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IBM, AT&T and Intel Plan National Wireless ISP
dailywireless writes "Cometa Networks (formerly The Rainbow Project), a joint venture by IBM, Intel and AT&T, plans to merge Wi-Fi and cellular networks. 'Cometa's vision and plan for this is to offer a single sign-on, single authentication, seamless-roaming nationwide network,' said Michael Mass, vice president of marketing for the Communications Sector at IBM. 802 Plant reports 'AT&T will provide the network infrastructure and management, IBM the wireless installation and back-office system, and Intel the Banias processor.
The company plans to have ubiquitous coverage - no further away than 5 minutes walk in an urban area or 5 minutes drive in a rural area - by 2004. which will require the deployment of more than 20,000 hotspot access sites across the U.S.' What fate awaits "free" networks like NYC Wireless, Seattle Wireless or Portland's PersonalTelco?
Will AT&T use CoMeta's blanket coverage, with 20,000 "hotspots", to crush the "free" rebellion like a bug?"
You know if everybody makes a single signon technology, nobody will have a single signon...
Free networks will never be orgainzed or capable
enough to offer this same level of service as
the "free rebellion" is far too disorganized
to ever pull it off. The small community networks
will exsist, but a national network would suffer
at the hands of the dishonest, and greedy.
Perhaps if you have 20000 people as crazy as RMS,
yeah, it might work.
Now leave the drugs alone and face reality.
"'Cometa's vision and plan for this is to offer a single sign-on, single authentication, seamless-roaming nationwide network,' said Michael Mass, vice president of marketing for the Communications Sector at IBM."
As well as a single point of break-in for the whole shebang.
well nothing is going to beat free stuff. 20,000 access points is not going to make any difference just like 20,000 copies of window cant stop free OS.
This is terrifying. It's an obvious attempt at a communications monopoly- they already have all the suppliers planned out.
The problems with such are obvious. If this is allowed to occur, it would be one company controlling it all as it is what is most availible. Start with low rates to kill the competition, then use the almost-monopoly position to kick the price tag way up.
Wait, that sounds like M$.
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
For service providers, it will mean the ability to offer wireless services to their customers without having to invest in the wireless infrastructure themselves." I don't know. I'm already unhappy with my cable provider, with no other choice available. Do I really think that they could handle this reliably? I doubt it!
Whenever you add another layer of bueracracy, you're just going to get help desks saying "It's not our fault, it's 3i's fault, and 3i saying it's Comcast's fault".
Of course, I could see both of them saying it's Microsoft's fault, please reboot.
just what the United States needs: another nationwide wireless air interface. not like we don't have enough already (1xRTT, GPRS, and WCDMA/UMTS already in testing).
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
Well I suppose if you wanted to pay for it through your tax dollars that could happen. Of course, the millions of people who don't want to pay for it would be mighty pissed. The truth is that these things cost money. Free is great and it can work in small places like Bryant Park where there is a not-for-profit (in this case backed by HBO and other large companies in the area) that can pick up the cost. But for large scale nationwide service a big company is going to have to take charge (and charge).
By the way - offtopic - Bryant Park is an incredibly historic place and a great place to have lunch when in New York. Visit bryantpark.org for a bit of history.
If they do a good job and don't charge too much for it and don't throw in bandwidth caps.. I say good.
Getting a free network up and running costs too much. I just hope they don't try and punish the hobbyists for their forward thinking (cough Apple, Microsoft, IBM).
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
I don't the OSS would have the slightest idea how to deal with something this big.
802.11 a/b band is allocated for *consumer* use. If this is how consumers want the frequency to be used, so be it. I, for one, can see a large demand for nationwide broadband, especially wireless. At the moment, broadband users can't even dial up to their ISP over the phone from the road, much less get broadband access to their account from a moving vehicle or a foreign city.
/. hopefuls out there, maybe this will serve as a good case-in-point to prove to the FCC that companies don't have to *own* frequencies to be able to do business on them. If we can convince them of this, it could still be possible to fix some of the FCC's biggest mistakes :)
It just boils down to the fact that consumers will have to vote with their dollars to say how they want this (their) bandwidth to be used.
And, for all the
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
This seems more like the biggies don't want to be left out of the race as Dayton Skye (earthlink guy) is rolling out his Boingo network (www.boingo.net I think.. could be .com). He's doing some pay service for wireless networks. If an national ISP also had AP's in good public places (airports and such) I would think of switching to them just for that fact. How many times would it have been nice to get access to the net while sitting at an airport termainal.
This is exactly One of Those Things I'd Pay For (tm). While I see the greatness of a free network, I probably won't see one unless I travel a few hundred miles.
Unfortunately, I'll probably get small fee'd to annoyance, but hey, I'll have net access at my run-down hotel in the country.
That vision would allow every Internet user in the U.S. to access their existing accounts wirelessly, anywhere in the United States, without changing their accounts or service providers.
Sure, it's early, it may be hot air, but I say "Go IBM! This is exactly what I want!" rather than wish death upon Big Business....
I Support Fair Use
An article that someone is going to build what will probably be a really useful wireless network on a scale that will actually make it useful and all that half the posters on here can do is whine that it won't be free. Well of course it won't be. There is no such thing as free wireless internet access. Only access that somebody else is paying for. Either because they feel generous, or because they hope you'll spend your money on something else. Will all the posters whining about this please go and build this free network that they are talking about. I expect it to be a great sucess once it's build and working.
Sig is taking a break!
IBM has said they want to turn computing into a utility (kind of like how the the weather simulations were conducted in "permutation city" :) so having a nation-wide wireless network (alongside its global services division) seems like just another step down the road... to world domination, j/k!
:) as well as take steps to protect personal and community networks already existing.
ironically tho, the very idea of mimicking a utility would appear to make government (federal, state or municipal) more suited to its delivery -- like how the road and highway system is administered in the US or perhaps a pseudo-public venture like the US postal service, which still leaves room for private competition.
the altruistically anarchic model for wireless network expansion is ideal and i hope it continues! but it's naive to think private entities would be content to provide equipment (as literally shareware) for an emerging wireless network and not seek to run (and monetize) them.
local, state or federal government i think would be wise to take the initiative and make sure providing computing utility does not become an entirely private venture (they might even contract with cometa
This may not be timeless literature, but it is entertaining and mildly thought proovoking. I also like novels that I can read in their entirety duing an average crap.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
Don't know if theye have ben bough by someone else, but I used to (3 years ago) have a BellSouth GSM phone when I was in North Carolina. There was no GSM coverage on the I95 corridor through Virginia at that point.....kinda made it suck when driving back and forth to PA.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I believe that same law states your device can not cause interference to other devices also. Not that a law could actually prevent interference.
Your interference is my modulation scheme. Notice I'm not arguing the ethics of that point.
Well, the right to listen to cellular conversations wasn't taken away in my country. Of course, I can copy music legally here, too. Nor was the equipment to recieve 800mhz made illegal. It is illegal to tell people about what you hear though, only fair, I guess. YMMV. Fix your legal system, or elect people who listen. Or something.
802.11 is unique in that it is the first time consumers have had access to a fast, flexible, inexpensive and high bandwith wireless communications medium. That just hasn't ever happened before. I've been a ham radio operator since I was 13 - the concept of being able to walk into Staples and buy a 10mbit/s spread spectrum transciever in a PCMCIA form factor for $100 would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. No wonder people are doing crazy stuff with it.
I would venture to say that if this ever did catch on, the rules would be changed to protect the business that is profiting from it.
Normally I jump right on the conspiracy bandwagon, but not in this case. People are making a LOT of money selling 802.11 gear. Those people will protect that right - and just like the RIAA and CD players, once a "good enough" technology hits critical mass, it takes on a life of it's own. Tell Joe Sixpack that he can't watch football's greatest compound fractures on DVD anymore and he needs a new player, he'll be e^unhappy. Same thing applies to 802.11 - it's not the best technology, but it's hit, or very near to hitting critical mass.
802.11 is a potentially disruptive technology that has a lot of people in the wireless telecom industry very worried. I'm not sure they can do very much about it though - 2.4Ghz is the wild west of radio, world wide. It isn't good for much besides 802.11 like schemes because of interference and noise, or so goes the theory. It's a completely different issue than with the cellular monitoring - that got through because politicians were sick of getting caught talking to their interns over cell. hehe.
My $0.02 (cdn).
..don't panic