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Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband
Atryn writes "Nextel Communications appears to be entering the world of wireless wide-area broadband technology. A new site showed up today describing their market level trial of Flash OFDM technology. Using a PCMCIA Type II modem card in your laptop or a tethered modem, you can have speeds of 1.5 Mbps (bursting to 3 Mbps) downstream and 375 Kbps (bursting to 750 Kbps) upstream as described here. They also appear to be seeking seeking trial participants, who, when selected, will get the technology free of charge! Of course, you need to be in North Carolina."
How often do I see the salespeople and Exec crying because they're laptops hard drive fell apart after being dropped because the careless twits were swinging their shiny new $2k+ around now that they were "freed from wires"
Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.
Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?
Also important is the low latency of the service. I've tried one of the high-latency ones (satellite based), and it's really not worth it - good for downloading large files, and for web-browsing, but useless for interactive use.
No-one ever seems to mention the latency though, just the bandwidth...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I may be off base here but I think these guys are not that bright and mabey should read /. more often. WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these celluar data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems. Blowing the $$$ on this type of system now is just a waste.
Should we tell em or sit back and watch the flameout (packing hot dogs and marshmellows read:sell short)
Apparently you can use a special pcmcia card Or flash memory. I wonder if my 8Mb CF will work, or if I'll have to take my 64Mb out of my camera.
This is where I keep my clever quotes "" Yup I only got a pair, so I better not waste em!
It seems now that if city-wide wireless broadband can be achieved, it would mean much of a doom to 3G technologies, such as UMTS and CDMA-2000.
Sure, 3G is beginning to be implemented in some countries; Japan, HK, UK, and Australia, etc; but with these wireless broadband services becomes easily available and cheap, consumers would naturally choose the latter.
It would mean doom to my job as well, as I am acting support to some equipment used by a 3G operator in HK; 3G is unbelievably complex and expensive to implement just for two objectives: faster packet data, and enough bandwidth for a video call (Circuit-switched data). Now, the only obstacle I see in this wireless broadband technology to totally killing 3G is circuit-switched reliability.
3G has a much wider circuit-switched domain compared to GSM, and this is important for applications that require low latency and delay: video calls.
In any system, latency can be reduced by introducing QoS into the system by prioritizing packets according to their prescribed quality level. Another sure way of reducing latency is to dump enough bandwidth into it.
When bandwidth becomes widely available just like what's available in land transmissions (perhaps reach ATM-class quality and speed?), 3G technology will be down the drain.
If current trends continue, this is happening fast!
I wonder if they'll try to squeeze money out of us by charging us for "romaing?" Also, I'm sure that privacy advocates will be concerned about the ability of Nextel or any other provider to track their customers and that information will inevitably be shared with the FBI, et al.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I know a guy working through his MBA, sitting in class hooked up to the net wireless through through Verizon Wireless. He's getting a minumum of 144kbps both ways most of the time. Considering that most of the US and world is connected vi dial up, that a bit improvement. He says it works well in most areas, but it has trouble if you're moving, such as while on the train. He said he does get the burst speeds in many situations, but the average speed is quite acceptable (and he's used to a oc-3). Cingular has this too, as well as, Sprint and At&t wireless. The nextel specs cliam to be high, as the other web sites I cites also make their claims, and they all charge premium prices for this service. Given Nextel's pricing, this will also be at a premium rate.
I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
That seems about the same stats as the EVDO card I've been using from verizon for months now. Basically it is a 3G CDMA-2000 add on that offers bursts to 2Mbps down. I reliably get 600Kbps down and 150 Kbps up. Then when your not in the DC or San Diego footprint you get 144 Kbps bursts up and down.
I thought 3G was dead (who needs any of these things in a phone, really), but EVDO (EVolution Data Only) convinced me this is what it is really for. When I'm stopped in traffic I can access the net. When I'm waiting for the girls to finnish shopping, I can access the net. And on, you get the idea. Hell, I'm even doing some video conferences over this card.
Check out their "Features" list under the Personal category at http://www.nextelbroadband.com/pu_features.html
I find it amusing. They say that is it secure because it's proprietary technology on a licenced radio service so no one can "gain unauthorized network access". I have several radios and scanners that can certainly receive frequencies that this operates on, if not transmit as well. One does not have to "gain unauthorized network access" just to listen.
The closing sentence basically says "enjoy our service but take your own precautions about secure access."
I'm not saying it's insecure (what is secure, truly!?). I do take a dislike to the reassurance of security with the disclaimer that any security should be provided by yourself buried in the rhetoric.
In fact low latency was a specific design objective of the Flarion solution that Nextel are using for this trial. The latency is much better than conventional 2G and 3G cellular systems so should avoid a lot of the problems with TCP performance which happens on must cellular data. As the original poster said the consequences of latency are often overlooked.
I'm in the trial area and started filling out the form to be a tester, until it got to the system requirements, which were basically Windows XP/2000. I think ME might have been listed. They specifically said they don't support Macintosh or other OSes at this time.
I have to wonder if there's some Windows-only software that they're using for the connection, or if they just don't want the hassle of trying to deal with connection issues from other OSes. Does anyone have similar technology running under Linux?
The Nextel system supports fixed and mobile users. Radio systems that support mobile users have to be designed differently from those that only support fixed users. Mobility adds radio issues such as variable fading and doppler shift as well as the need to handover between different transmitters at the edge of cells. Fixed radio systems can't to any of this.
WiMax is competing with DSL and cable for broadband to stationary objects.