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Open Spectrum: Toward Ubiquitous Connectivity
obiwan2u writes "ACM's Queue magazine has a moderately dense article describing how new intelligent radios may free up under-utilized spectrum bandwidth, possibly providing solutions to the
last mile bottleneck."
It's tough to think of meaningful applications for the Last Mile because it's not here yet; impliment it comprehensively and watch the machinery of capitalism work and think up thousands of applications for it. Of which a few will probably be meaningful.
Also, I'm not sure that
"As the internet gets more mature, the need for broadband lessens because of improvements in packet technology and of course data compression. What was possible 5 years ago on a 56K modem doesn't even compare to what you can do with the Internet today with even a lowly 28.8. The improvements are just so vast."
Could you qualify this statement, as improvements in packet technology (IPv4 vs IPv6) have actually increased the likely overhead of packets, and though we've come a long way in sound/video compression, we've not made much progress in generic data compression (the majority of overall and residential packets, vs streaming audio/video) in the past 5 years AFAIK.
If you build it, they will come. Improving compression ratios is at best evolutionary in change, not revolutionary as the Last Mile potentially is. And it is definitely that.
Sir, I find it hard to believe that you've used dial-up internet access recently. Either that or you haven't used broadband recently, since you claim to notice no substantial difference between it and dialup. The length of time required to "register on our awareness" depends heavily on the circumstances surrounding it, and on how long we expect an activity to take. When it comes to pages loading, using broadband gives you the expectation that the activity of loading a page will take almost no time. When you use dialup and, suddenly, the time you're required to allot to page loading is much more than what you expected, you are all too painfully aware of the time differential.
In my apartment, on my cable modem, mapquest takes a second or two to load. The last time I was at my parent's house, using 56k dialup, mapquest took over 20 seconds to load just the front page. Actually downloading directions somewhere took over a minute. Granted, under certain conditions, I don't notice the passage of a minute of time, but staring at a map that's being downloaded isn't one of those conditions.
The culture shock of dialup is part of why I use the internet so little when I'm home... I'd rather have no access at all than slow access. ;)
Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned! Ask not for whom the bone bones; it bones for thee. -Bender
One word for you, and this is from a user on a *shared* 28.8 modem, "Flash"
Compression might have gotten better, but the size of websites is incredible!!!
Stupid web designers can overcome any technological gains, and easily. I have seen a website that used JAVA for OnMouseOver(), not JavaScript. Annoying bitch. Another great (bad) example is http://www.swatch.com/internettime Flash used with no way to navigate outside that flash.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Wanting to live in a cave doesn't always mean one wants to turn his back on knowledge and information.
So what's the big deal with broadband? So you get to view Slashdot 2 seconds faster.
Apparently you live in a different kind of "wilderness." Sorry for you, but being a hermit doesn't have to mean being a luddite. Nor does choosing to live in a "green ecosystem." Modern technology presents all sorts of new opportunities - even to those who choose to separate themselves from the greater of "society." In fact, that's the best part of it.
...that I have found is tabbed browsing. I'm one of those on a slow staticy rural dialup, just too far away from the nearest telco switch, and even then, the cost would be prohibitive for what they offer for *dsl. Well, to me anyway. 56k modems just slap don't work, I have three of them, they lose connectivity so quickly that they are useless. Next down I use a 33k modem, and only when the weather is perfect. That's my main modem, fairly robust and reliable, but again, the minute the lines get more static and noise, poof, they dropconnection. Right now, the only way I can even stay online is by using a 14.4 modem, as it is storming out. This might last all summer, just depends on the weather. The workaround is social,there is no actual hardware solution that I think I can do (satellite is out, that's one thousand bucks or something) I just load various tabs with content, then go do something else. It takes minutes sometimes to load pages, even with images turned off,etc. I will say that xmms playing radio mp3 streams is very nice no matter what,it gives me one more cool *thing* to do with the net, I only listen to lower bitrate talk stations, beats the pants off any other streaming tech out there, real, quicktime, windows media, winamp, etc. The old mac classic soundjam does the next best job on slow connections with mp3s. Of course I have a lot of other "real" radios as well,I just like the ability to get exactly what I want off the net, I mean this thing is sitting here turned on anyway, one less hardware device to power up.
I would really like broadband, I'll pay x-amount to me reasonable money for it WHEN it becomes avaialable, but yes, I won't trade my other real life interests and advantages I enjoy about living rural "just" for broadband. I lived heavy urban for years, nothanks, I'll pass now, did my time in crime city, constant loud, stinky (cities literally stink, you don't notice it until you've been away for awhile and go back into one), expensive this or that, etc. There are a lot of advantages, but a lot of disadvantages to urban life. And vice versa, neither is "perfect".
OK, back to connectivity. Whichever company that comes up with an easy to use, reliable and cheap universal wireless "solution" for that last mile WILL get my business, and there's millions of people out there who will buy it as well. Perhaps it's a niche market, but what ain't once you get down to it? Look at what happened with small dish cheap satellite TV when cable wouldn't go there to that last mile and when some mastermind noted that large dishes and hardware were too expensive for a lot of people, there was a niche market for something besides 1.5 fuzzy channels of over the air tv option, rural people jumped on it in droves. They weren't willing to move to the city for a lot of clear TV, that still didn't mean they didn't like to have some TV, a market that went begging for a long time.
It's like cheap downloadable music tracks, a market that went begging for years, literally went begging, people-potential customers- going "here, take our money we want this product". They got told to go &*&&^k themselves by the music monopoly. It was that insulting, hence the popularity of napster and etc and yada yada yada. Half of it was to just insult those bungers right back. Now how many songs has apple sold so far, because all they did was respond to a market going begging??
I will guarantee ANY of you companies or developers out there, you offer a wireless last mile that WORKS, that doesn't cost outrageous money, and that provides even a slightly more reliable and faster connection than most-alleged "56Kbps" rural dialup, you'll get rich, you'll get obscenely stinking rich, you have millions and millions of potential customers out there.
Sometimes the bean counters are wrong. A lot of times they are, really, they over estimate one potential profit maker while completely ignoring another one, and usually because the new potential is just that, new, or they aren't aware of it. I sincerely doub