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Review Of Verizon's New Wireless Network
jagger writes "The service gives you the speed of broadband, the ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular... sort of. The service is currently rolled out in Washington D.C. and San Diego, CA but offers speeds comparable to broadband. Read the full review from Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post at Yahoo News."
Sounds too much like a Ginsu..."It slices, it dices, it can even cut a steel can! Call now, operators are standing by!" Personally I'm a bit suspicious of products that claim to do everything, they invariably do at least half the stuff they claim but are good at none of it.
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
The biggest blocking factor for me on Verizon is the lack of bluetooth phones. My t610 joined with my Powerbook is a shear joy (except for the speed). Bluetooth is great. Verizon sucks for not having any handsets that use it (or pressuring manufactures to make a decent CDMA phone with bluetooth).
We are starting to deploy the cards on sales laptops. While most of our sales guys are out of the highest speed markets noted in the article, the card and software have worked very well and both are an absolute cinch to install and use.
This is probably why there aren't a lot of posts to this article, yet. Every Slashdot reader is frantically trying to order "boradband".
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I have to give some credit to Verizon for really putting their competitors to shame. I pay $30 a month for DSL thats 1024/256 Mb/s I get excellent customer service. I had been an earthlink customer prior to this for over 5 years and got tired of there ever creeping up prices. My only concern here is it seems this is basically WiFi via there current cell phone network. if so then again we are going to run into the local bells muscling the market.
Bastards.
/. fix speeling errors that fast?
They ruined my joke!
Since when did
fortune -o
Are you kidding me? "boradband" has over 4,300 hits on Google! This technology is hot stuff!
can you IM me now? good....
I can see this as being a promising service.. as of now Verizon Wireless has the largest nation-wide network and one of the best coverages in the nation..
BE DEAD CAREFUL OF VERIZON's WIFI SERVICE
This is for your New Yorkers who know what I'm talking about. (wifi service in the island of Manhattan free for all verizon dsl/dialup users)
What is to be careful of? Fake Verizon-WIFI APs. No joke. I was walking down 14th street next to Broadway, and suddenly I wanted to hop online to check what the weather would be for later that day.
I pop out my Zaurus, pop in my wifi card, and start sniffing for whatever wireless networks I can get to. I hit a Verizon-WIFI AP, which works for me being that my company is a customer of theirs. I pop in my Verizon Online password, and my password, hit enter, and I'm in.
Except for ONE problem. I typed in my username wrong! (Zaurus 5600 owners know how much of a bitch it is to type numbers with the damn Fn key.) But I still got in!!! I reconnected, typed in a bogus user/pass, and still had zero issues getting in.
At first I didn't realize what was going on (being that I was late for class, and rushing like crazy). But then it dawned on me, that this was a fake AP setup to steal real verizon user-names and passwords. Pretty slick if you ask me.
Yeah yeah, not too related to the topic at hand, but other verizon customers may want to know
Sunny Dubey
"...it includes neither an e-mail account nor voice phone service."
But it does sustain rates around 500 kbps or over...
Voice over IP, anyone? It seems like they're practically begging that application- why carry and pay for a cell phone too, especially if you can get this service on a PDA some day?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Sadly, it also gives you the quality of Verizon.
now i can download my mp3's and screener iso's while leading the RIAA and MPAA's lawyers on a high speed chase!
:P :P
you cant sue me until you catch me and serve me with a summons
nyah nyah now im in mexico
Verizon says BroadbandAccess's downloads should average 3oo to 500 kilobits per second (kbps) and can hit 2 million bits per second (Mbps) at best.
...and I thought slashdot editors were bad! I get 3oo kilobits per second myself though.
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
I currently pay 40$ a month and use the Audiovox 5220 card that Verizon is selling.
Thing is, this is not a new service and I'm not getting it from Verizon. I'm getting it from Monet Mobile.
...but not for long...
The service is fantastic- I can't imagine a better product. The truly sad thing is that Monet Mobile (www.monetmobile.com) is going bankrupt and shutting me down on April 1, at which point I'm going to have to pay the Verizon fees or go back to wired internet... (sigh)
Lets see.. I pay $50 / month for DSL. I also have to pay for a $20 / month "basic phone" line just to get the DSL. By basic, it's just a dial tone, no caller id, no features, even the ringer stays turned off so I dont have to deal with telemarketers. I could care less about it. I get free long distance, 400 anytime minutes, free nights and weekends, and free mobile-to-mobile minutes on my wireless phone. Plus voice mail, caller ID and I can take it anywhere. So why do I need a wired phone? Just so Bellsouth can establish DSL service. Yuck! It stands as an emergency 911 phone in case the wireless phone's battery is dead (if ever..).
That means I already pay $70 / month just to get DSL. I already have Verizon Wireless, so I might qualify for some kind of package deal discount.
The wireless phone I have is already a data-capable G3 phone. Possibly just a flash upgrade will enable the higher rates. So, I am probably out just a USB cable to get online. Anywhere, whenever. Hmmm.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
You know, it seems that where the telco's dropped the ball with fiber-to-the-curb, the wireless providers stand to prosper using RF.
The article didn't go in depth (or mention at all) about security the wireless service uses. If this is something that is widespread, I only hope that the security is something to be applauded. I would hate for a user in the home to go to their bank and enter their information only for the ever lurking hacker/cracker to gain access to their information.
Does anybody know of the security protocals used for this?
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
..up here in Ontario, Rogers cable offers boredband, where you click on links just like usual, then get bored waiting for pr0n on their so called "high speed network". It fucking rocks.
and I wrote a story about this months ago. Here's what you Linux geeks won't like. So far it won't work in Linux. That's mainly a driver issue with the card or really that there is no Linux driver (that I am aware of). Also I think that it is installed (even in Windows) in a funny way. It has to connect under dial-up networking?!?!
I was troubleshooting a problem that my client was having today, so I traced his IP and found a misconfigured (jacked) router on the "myvzw" network. The thing was routing packets to itself, preventing anything from sending data to him........ "Can you get packets now?"
"But at $79.99 a month, it's only a good deal to those who can write it off as a business expense."
Grrr. I'm paying $60 for a (highly rate limited due to the # of subscribers) 256Kbps 802.11 uplink, $99 for 128Kbps IDSL (yeah, I know it's just repackaged ISDN) because the former is too unreliable, and $15 for a decent dial-up to backup all the others because I can not afford not to have a connection! If I thought it would help I would kill someone to get 600Kbps for $80.
You can not function in the modern employment world above the level of "service" without solid, fast Internet connections. If you haven't figured this out yet you're grist for the unemployment line. It's a personal expense the same way a plumber pays for a toolbox full of tools. Get it?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I just got wireless broadband out here in rural West Virginia. Amazing..I know. It is great as I get 1.3Mb down about the same up for $50 a month. Anyhow I just bought a wireless router and it seems to interfere with my wireless broadband antenna. When I enable the wireless functionality on the router my internet connect goes bye-bye. Anyone else had similar experience. I'm pretty sure my wireless broadband is over 802.11b and the wire router I bought is 11b as well. Any solutions?
No Sig For You
"But at $79.99 a month, it's only a good deal to those who can write it off as a business expense."
This guy apparently doesn't know any geeks.
With VOIP becoming so popular, a laptop with this would be portable broadband and mobile VOIP all in one. That would be well worth the expense to lots of us.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I've used PCCard based wireless internet access devices in the past, and every one of them has been only "supported" on Windows, but every single one of them has simply emulated a standard COM port that required you to guess the particular "AT" command to bring up a PPP connecetion.
With data rates as high as claimed, this one may indeed be proprietary, although it would still, I believe, be *theoretically* possible to emulate a COM port that simply provided data a lot faster than you think it should (all of these virtual COM port style devices all ignored the baud rate setting anyway).
Can anyone confirm or deny? If you're using a Windows XP box, bring up the device mangler, properties of the device, Details, and give us the "Device Instance ID". Decoding that should tell us about the attachment (PCCard or Cardbus) and if it's Cardbus, should give us PCI vendor/device ID info.
Verizon has no competition at this speed and won't for a while. Carriers using the competing GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) wireless standard aren't close; for instance, AT&T's new EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) service tops out at 200 kbps.
So ATTWS has EDGE nation wide, and Verizons EvDO is only in a 2 markets. ATTWS already has UMTS trials in 7 major markets, at speeds faster than verizon, soon to launch commerically!
So you dont hear it much, ATTWS has the fastest nation wide network. When Cingular takes over, and the 2 merges coverage areas, expect the best nation wide coverage, and fastest speeds around.
I'm just wondering when Cingular starts expanding UMTS past the 7 markets, what will Verzion do? It cant offer what it doesnt have, or built out. Be interesting to see what Verizon does to counter the Cingular advantage.
RTFA.
They are using 1xEV-DO from their cell towers, on dedicated cellular bands.
Gentoo Sucks
3G has been put off for a long time, i'm suprised it hasn't come until now. This (to the best of my knowledge) qualifies itself as 3G. From a company like verizon I believe it. Rikachet failed because it was a solo project of a company that relied on their wireless internet service only. Verizon is already well-established and doesn't need this to produce revenue immediately. As far as $80/month being too much, take a look at how many people pay $50/month to bluetooth through their cell-phone with increadibly long login time and unreliable service-coverage.
By the way, this article was written by a reporter who probably either didn't know very much about the technology or was addressing it as being nice and easy to use, even for lusers (the "difficult to get working in a PC" comment). He claims it works wonderfully without any problem, he hasn't been payed to say it, and didn't say very much of anything on the negative side about it. This technolgy is not new (look at japan) I suggest you save your tinfoil for annother day's hat.
Nextel appears to be doing the same thing. Those in the Raleigh/Durham area can sign up for a free trial for a couple of months yet I think. More details are here.
The article leaves out some interesting details. Like--how many antennas per square kilometer do you need to get this kind of speed? When I lived in Santa Cruz, Ricochet did one of their first deployments around town. This was in the early 90s, so you were getting 2400bps (yeah, bps) wireless all over town, which was kind of cool. Except they had to hang transmitters from every other light pole to blanket town. I think that's one of the reasons they never caught on: deploying infrastructure was too expensive.
It sounds to me like Verizon has something with much better range going here, but I guess Pegoraro didn't think to ask.
One of the reasons I'm interested is that my parents live in one of those oft-forgotten places in the US where high speed internet is a far-away dream. The town (population 500) is about an hour's drive over a terrible mountain road from civilization, so the local CLEC never bothered to run phone lines in: they just set up this crappy microwave link on top of a mountain.
No cable, no wired phone lines: needless to say, broadband is impossible (satellite being the unacceptable semi-exception). Which makes going back to hang out at the ranch pretty annoying.
The point (I'm getting there!) is that if these guys have figured out a way to get high speed internet to travel a good long distance, this could help solve the access problem for rural america.
Of course, I've seen so many supposed solutions come and fade away, that I sort of doubt it.
\
The other day I was talking to some Qualcomm guys (who do the chipsets) and they told me this basically works by using an entire channel multiplexed in time. Since the service has not yet been widely deployed, the reviewer probably got most or all of the available time slots. I'd imagine the average bit rates to go down as the number of users increases.
http://ramp.ucsd.edu/~bellardo/darwin/airprime/
Where can I get some of this Boradband, I need some RIGHT NOW!
It took them over a month to connect my DSL. It's a long story. They are incompetant. They are probably breaking a handfull of FCC rules. I want very much to never do business with them again and I encourage others to avoid doing business with them.
Start Running Better Polls
get yourself a kyocera 2235 phone and a serial cable. this will allow you to use verizon's 1x network (nationwide) at 130 kbps. the neat thing about the 2235 is that there are no drivers required - the phone speaks hayes commands all by itself - i have even hooked it up to a dial-up router to share connections with multiple computers. oh and if you take the cable off, you can use the phone as a phone.
I can see the commercial now...
[Annoying Verizon twit walking around in wannabe geek attire]
Can you ping me now?
[Pauses so camera gan see uber-cool propritary branded gadget BS]
Goood
[Walks off stage leaving camera showing oh-so self-important suits and wanna-be geek types watching in "shock and awe"]
[...and que fine print at bottom of screen scrolling so fast a hamster on crack can't even read it and Verizon Logo]
As I live in the raleigh area, I was quite happy to see this article a few weeks ago. I signed up and got in the six month beta. The service is still in beta stage and not allways up. The area covered is also quite small at the moment. But the speed is great. It is quite fast, I often see speeds of over 750 kbps down and 80 up. I get a ping of 50 from google.
The downside is they assign you a private ip address, and route you through a NAT. So bittorrent and game serving stink.
"The speed of broadband, the ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular" is a good discription of the service, but I will be keeping my cable access untill they start handing out real ip addresses.
FUD, plain and simple
1) your usage of the word "shared" isn't clear in its meaning, so I'll just ignore that statement.
2) Security. Each CDMA phone in the world is has a unique ESN that is hardcoded into the phone. Even if it were possible to reprogram a phone with a duplicate ESN, no two mobiles would be allowed on the network with the same ESN. Both mobiles would be denied service and your account most certainly would be flagged. The ESN is used to create a unique offset in the main long orthogonal code (41 days long) that enables your "calls" to be uniquely encrypted/encoded with your own version of this orthogonal code (in combination with Walsh Codes and Turbo Codes). Not to mention the fact that all packes are "chipped" up and reorganized and duplicated into a random order to improve error correction.
48 users was (about) the maximum number that an AMPS system could handle. The technology has significantly improved in the last 10 years. Try 100+ users per cell.
3) This statement, as a blanket statement about VOIP is FUD. But over EVDO I'd graciously admit that you're probably true. Its designed for Data, not Voice.
4) EVDO eats no more "spectrum" than 1xRTT or IS-98 or IS-95. The other standards don't "coexist" with voice, they CARRY voice. Data over the older standards (even 1xRTT) was a side benefit. EVDO can co-exist in the same sell as 1xRTT handling Voice traffic. The system designers aren't the morons you seem to be implying they are. Just think about it.
"Sorry folks, no cell phones work within this 5 mile area. Data modems only!!!"
802.11 will do nicely within your office building or at your coffee shop. It won't do as you ride in a cab from the airport to your hotel to the conference center to the local park bench (all without having to scan for a new, open, AP).
I hear it every...single..bleedin'...day on BART.
:P
The same clueless wonders are surprised when their phone cuts off as the train heads into a 2 mile tunnel, too.
I *HATE* Nextel phones for just that reason. People think that the rest of us want to hear both sides of their inane conversation.
I am an engineer who works for a company that makes base station-side software and hardware for this product. We are a supplier to Nortel, who is the general contractor for the San Diego deployment. Since I personally wrote a lot of the code that makes this stuff work, I can speak somewhat authoritatively on this technology.
First of all, EV-DO does scale. There are 5 million subscribers in Korea alone, shared between SK telecom and KT freetel. The technology has also been rolled out in a big way in Japan by KDDI recently.
It is true that the current Verizon deployment uses only PCMCIA cards. But phones are on the way later this year. There are dozens of EV-DO enabled phones and handheld devices available. Check out this page. EV-DO is data only, but nothing says that end-user devices cannot be EV-DO + 1x-RTT.
The article says that this is not "always on". That is misleading. EV-DO has the concept of "sessions" and "connections". Sessions are always on, and connections are on an as-needed basis. Connections are set-up when the user needs to send/receive data and torn down when he is done. This happens automatically, the user does not have to do anything special when he needs to do something. (For e.g., just click on a link on slashdot and a new connection is set up, data is uploaded and subsequently downloaded from the website, and the connection is torn down. All this happens automatically, the technology takes care of everything).
This is not a LAN technology. It is not a replacement for WiFi. This is a CDMA-based, cellular-WAN technology. It automatically provides all the security of a CDMA-based network. Not that this is perfect, but it is much better than WiFi in that w.r.t. security.
Hari.