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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.
Light is in the hundreds of terahertz. Not only that, but this doesn't have nearly as hard a line-of-sight restriction as a laser.
Close, but not quite.
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
A few jobs ago, my wife worked for NOAA in the passive microwave radiometry group, which is fancy words for a bunch of folks who listened to clouds.
90Ghz is one of the harmonics of H2O molecular vibration, so it's one of the key discriminators to tell between ice, liquid and vapor forms of water.
This area of the spectrum has a few frequencies which are easy for H2O to absorb, but assuming that the FCC has half a clue to avoid those specific frequencies, the band as a whole should be able to penetrate humidity just fine.
IANAEE, but I'm married to one.
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
Fixed point-to-point links over shorter ranges should work fine, but you can do that now.
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.