Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
Fixed point-to-point links over shorter ranges should work fine, but you can do that now.