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Project Rainbow - 802.11 Across the U.S.
rakerman writes "IBM, Intel and a number of wireless services operators are considering building a wireless data network across the U.S., according to the New York Times."
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Because there's a big fat pot of gold at the end: freedom from the tyranny of the DSL/Cable monopolies.
Questions to ponder:
1) Will the punnily named Current Techonologies succeed in bringing IP over AC to households everywhere, bringing yet another monopoly to bear in the war for household broadband... and
2) How will the 802.11 spectrum deal with multiple, competing wireless carriers when/if the spectrum becomes clogged with them?
I still can't get a cable modem OR DSL in my house, so bring it on.
Across the WHOLE US? Or across major metro areas?
I've got some users that could really USE true border to border access (petroleum tank inspectors) but since live access= digital cellphone coverage, there's a BUNCH of the state that's unreachable via cellphone.
Meaning we've got to add a LOT of logic to the custom apps to handle dead zones.
Now, if coverage were limited to cities with more than 60 people (and could be, at $100 per basestation) that'd be a Very Good Thing.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Most of the posts here seem to assume this means wireless connectivety everywhere. Such is *not* the case. The article states that the players in this network will put access points in airports and other public spaces and will not try to provide access to peoples homes.
In fact this doesn't seem to be so much a 'Wireless Network' as a bunch of access points connected to the Internet. Not what I was hoping for when I saw the subject line.
What I want is a nationwide variant of the Ricochet network. Anyone remember them? They used light-pole mounted units that acted as wireless routers, letting them provide access anywhere by routing the packets through the air to the closest wired router. It worked pretty damn well (if slow). I used it here in Seattle for a couple of years and being able to check my email while stuck in traffic alone made it worth the cost. The fact that I had Internet connectivety pretty much everywhere else was just gravy.
A similar scheme can work with 802.11 devices, given cheap hardware and proper software. Many groups are already working on this. Here in Seattle there is even a group trying to set up a non-profit community network this way -- http://www.seattlewireless.org
If such home-brewed networks were to spread across the country we could tie them together via the Internet, or even via leased lines between cities. Now that sounds like the kind of thing I would like to see! No way anyone could ever control that...
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
[bzzzt] I'm sorry, your answer is incorrect. Please read the story and submit a new answer. this wireless network is not designed for home access.
Quoth the story "...would build access points in public places such as airports but would not try to supply access to people's homes, according to the report."
Sounds to me like the big monopolistic corporations such as AT&T, Verizon, Cingular, etc are watching the explosive popularity of 802.11 wireless networks through homegrown efforts and non-profits like Seattle Wireless http://www.seattlewireless.org , and now they are shaking with fear that this will loosen some of their strangling grip over telecom. They figure they can co-opt the 802.11 movement by promising a "nationwide network" to attract all the bandwidth-starved users, who don't stop to think that a big benefit of 802.11 is that its NOT CONTROLLED by these corporations!
SAY NO to corporatization of the wonderful, open, free, enabling, and cooperative world of 802.11 wireless networking!
It would be cool if when you are stopped at a stop light your eMpeg "www.riocar.org" would link up to the guy's next to you and download all of those mp3's onto your player. You could sort through them when you got back home. That would be a network you couldn't shut down.
Anyone care to come up with an estimate on how many base stations would be needed to cover all the US? I bet it's a lot!
US Surface Area 3,618,770 square miles
1 square mile = 27878400 square feet
802.11b radius 300 yards (outside) or 900 feet
Area of circle = pi r^2
Area of base station coverage = pi *(900^2) = 2544615
base stations per square mile asuming perfect coverage = square mile in feet / area covered by base station = 27878400 / 2544615 10.955+, or for all practical purposes 11.
That means we need 11 * 3,618,770 or 39,806,470 base stations for 802.11b coverage.
If you assume that each base station, including required infrastructure to support it (minimum requirements solar cells, storage batteries, built in routing software/hardware) were $100 (in the volumes we are talking here I think we can get some discounts...) you are looking at the stray 3.9 billion that worldcom misplaced in it's accounting records.
The perfect coverage assumption is based upon the assumption that there is neither overlap, nor dead space. With circular coverage patterns you can not get that kind of coverage. You will always have some of one or the other. However this calculation does provide an estimate for an average overlap and blind spots.
Oh, source of surface area information was a 1991 copy of the World Almanac, and the area does include a lot of water surface that could be partially eliminated.
-Rusty
You never know...