Canadian Telcos Agree on WiFi Hotspot Standard

Jucius Maximus writes "As reported by Globetechnology, Canada's cellphone providers have agreed to create a common standard for their subscribers to connect to the Internet via public "hot-spots." The agreement became necessary because Canada's cellphone providers offer four different and incompatible connection technologies. The carriers will continue to vigorously compete with each other, both for customers and Wi-Fi hotspot locations, the CWTA said in a statement."

Comments

What an apt name!

[bo0ork]

"Hot spot" -- a place where the radiation level is high. Oh I know, nothing has been proved, but then, smoking was harmless for decades, too.

Re:What an apt name!

[Eric Ass Raymond]

Ever taken a look at the frequency the cell phones use? The energy these photons carry is nowhere near the limits required to disrupt the molecular bonds in DNA (which is the cause of the "radiation sickness" including the radiation induced cancer).

It doesn't matter how intense the radiation is if the energy carried by the photons does not cross the threshold of actually doing something.

Re:What an apt name!

[Eric Ass Raymond]

where energy comes in intensity distributions, not levels

But that's my point and that's what people don't often understand when it comes to matters of radiation.

Intensity does not matter because

Damage(E) = Intensity * Damage per photon(E)

If the energy (E) is too low to disrupt the DNA, "Damage per photon" goes to zero.

A (high) school physics example of this is the photoelectric effect in which the incoming photons extract electrons from metals. If the energy of a photon is less than the energy between a free electron state (=ejected electron) and a binding valence state (=electron in an atom), electrons do not get ejected no matter how intense your radiation is. You can replace the free-electron - valence electorn bandgap with the energy required to disrupt the DNA and the same reasoning applies.

The energy does not "accumulate" in the system either. The photon will only yield its payload of energy to the matter IF the payload is equivalent to the energy gap. Otherwise the interaction is negligible.

It's well documented that natural temperature variations in the brain are larger than anything induced by a modern cellphone.

The only way that I can imagine the cell phone radiation causing damage is an extremely unlikely chance of a interference peak of several fields inside the skull cavity. But even that would be short-lived because of the extreme sensitivity of the interference pattern on the dimensions and spatial location of the skull and the transmitters.

Re:What an apt name!

[lars-o-matic]

Intensity matters... ever use a microwave oven? That's non-ionizing radiation too, but hardly irrelevant to organic materials (hint: cooking breaks molecular bonds, too).

Also, as you point out, your physics properly applies only to metals. There are lots of lower-energy bonds one can excite in long organic molecules.

As to total energy deposition, evidence suggests that bulk heating is not required in long-term exposure. I have read that highway cops who used to sit with traffic radars next to their heads had a scary incidence of brain cancers. Last I heard, there was no way to argue away the increased incidence of childhood leukemia, etc. for people living under power lines, either.

How does non-ionizing, (relatively) low-power EM radiation affect overall health, immune disorders, incidence of cancer, etc.? I don't know, and neither do you.

Empirical evidence beats hand-waving from a first-year physics course. I'll try to limit my unnecessary exposure to non-ionizing EM radiation until conclusions are in from long term studies, where maybe the biophysics will be more subtle than the photoelectric effect. There are lots of ways to affect (and damage) big, complicated molecules than knocking single electrons out of them.

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Standards do not really promote competition

What do you mean they don't promote competition? Of course they promote competition. When you have a standard, anyone who wants to can implement that standard. When you have nonstandard, proprietary connection technologies, each company has a monopoly over its own version. That doesn't sound very competitive to me; it means that any new players in the field will have to make their own incompatible technology, enlarging the barrier to entry. So make no mistake about it, standards do promote competition.

Re:Emigrating to Canda

[term0r]

I believe one of the pre-requisites to living in Canada is being able to spell Canada.

Standards Nice, Now they'll Lose Money on Location

[Bruha]

These guys may have interoperability going for them but they'll definately have a pitched battle for all the good locations. I can see the regular locations making some good profits off how greedy these Welcos as they toss more and more money at companies for lucrative locations. My advice to any potentials is to not sign extremely lenghty contracts so you can have a bidding war every few years.

Rogers & Wi-Fi

[Zro Point Two]

I just hope that Rogers isn't the one who develops the network layout. I get to deal on a daily bases with what they have done with the cable internet, and man does it suck.

I wonder if they'll roll Wi-Fi into a service offered to their highspeed internet customers? Small extra fee, but you'll be able to access the internet without being at home. This would be great for the business guy who's doing meetings all over town constantly.

Telus: Future outpost of Hell?

[Cordath]

Does anybody remember a T.V. show called "Space: Above and Beyond"? It was pretty derivative and was cancelled after one season, but it did have one thing going for it... All the evil government conspiracies back home were tied to an evil megacorp named Telus... Telus just happens to be the dominant Telco in my province, and yes, they are EVIL.

You should see my bill. Enron should have taken lessons from Telus's billing department when it comes to creative accounting. I pay twice what I agreed to pay in the five-year cellphone contract I unwittingly signed in suspicious smelling red ink. I have no clue why, and they aren't about to tell me.

My cellphone inexplicably dies in my basement while other cellphones on other providers get crystal clear reception. I regularily receive phonecalls at 3AM from people who say things like "What the @#$%!! Stop calling this number you @#$#tard!" or "Hello? Hello? STOP CALLING ME YOU PERVERT!" Of course, the number displayed from these calls is my own, which makes it somewhat difficult to know who I should stop being woken up by calls from at 3am. Is there an evil prankster at work, or are Telus' phone-lines possessed by a minion of the Dark one who relishes the creation minor annoyances? Perhaps it's the same minion who came up with Britney Spears and reality TV...

Re:Telus: Future outpost of Hell?

[Eric Ass Raymond]

3AM from people who say things like "What the @#$%!! Stop calling this number you @#$#tard!" or "Hello? Hello? STOP CALLING ME YOU PERVERT!"

Maybe your cellphone has been cloned. That would explain the huge bills and these calls. Have you ever asked for a listing of the calls made with your phone?

To Divide or To Unite - Does Money Decide ??

[leoaugust]

Common standards introduced by the national Canadian cellphone carriers would help to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods and will lead to consistent, simplified access, the group said.

It seems interesting to me that to really tap into the market, different companies are uniting in Wi-Fi. But, on the other hand in the "Instant Messaging" market, it seems that the companies have thrived by dividing the market amongst themselves ... why does "uniting" work in the Wi-Fi market, while "dividing" work in the IM market ...

Looking at the quote from the article (on top of this comment) it seems that the driving force to common standards in Wi-Fi is to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods viz. that it is about money.

It makes me wonder if the IM packages became "pay only" would it lead to a set of open and common standards in the Instant Messaging market to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods. I don't think that many people would relish having to pay for five different IM's .... Personally, I think free is better than not free - but I couldn't help noticing this relationship of money and dividing/uniting ..

Re:Emigrating to Canda

[Cordath]

The current model for emigration to Canada for people with your qualifications is this:

1. Apply for refugee status.
2. Get rejected.
3. Marry a Canadian.
4. Get a Visa, head on over, and apply for landed immigrant status.
5. Hire an Immigration Lawyer. Start filling out forms.
6. Six months later you will still not have a work permit. This will begin to worry you because you will be almost done filling out forms and the staff at the local government offices now know to run and hide as soon as you enter sight.
7. Bribe, threaten, or blackmail your immigration lawyer into submitting the lynchpin form he was supposed to submit the day you started paying him. He will not want to do this because it will mean allowing you to pass out of his power. Read some Anne Rice novels to more fully understand his or her motivations.
8. Congratulations! Work permit! Your can now use your PHD in physics to find employment in our nation's fine eating establishments, convenience stores, and, if you take night-school, perhaps a mechanic shop. Of course, you will be competing with Canadian PHD holders for many of these positions, so don't expect an easy go at it. (This is one of the downsides to being a member of the most over-educated population on the planet) If you feel discouraged, visit the local pizza hut and laugh at the waitresses holding PHD's in 18th century Russian Poetry who are even more hooped than you!
9. Employment. Now that you're making money it's time to pay 60% of what you earn in taxes. Being from a Scandinavian country you should be used to this.
10. After a few years you will be able to apply for Canadian citizenship. After this point you will be fully qualified to criticize americans and be completely ignored instead of being bombed back into the stone age. By this point in time you should also feel the beginning of a massive inferiority complex setting in and should also be experiencing uncontrollable urges to hold doors open for people while constantly apologizing for everything.

Re:Hmm...

[zhiwenchong]

The latter, I'm inclined to think.

Savage wasteland, eh? Hmm.... but the weather in Minneapolis, Detroit, upstate New York, and the northern states aren't too different from other cities in Canada. The weather in Seattle isn't too different from Vancouver either.

So how is Canada a savage wasteland? If you're talking about Yukon, NWT and Nunavut, well... Americans have Alaska.

Nothing new

[JohanV]

European NRENs are already doing this on an international scale. With credentials from participating local university students and employees can already log on to the WiFi hotspots of other participating universities and research institutions in both their own and other countries.
The authentication mechanism is based on IEEE 802.1x and uses a RADIUS backend to enable cross domain authentication. Currently this is in operation (machine translation) between the Netherlands, Portugal and England, and Croatia is next.

SURFnet is also working (machine translation) with local hotspot operators in the Netherlands to make sure Dutch students can roam their networks as well. Initially this will offered as a free service fro students.

Text messaging already interoperates

[Hamster Lover]

Nearly two years ago the Canadian cell companies got together and created a text message centre to allow interoperation of their text messaging services. Now, I can message a Telus, Fido or Rogers customer from anyone of the competing services.

The Wi-Fi move is just another logical step. We have three competing national companies in a market that really only seems able to support two profitably. This is a reality of a country with a small population covering a large geographic area.

Canada is second in the World I'll have you know

[Hal The Computer]

Actually, we're second in the world for broadband per capita. Even though we're also the second largest country in the world.

Betcha didn't know that, eh? ;-)

Nice change... no GSM vs CDMA choice.

[WoTG]

After years of deciding between GSM and CDMA (and I think we had a TDMA provider...) I'm glad that won't be a problem this time around. I'm definitely glad that they're not choosing some proprietary protocol... so at least getting a wireless card will remain as easy as hopping into your local computer store.

Now the first question I have, is how much is this going to cost? Data rates on the cell-networks were ridiculously high for non-necessary useage... hopefully it won't be the same with WiFi.