Alternative Wireless Broadband for your Neighborhood

An anonymous reader writes "TelephonyOnline reports Motorola has announced a new line of 5GHz *unlicensed* Wireless Broadband point to multi-point solution with a 2 mile range called Canopy. Pricing may allow neighborhoods to gang up and be their own ISP."

Comments

could help with last mile issues

[Gooner]

The last mile has been one of the biggest barriers to more widespread broadband adoption so something like this would be great. The only question is where does the bandwidth to the rest of the Net come form?

end of ip over fixed telephony?

[tapiwa]

With the everincreasing range of wireless, especially over the *free* spectrum, will we see the end of ip over telephony.

Taken to the extreme, if each 'neighbourhood' is running high speed ip over wireless, and is peering with its neighbours, then the world becomes a true web. Why connect via maBell and pay $$$ lots, when these local wireless networks grow and peer to a level where xx% of your ip traffic can be routed without ever going via the major backbone providers?

Re:end of ip over fixed telephony?

[mumkin]

With the everincreasing range of wireless, especially over the *free* spectrum, will we see the end of ip over telephony.

yup, it's a free spectrum. that means that your device cannot interfere with licensed users of the spectrum, and that it must accept all interference. so if some duly licensed hams decide they want to party all night on your wavelength then it's just too bad for your neighborhood's net connection.

i like wifi et al as auxiliary coverage, and it's great to find friendly public nodes in parks and cafes and such... i wouldn't want to totally unwire, however, until i had some guarantees that a hamtv or over-extended cordless phone wouldn't leave me cut-off.

we need our *own* spectrum, specific to wireless networking, without other significant forms of accidental interference. the us govt (sorry, international readership) gives enough spectrum up to the corps... why not designate a chunk for an open wireless space?

Re:end of ip over fixed telephony?

[IncohereD]

The problem with this concept of interconnected neighborhoods is that every current wireless system is designed with a fast downlink, and slow uplink. I recently attended a talk from the leader of the World Wireless Forum, and this isn't changing any time soon.

And this is exactly what is turning the net over to the media conglomerates. Sure, everyone can get ON the net.....but it is increasingly difficult/expensive for the commmon man/woman to actually _serve_ content.

I really don't see the point of having every appliance in the world wired and receiving information, if none of them can communicate back at more than a snail's pace. Which is why your suggestion of neighborhood-to-neighborhood routing isn't feasible. There's nothing in TCP/IP stopping this from happenning, in theory, but all the content is on the backbones.

Until someone markets a good, cheap, uplink solution, the neighborhoods will still be slaves to the wire.

Is this really cost effective?

[teaserX]

> CANOPY STARTER KIT, 6 AP CLUSTER, SUPPORTS UP TO 200 SUBSCRIBERS ON EACH AP MODULE $30,000.00

So let me get this straight. 6 APs supporting 1200 total users (assume residences) for $30k. That's only $25. Oh then there's the Customer Terminal Equipment at $515 a pop and a license at $28.95 ea and bandwith to feed your back haul...

Your talkin AT LEAST $650,000 to set this up for a neighborho(ood). That works out to around $540 per household assuming evreyone in the coverage area gets on board. I guess that's not bad if you amortize it over the year (or two). But what kind of freaky geek commune are you going to find that needs 1200 BB connections in a two mile radius?

Technology not the biggest hurdle

[devmanager]

As a couple people have pointed out, just getting neighbors to talk to one another is a small feat. But, let's just say you get that far -- then what? You've got to pony up a lot of dough for equipment, then someone's got to do system administration.

You're going to have neighbors bitching at each other over who's sucking up all the bandwidth streaming videos, and so on. Now, this happens to some extent already with cable modems, but when people get bent out of shape with the cable company, they bitch at the cable company, who's better equipped to deal with the bitching than the neighborhood propeller-head.

Sounds like way more trouble than the typical neighborhood community wants to step up to.

slightly OT: wireless rollout in Allen, TX

[renehollan]

There's a company starting to rollout wireless access in the Allen, TX area, and being a geek (and not particularly liking my $80/month DSL bill for 768k/384k (with $15/month for a dedicated pair, 'cause I'm 15.6 kft from the DSLAM)), I looked into it.

I can get 2 Mbit up/down, synchronous, for something like $40-$50 a month, so it looks interesting. However, I share that bandwidth with all the people in my quadrant, so, like cable modems, if I'm an early adopter, I get great bandwidth, but if it gets popular, there will be times when it gets clogged up.

Is it worth the $30 extra a month that I'm paying now? Well, I've had few problems, bandwidth is great, and I don't need to worry anout rain fade (ask me about my terrestrial HDTV and DirectTV signals).

Systems like this probably need bandwidth caps on users, and the ability to support multiple channels in a single quadrant. Remember the days of asking what the user/modem ratio for a dial-up ISP was before chosing one? Same kind of thing.