and talking in the evening.

    Now my girlfriend and I live together...and our long-distance bill is small. If there was a flat rate for long-distance, it would certainly be higher than I'm paying now. All that would do is anger the 80% of people who use a less than average amount of long distance. (Yes, my math is right - the top 20% of long-distance callers talk five times as long.)

    I would actually be willing to pay for cable/DSL by the megabyte. Why? Because that would encourage adoption...my grandma would be able to get DSL for $3 a month because she just checks email. I'd pay $60 a month, but I'd be getting my money's worth. And when I go out of town for two weeks, my bill would reflect it.

    Having the option of a flat-rate plan is fine, but I think that it's not best for most people.

  2. Re:that's PER CELL by grnbrg · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yeah, but think about what most of those users are going to be doing with the connection: looking at web pages, reading email, and instant messaging people.


    The cable companies brought out DSL and didn't worry too much about that fact that heavy use could saturate the local segment of the network, because very few people would ever be downloading multi-megabyte files, they'd just be looking at web pages, reading email and instant messaging people....

    Then Napster happened.

    It's just a matter of time before someone figures out a high-bandwidth app that Joe Public wants on his phone.

    Want an example? Wouldn't it be cool if Nokia (or someone else) put one of these modems, a small colour LCD, camera, and video conferencing software into a cheap phone? Suddenly everyone is sending/recieving high-bandwith multi-media streams, 'cause everyone just *has* to have a videophone.

    Demand will always grow to exeed limitations, usually in ways that could not be predicted when the limitations were imposed.


    grnbrg