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Yet Another "Last Mile" Option
Jay writes "This article on Yahoo talks about the FCC looking into licencing the 70 - 95GHz bandwidth spectrum. Which would provide "12.5 gigabyte Internet access to homes or businesses as many as 12 miles away from an antenna." Another option for bringing bandwidth over that last mile?" And we could
see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.
Doesn't radio at such high frequencies require all sorts of funky hardware that's strange and expensive to operate reliably?
If the barriers can be overcome, wireless delivery is really an ideal networking solution, though.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
and you can stop worrying about last mile and crap like that....
why? check this:
http://armageddononline.tripod.com/planetx.htm
The question that I keep saying raised and being answered (not the favor of home users) is what happens when bandwidth becomes more and more available and the end-user starts getting charged for it.
Here where I live, I've been asking business to consider installing a wap11 to allow customers surf while they have a cup of coffee, but all of them have refused because they fear the increased costs. At home, if I tried to set up my own wap11 for use outside my house, and let a few people start using, what would be bills be? I wouldnt mind paying a little more, but I keep reading the the cost of bandwidth is really going to start to get expensice so that ISP's can make their money ( no problem with that)
Thanks for reading
Sigs are dangerous coy things
I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me on this (as always), but didn't the last time the FCC "open up" bandwidth, it did it in a secret auction that only the "baby bells" could attend?
Now, if this auction were fully public so local folks could actually get a bid in and, oh, I don't know, fucking compete, then I'll get excited.
Until then, I'll keep up my plans to lay my own fiber in my area (and hope my neighbors stop reporting me for trespassing.)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Every couple of days /. reports on someone solving the last mile problem.
Wonder when there actually WILL be a solution?
Us rednecks are tired of waiting so long for our our porn and Britney Spears songs to download.
Now my microwave will not cause packets to drop on my network. All I have to worry about at that high a frequency is solar flares, the voice of god, and flying saucers.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.
If the telcos buy the frequencies (likely), for sure.
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
It seems like if these radio beams are so hard to generate and focus then it isn't going to be possible for each home to have one.
Perhaps you can communicate between the ISP and a neighbourhood, with a centralised antenna, and then try and solve the last quarter mile problem between that and the homes.
I definitely think that Bell Labs needs to work on using people as a way to transfer data telepathically. With all the electricity going through the human body it only stands to reason that we could pass data from human to human eliminating the need for these technologies.
So, who,s going to pay for all the traffic produced and for expanding the backbones???
Instead of downloading porn and Britney songs, just combine them. Download Britney porn, and reap the savings.
Why the hell not just use line-of-sight laser? Radio at these frequencies has nearly the same properties as light. It would be absorbed by trees, buildings, the air, and nearly everything else. You would also need very high power output to keep it from being completely scattered. This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.
The phone monopoly? Or the cable monopoly?
[o]_O
This is a good one. They want to stop mp3 sharing BUT wants to provide customers with larger bandwidth.
.2 euros
Let's face it - what is broadband used for? You can download a webpage on an isdn line (64/128k) almost as fast as you can on a DSL line (640k) due to the fact that by the time the traffic flow has got to its peek, all of the data has been transfered.
So, what about digital video and streaming? Cool. DSL could easily be used for that. But what is the percentage of people using broadband to see video streaming (except pr0n) compared to those who download 'piracy' music/movies with it?
It's ok if they provide businesses with broadband (they have lot of users, plus mail must have a reliable link). Ok for VPNs. Ok for websites.
But the whole purpose of giving broadband with dynamic IP address (and sometimes not allowing the customer to put on its own service, like mail, www, ftp...) could be nothing else than giving users a way to download files. Nothing else.
It's like giving citizens a REALLY fast car and REALLY good freeways for a REALLY cheap price, and telling them not to go fast. Why not? You don't even got hurt if you download music!
This looks just like another contradiction of Capitalism, to me. [and yes, after this sentence, this comment will be modded down to -6]
just my
cheers
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Yes another technology that, although useful to people in rural areas, will be restricted to towns and cities. (Well, Tele2 here in the UK could bring broadband to rural areas (ie 30 miles away from London) but they've instead chosen to concentrate solely on cities. Whoopee.)
I was hoping that they would use the that specturm for cordless phones so I could finally build that 12 mile long Beer Pong tourtement hall I've been aspiring to make... But I don't want to miss calls... So I guess it'll have to wait.
Your mammas flamebait.
I was going to flame your bad grammer, but the thought of you having children is making me sick.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm troubled with the suggestion that we use still more of the precious limited radio spectrum. What will we do in 5 years when any device you buy intereferes with some other appliance? For Christmas sake, my corded phone sounds like a cell phone thanks to the damned DSL.
When will it end?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
With such a high frequency, line-of-sight would be required. So the only real advantage over 802.11b is the bandwidth.
-------------------------
It is the monkied monkey that monkies with another monkey's monkey. Monkey.
And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.
And knowing how old you are, those times are not far off!
Rapid Nirvana
So what happens after you accessed your 12.5 gigs?
Sad, but true is that it'll take a lot of forward-looking folks to bring this to the fruition. As much as Verizon, Qwest, Bell South, and the other Baby Bells complain that they have to bear the costs of maintaining the copper, it is essential to their business future. If they didn't have that cross to bear (that is, if wireless were available), then what would they have to block out competition as effectively as they can today?
Wireless would be wonderful. But only companies such as Sprint, who is a minority player (relatively, on a national level) in the local market anyway, can actually afford to offer it... And even they've given up. The rest simply don't want to challenge their business plan that much. And can you blame them? The investors would have the head of Ivan Seidenberg.
Face it, we're stuck.
jrbd
with technology like this, we're almost approaching the point where we may as well be pointint frikin laser beams around.
realistically, the LOW GHz just got viable. going higher will require multiple antanaes, larger hardware (for a while yet), and impossible tolerances in the components (by today's standards).
it's nice to know we're thinking ahead tho.
The US Government hasn't bothered to use this spectrum because it is too "difficult"... I read that as "too expensive to be worth the investment"... so how could that possibly filter down to be financially viable for any residencial customer other than Bill Gates??
Yeah, you don't want to miss this part of the article. Supposably another important tech has already been approved.
In related news, the FCC recently approved the commercial use of ultrawideband, which provides a fast and secure way of sending wireless transmissions.
If I'm not mistaken, ultrawideband elimates noise problems and allows gigabyte size transfer rates.
you are clearly a boy who can appreciate a pair of warm balls in your mouth. Posting as an AC only to get modded down so that this IP will get banned, thereby screwing everyone on this subnet. Mod me down bitches, in the name of CLIT.
Seems to me that 71-95Ghz wouldn't work through walls or trees. Maybe satellite? Anyone with enough knowledge of radio waves willing to comment?
I hope that most of you do realize that the high bandwidth offered by these services isn't it's biggest feature.
DSL has a max throughput of somewhere around 10mbps. Virtually all ISPS cap it at 1.5mbps or lower.
Cable is a bit different: sometimes it's capped at a set rate, or it's evenly distributed throughout all the active users (evenly in theory... somehow, it doesn't seem to work out that way). Even so, it maxes out at around 10mbps as well.
T1 is.... awesome. Unfortunately it's quite expensive to run, even though it's available virtually everywhere (remember that the T-1 system has existed for well over 20 years).
The other factor is the 12.5 gigaBYTE limit. Is the article wrong: most network transmissions are measured in bits. If it is in bits, you only get 1ish gigabytes per second.
Simply put, the 12.5 gigabyte limit may be for everybody within the 15-mile radius of the antenna. If so, users will be severely limited. If each user has 12.5 gigabytes, it will definitely be capped. SLASHDOT probably couldn't handle that much load (poor fellow whose server gets slashdotted by thousands of users on 12gigabyte connections). Think about it, there are about 20,000 people living 15 miles from my home. The article says it's 1,000 T1 lines. that's 1/20 of a T1 for home users. FYI, that's slower then 56k.
Finally, how expensive will this be? Will it go through walls? Will it be fixed-point (ie. you must be aimed directly at the antenna, making use of this with laptops/pdas/phones impossible.).
High-frequency transmission equipment is expensive. Possibly this would use a one-way connection with a 3G type system as the upstream connection.
In conclusion, I must add that ISPS need to realize that they don't have to cap bandwidth for their users if they simply provide services (ftp mirrors, gaming servers, etc) to their LOCAL networks so that their users can have fast internet for those services without having to cap their bandwidth or waste excess bandwidth over the backbone.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Personally I thought the most worrying part about
the article was the penultimate paragraph
"Slaughter said the trials proved an important point: that the waves will stay densely packed and not spread out that much as they travel through the air."
which has to be one of the worst descriptions of diffraction that I have read in a long time. What I guess this means is that either (a) they used focussing elements or (b) millimetre waves don't diffract.
Neil
This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.
Oh lord, it took 12 different techs 6 tries over 4 months to get my 1 cable modem working... Imagine if something actually had to be PROFESSIONALLY installed!
:)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I'm under the impression that there's a connection between frequency and directionality, and of course penetration. So what is the 70-95 GHz spectrum like? How well can it reach through clounds and dust? Is it directional, or is everybody sharing? Thanks for any info.
P2P networks are not only are revolutionizing file sharing, but also dynamic routing and load balancing. As soon as these devices start to talk to eachother with that much bandwidth, people will be able to look at it as a viable medium to express themselves and the content will flow from those with the biggest pipes.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This title bothers me because I still only have 28.8 as my only reasonable option. (I am considering leasing a T1 and reselling it to the neighbours, but that's different.)
"And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes. "
You had better get started making kids, don't you think?
I think the problem with this (as opposed to 802.11), is that this spectrum would be managed by the government, which means (perhaps) an auction, which would inflate the prices. Look at how much the 3G rights went for in Europe.
"The FCC said it would begin seeking comment on whether to create licenses for this spectrum or make it free to use. How much bandwidth in these areas should be used and whether it should be shared with government users are also part of the inquiry, the FCC said."
Can somebody (who knows more about how the FCC works) tell me why there is even a question as to who gets to use the band. I can see that the military would get first dibs on some of the UMWB only because they already own the equipment to use it. However, after that shouldn't it be divided up evenly. Selling usage rights to a radio band is as absurd as selling rights to a band of light.
Where I live, Qwest is my phone company, and Adelphia provides the cable TV. Service is worse than horrible from both companies, they both act like they're going to go titsup first thing tomorrow morning. Extended phone and cable outages are the norm, mainly because they don't have enough techs after the last round of layoffs. The only adequately staffed department in either company is the collections division.
It's beginning to look more and more like my last mile is going to be wire-free... maybe satellite, maybe some chunk of the earthbound radio spectrum, but it probably won't be coming from the traditional infrastructure.
So it's like cablemodem, only with a worse bandwidth/user ratio?
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
We have (partially) solved the last mile problem using DSL and Cable. We all thought the "last mile" was going to be the golden egg, but it has caused a host of other problems (witness broadband companies going belly-up due to high bandwidth demands of P2P software..)
We need to figure out a way to drastically improve the infrastructure of the backbones and "next-to-last" miles.
As wonderful as it all sounds, it's kinda like reading in 1960 about how cars by 2000 will be rocket powered (a la Batmobile), we'll be cancer free, and everyone will have a house like FLW's Falling Water. Some day...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe not as far off as you think. Velocium is currently advertising a 93 - 95 GHz LNA and power amp MMIC set. The technology exists now. The only problem is the power amp MMIC sells for like $1500 each, so the price is still way beyond what would be acceptable for commercial/home usage. The company I work for makes products up to 80 GHz, so going to 90 is not that much of a stretch. The problem would be to get that total 70-95 bandwidth in one unit.
For once, an issue on /. that's actually worth talking about...
;).
Ok, so the FCC is looking into this technology. They have been for a while now, but it's starting to look like they may allow civilian research on it (finally). It's not like this stuff is brand-spanking-new to science or anything...
Broadbands "last mile" solutions have, until recently, be very pricey, unreliable, and sometimes non-existant. (Sounds like an oxymoron because in many cases, 'rural broadband' is an oxymoron).
So, great! We now have a new promising technology which could bring 'rural' areas massive bandwidth (I mean 12.5 GIGABYTE!), but what can be defined as 'rural'? 12 miles isn't very far from any 'non-rural' area, and in some places (such as New Mexico) 12 miles can mean 6000 ft elevation changes, solid granite mountains, and generally prohibitive terrain. It seems like this technology might have more potential for bringing cheap, easy-to-use broadband to metropolitain areas and their suburbs. (Much as cable, DSL, and microwave wireless currently does). However, in a large metropolitain area, one has to aknowledge the amount of traffic flying around (but that's way off-topic).
12 miles will not change how broadband effects rural areas. Once there is a 100 mile solution, THEN we will have bridged the "last mile" gap. (Lasers anyone?)
I'm all for technologies like this, and contrary to some people's beliefs (*COUGH* CmdrTaco*COUGH*) we might actually see technologies like this take off en masse in the next 10 years.
The way I look at it is 10 years ago I never would have dreamed of having a satellite TV downstream hookedd up to a DVR that automatically removes ads from TV, the can send these recordings around the world via the internet. Hell, 10 years ago no one really realized how the internet would reshape society (and if you think it hasn't, you're an idiot).
The scientists will keep researching. The possiblities are endless and nothing is "impossible".
One day I might even have broadband at home, 15 miles from town, up in the mountains
Linux is dead.
LU
So how secure are these wireless nets to sniffing? Does the FBI even need a warrant for wireless?
On Friday, March 1st, 2002, two Californian Amateur Radio Operators communicated over 175.3 Km (almost 110 miles!) using home build 75 GHz equipment. You can find an article here. The fact that the military is not interested in this band might not be the difficulty of building the equipment, but the in the difficulty of operation and / or the reliability of the connection. Just my $0.02
So what?
In general, lower frequencies tend to suffer a bit less from multipath distortion, suffer less from feedline losses, are easier to engineer, and more efficient to generate.
Channels 2-6 are very low in frequency indeed. They start at 54 MHz (TV channels are 6 MHz wide), but there is a 4 MHz gap between 4 and 5 for various low power services (mostly RC cars and planes), with channel 6 abutting the bottom of the FM radio channels (88 MHz). Now, I think channels 5 and 6 should be dedicated to an amateur broadcasting service, and the rest perhaps to land-mobile activities, but channels 7-13 are the perfect place for low power data services.
Of course, it's going to be years before the VHF TV transmitters are finally turned off, but I do believe it will happen eventually, and if we don't plan well in advance, there will be a smoke-filled-room give-away of this prime spectrum to someone with a lot of money, which isn't necessarily in the best interests of everyone.
Required antenna size for a given gain is inversely proportional to the frequency used.
Also, as the frequency goes higher, it becomes much harder to generate power. At 70-95 GHz, you're talking single-digit milliwatts in most cases.
For example: I can build a 100-watt amplifier for the HF frequencies (1.8-30 MHz, approximately - I think in terms of the ham bands) for $100 or less. It might be 200-300 watts at that price range. (500W+ if I'm willing to accept nonlinear operation, i.e. I'm running Morse. Of course, at that point, I'm spending serious $$$ in the power supply too)
A 1-watt 2.4 GHz amplifier runs around $400 commerically. I've seen supposed designs for running 1W at $100, but most modern 802.11 cards are too integrated to allow access to the T/R switching line, which makes the cheap amp designs useless.
So to get effective range, you ABSOLUTELY need a high-gain antenna. At 70-95 GHz, even a 1-foot dish is high-gain though. The beamwidth will likely be less than a degree.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Not be completely negative, but this is true government vapor. It will take 10 years at least to get this into the private sector. I guess maybe by then the hardware won't be so flaky, complicated and expensive.
Yahoo should have chosen someone that knows what they're talking about to write this article. This guy knows neither radio, nor what data rates are or how they are expressed. Pathetic.
Gur svggrfg funyy fheivir lrg gur hasvg znl yvir. Jr zhfg ercrng.
This won't happen in the near or far future because there is no money left in the telecom's or equipment manufacturers accounts to fund this sort of thing. Wall $treet won't either because they got burned in the last internet/telecom bust. Since there hasn't been a link to the NY Times yet today, let me be the first. Telecom Outlook: First the Bad News, Then the Bad News
Put up 125 equidistant sattelites. Each should have the capability of lasing out 1 million (125 Million backbone speed connections!!!) simultaneous beams as well as a cross connect beam for LOS interlink in orbit. Figure 100G/s data rate max througput duplexed (200G/s by pulse). Now, rip out all that fiber and recyle it into home use and other applications, instead use recievers at major nodes pointed at space. EHF radio frequencies (over 200 billion split channels, each capable of 10G/s transfer max) that the military has buried in patents is your interconnect to all devices... some EHF spec recievers are as small as a bic pen and have a range of 15 to 30 miles depending on atmospherics. Spread your nodes out to get optimum rural and urban coverage, wash and repeat.
I wonder if this would be solid enough for a commercial connection. By commercial, I mean a replacement for a T1/T3.
It seems every time we order a new line, the phone company has to bring another line 1/2 mile down our road, which takes months.
We don't have line of site to anyplace useful, which makes things even worse. We are at the mercy of the phone company everytime we need more bandwidth.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Yet another neat 400 doller to as an excuse for SBC bell to suck.
Combine this with this and we have the perfect solution.
Both will be feasable around the same time.
I just got 1Mb wireless broadband and couldn't be happier. Much higher (8x) bandwidth and 1/3 the price of my ISDN connection.
The most satisfying call I've made in a long time was yesterday to Qwest to cancel my ISDN service. The CS rep asked me if I'd had any problems with Qwest service! "Non-stop from day one," I replied.
Rumor is that Qwest is not doing *any* upgrades this year (no new DSL service areas for instance) and doesn't have enough spare parts in stock to keep up with repairs.
One hint for Qwest customers: file regular complaints with your public utilities commission. I've filed my fair share of complaints with the Colorado PUC. It is the only way to get action from Qwest.
Anyway, I now have wireless phone service and wireless internet service and am 100% Qwest free. It's been a great week for me!
Now I just need to decide if I want to work with the satellite monopoly or stay with the cable monopoly. I'll probably ditch AT&T cable just for calling their service "AT&T Broadband" without offering internet service and stringing the folks in my area along for so long without upgrading the cable to provide broadband internet access.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Just give me my tin-foil underwear first.
"Only God can create bandwidth." It's a good thing that he created an infinite amount of it.
I have cable and DSL in my area, infact the majority of 1st world countries do these days. It'll be great when 100% of the areas have it.
But for those who already have cable, who cares? I connected tried a gnutella client and left it running without sharing or downloading anything. In two days I had my service cut off!
Apperently I was routing too much traffic and went over my limit of only a couple gigs. Think about that, at 12gigs/sec in just minutes I could have my service taken away! Yay!
I think for the majority of us who are fortunate enough to already have a last mile option we all care about the rest of the miles more.
The FCC said it would begin seeking comment on whether to create licenses for this spectrum or make it free to use.
Hummm.... Wonder who they are "seeking comment from."
"40 years ago a computer less powerful than your TI-89 was so expensive that ONLY powerful governments could afford them. Everything eventually trickles down..."
Some 70 years ago, Hoover Dam was so expensive that it took a vast Federal public works project to construct it. Today it would cost far more, even in constant dollars (far more demanding safety regs, no one would live and work under the conditions then endured, etc).
Do you think maybe it's just a bit overenthusiastic to say that everything trickles down? (BTW, I'm still waiting for my piece of the Dot Com boom to trickle down, not to mention the Peace Dividend - guess I'll have a long wait, eh)
The article really doesn't say that this is what it will be used for, so it could be something else. It could be to continue their plans to create a new digital band of radio frequencies. Has anyone heard about this stuff? The way they plan on going about it is somewhat scary. They plan on putting a digital radio signal between current station, which would affect current radio listening because FM radio works on ranges and not on specific frequencies. Was there an article on slashdot about this? I think it really is something people should know about and I don't see it as a totally good thing. I like FM radio, and forcing everyone to buy new digital radios and all the stations to move over to digital sounds really messy. Ok, now I am offtopic (well depending on what the usage of the frequencies is going to be).
Fixed point-to-point links over shorter ranges should work fine, but you can do that now.
CRIPES!
The 70-95 GHz range is a critical radio astronomy band. Much of the gas in the Galaxy emits spectral line radiation in this band. See http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/reports/pub9835. Portions are protected in some areas
Researchers were able to teleport laser light from one area to another :)
;)
That should certainly help the last-mile issue. According to the researchers, it would create a secure data channel because only properties of the protons/neutrons are sent or something. It was an interesting read. For all you Slashdot nerds in Toronto, you can find it on your local TTC bus
Everyone wants a Tux in their life.
One of the problems with these higher-frequency microwave signals is that they are strictly line-of-sight.
They don't reflect of the ground and diffract around mountains the way radio waves do. Like
low-frequency microwaves used in wireless ethernet and portable phones they also don't travel through walls very well.
The biggest problem is that the wavelength of microwaves like this are less than half a centimeter - typically only a few millimeters.
This is small enough that raindrops, snow, hailstones etc, will get in the way and cause a significant amount of packet loss. I don't know how they intend on getting around this problem.
Anyway there is a ton of legal and non-useless content out there. emusic and mp3.com are but two examples. Universal also just announced plans to sell mp3s of its library IIRC. Even if all the sharing utilities/services died tomorrow (HA!) these would still be there.
VPNs are incredibly useful for telecommuting. It still amazes me that some cablecos block VPN traffic - causing users to disconnect and switch to DSL! - out of some weird view of the world that includes not selling as much service as possible. BUt I digress - again, VPN is another killer app.
And in any case the demand for bandwidth and network capacity continues to grow, just as the demand for computing power continues to grow, the current telecom shakeout notwithstanding. So I suspect that we will see more, not fewer, of these developments in the next several years.
sulli
RTFJ.
funny shit
DSL will only go 12,000 feet without a repeater. That is only about 2 1/2 miles! If you aren't that close to your switching office you are in trouble. This is more common than you think. My company is in a densely populated area. We are in a building in a large office park right off of route 128 (famouse high-tech area in Boston). Yet, we are too far away from the switching office to get DSL.
With a tree blocking a point-to-point wireless solution, we were stuck with getting a T1.
I'm not sure about cable, but there are still many rural areas in the US where cable TV is not available so they use satellite TV instead.
This assumes that information can survive the tunneling process. There's been several quantum teleportation stories over the past few years. One feature I remember from each of them is that it tends to work well with things like lasers because unmodulated lasers have a minimum of information content. What I think your hypothetical hardware may do is provide a featureless laser at the other end of link that shares a few characteristics of the transmitting laser. That is the receiving beam may have the same frequency, polarazation, etc minus any modulation that was induced in the transmitting beam.
Put that way, 'last mile' gets a whole new meaning.
If you haven't yet, I'd say you better start planning a family.
Here is a PDF document produced by a company that wants to use this portion of the spectrum, Loea Communications, Service Rules For The Point-to-Point Use Of The 71.0-76.0 GHz and 81.0-86.0 GHz bands
The petition listed above and the company's website give a little more background information on the subject.
June 18, 2002 - Washington DC,
Today the FCC has begun the process of licensing the 600-700 THz spectrum, also known as the mid-nanometer band. Radio waves of this type are infinitesimally small, on the order of several hundred nanometers (one billionth of a meter).
Creating radio signals in this band is not terribly difficult. Says an FCC representative "Boy scouts have been using this unlicensed spectrum for communication purposes for decades with no problems - I still have my old signal flashlight".
The communication protocols used in this band will have to be updated, as the current system, know as "Morse Code", lacks the error correction and flow control algorithms neccessary for robust communications.
One problem will be the interference caused by the wealth of prexisting unlicensed radiators in this spectrum. Says the FCC representative "Yeah, it's a really noisy spectrum, we admit, and there is really not much that can be done about the sun, but we'll work with existing users of this unlicensed spectrum to do whatever we can to eliminate the potential for interference with licensed devices."
The vast bandwidth potential of this spectrum makes it a likely candidate for a 'last mile' broadband solution. This spectrum is estimate by scientist to be able to carry the equivalent data capacity of approximately a bajillion T1 lines, meaning a user could download the entire contents of the Library of Congress in approximately 2 femtoseconds.
-josh
Their coverage is pretty good in my area too. cool.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
People are so desperate for halfway decent connectivity that they're putting together their own solutions. (witness the rash of articles about neighborhood co-op type setups.) Some might call it enginuity, but I call it desperation.
It seems like a failure of the free market system when poeple have to roll their own telco/isp.
I suspect average folks will to continue to innovate where the big corporations have failed to innovate and give customers what they really want. That's the big story behind the riaa/mp3 thing in my mind; the music industry can't realize that people love mp3's and space shifting. People will find a way to do these things, whether big corporations want them to or not.
one thing that needs to be focused on is that MP3 and video aren't the only large files people download these days. I download linux distros, and live in the country. 28.8. not illegal. That would be a very legitimate use of this service, no? then I could actually try out gentoo...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
There's a little internet cafe near my house that offers wireless service...You can pull into the parking lot, fire up your laptop and never even go inside. If you've got a wireless ipaq or something like that, you can just DL your mail as you walk by. It's pretty cool except I don't know how it would be viable to make money off of that. If you add security it becomes less usable, but if you don't, nobody pays. Interesting dichotomy... ~Vlade
WHEREAS Congress notes the slow take-up of broadband internet services in the US, we reccommend that copyright protection be reduced to three (3) years, so that people can buy lots of WiFi kit to share newly public-domain films, music, and artwork...
Nah, that would be too much like common sense!
...the lastmile will be solved as soon as we can get a handle on government and get the career bribe taking bureaucrats and politicians out of government. the FCC is the biggest impediment to broadcasting in general, that and local communities being allowed to grant a monopoly license to cable laying companies. And that's all the bulk of the cable companies are, wire-pullers. Eliminate the monopoly license, then you'll see progress, most generally speaking.
The other deal, build hardware so it's both client/server from the gitgo, and put hackers in jail for a twentyyear minimum. Illegal intrusion hacking is the biggest impediment to peer to peer eliminate the bottle neck computing, then the FCC, in that order. Black -hatting should be classed as bad a crime as a home invasion, and the perps treated the same. If it wasn't for virus makers and senders, and intrusion makers and users, we could have 50 times as big a net, and do it distributed, with the tech we have right now, simple stuff. And if there was competition in laying fiber and copper, we could all have cheap bandwith. And if the fcc would stop granting multiple generational rubber stamped "licenses" to the big broadcasters, we'd already have hdtv and wireless net as common place. Talk about bandwith hogs, ever see what it costs a big network to hog some valuable frequecy? Peanuts. Over what they make off of it over decades? Tens of billions and zillions.
1,000 T1s == 1.5Gb ~= OC30
12.5 GB == 100Gb ~= OC650
a very minor disparity, don't you think? Why can't press releases say 'VERY FAST!' instead of quoting fake numbers?
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
With this technology and the ability to cover an area of ~12 miles radius with each one of these, it seems that some company could quickly build a huge coverage area by putting these up on Cellular phone towers. Since most cells are smaller than a 12 mile radius, they would not even have to put it on every tower. Most people can use their cellular phones in their house, their office, the restraunt they eat lunch/dinner, etc; this makes it ideal and at 75+ Ghz your antennae would be very small since the element only needs to be about 4 millimeters in length you could make the entire antennae about the size of a fountain pen. You could travel with this and have a meter (software) to run while you swing the antennae about until you find signal and, voila, you have interenet connectivity. You won't be able to wander around or drive, but this seems like a minimal price to pay for high speed connectivity.
;-)
Hmm, could you build a tracking antennae mount that would fit in a hat
Andy
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
speaking of "last mile", is anyone familliar with New Visual (OTC:NVEI)?
They claim to be developing a last mile solution that uses regular copper wire that's already installed.
I have a fair amount of their stock, which seems pretty undervalued if anything they're saying is halfway true.
http://www.newvisual.com
Any thoughts?
The FCC is co primary with this band with the US Govmnt, and its unlikely that the govmnt will let them auction it off. An ideal situation would be a nominal license for specific link. The beams are so narrow that they are mostly non interfering (unlike 2.4Ghz, etc...), so this would make the most sense. Hard to say what will actually happen though.
The spectrum at this range has some interesting properties:
There are also a few problems
Overall its pretty cool stuff. I wouldn't expect to see it replacing your DSL line at home any day soon, but for point to point business links, it rocks.
Lousy wrong password. Disregard the anonymous post (I want the karma :) )
Yes, but the problem is that we all know the real drain on the backbone is P2P... and either
(a) The internet provider is the content provider, or
(b) The internet provider fears the content provider.
They will never set up Direct Connect (Gnutella, etc.) servers for Cogeco (or whatever) users only (much as I would love to see that happen). Perhaps a grass-roots effort would be more effective?
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
For Christ's sake, please run your posts through a decent grammar checker! Even Microsoft Word, the evil of all evils, would've spotted your grammatical flub in a flash! "Grandchildrens" is not a word, since the plural form of "grandchild" is "grandchildren".
Maybe CmdrTaco could hack his kernel and install driver support for the apostrophe key?