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 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
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
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)
No worries, a telepathic network approach would never get very far. The infrastructure in most neighborhoods wouldn't support it. ;->
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.