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5 km Range Commercial Wi-Fi Available
prostoalex writes "Japanese company Maspro Denkoh will start selling transmission systems, enabling WiFi signal over 5 km, Network World magazine reports. From the article: "There are two types of antenna: one is a tube-shaped model about 40 centimeters long, and the other is a much shorter and square-shaped model. Combining two of the tubular antenna -- one on each end of the link -- will result in a transmission distance of about 5 kilometers while one of each antenna will work on distances up to 2 kilometers and two of the compact antenna will be fine for up to a kilometer, the company said.""
Can it serve decent speeds?
I don't think anyone will care if it isn't at least half the power of broadband with a reliable connection.
I would say that this article is nonsense, because it doesn't touch on whether or not it can actually scale to meet commercial demand, but that would give the impression that I didn't read the title, that being [...] Commercial Wi-Fi Available.
On top of that, the summary doesn't even say where this is available, and whether or not it will be elsehwere. I'm left to assume this is in Japan, because it's a japanese company selling the service.
What gives?
Pringles can antennas already delivered that back in 2001... Now, if there would only come someone along to pick up these pesky crumbs.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Sure, that world record was a great accomplishment, but what does it do for the general consumer? I don't think anyone's going to want to carry a 10ft dish around with them. Maspro Denkoh's accomplishment is that it can be used practically.
End transmission.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you start to run into increased latency issues over such a connection? 5km at 300km/ms means that you're talking, um, 0.016ms of travel time each way, per packet. While that does not seem significant, that's assuming perfect conditions (and my ability to do math in my head), and that could build up in the case of multiple transactions. Of course, considering that you're talking a minimum of about 30ms latency to any remote server, I guess it's irrelevant. Ignore me. :-)
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