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Siemens Continues OFDM Push
Khoo writes "German telecommunications gear maker Siemens is backing a new kind of broadband wireless technology that will compete with Wi-Fi and 3G cellular services." As we covered recently, speed tests have been up to 360 Mbps and one of the latest rumours is that they will use it in conjunction with VoIP servers. That's unconfirmed, but particularly for new phone deployments, laying no wire would be nice. And Yes, Virginia - ITMJ is part of OSTG, like Slashdot.
One thing seemilngly always omitted in these 'speed' stories is distance. While a 3x speed increase over 11n - which is 2x better than 11g - is impressive, if the basic assumption that the speeds correlate over the same distance is incorrect, the speed is not all that great. It would take multiple repeater modules to make up for the shortage, limiting its usefulness.
that's exactly the point many people forget when they're hyping up voip for mobiles, that the for _mobile_ use networks already have been tuned for transferring voice as cheaply and well as possible.
(that is, if it really gets cheap enough to build wide coverage other networks they would still have the upper hand- now, they might change gradually into providing general data services rather than clearly seperated voice functionality, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon totally)
so the ONLY reason to use VOIP over mobile networks would be artificially stupidly twisted pricing structure.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.