The New Wireless Wars

An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek has a story on the coming wireless wars. It's a look at how the upcoming government auction of wireless spectrum will open the door to a new crop of competitors. The new players, from Google and Microsoft to Intel and Craig McCaw's Clearwire, will compete in new wireless voice services and in wireless broadband. Look out Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint-Nextel."

Comments

Community networks

[ozmanjusri]

What I'd like to see is peer-to-peer community networks which use each device as a node. That would free us from this centralised manipulation of the market.

There are already fairly successful attempts to provide this with existing wifi hardware - http://www.e3.com.au/, for example. How hard would it be to design devices that would set themselves up in a self-managed mesh network which requires no centre?

Re:Community networks

[lamebrane]

How can we trust everyone on our node to not browse our packets? At least with one of the major providers, we know that only their partners, suppliers, and, of course the NSA, would be listening in to every byte. Most of our traffic still is unencrypted and I doubt that many of us really want to trust each of our neighbors with our email. Also, this might be a problem for the gov't sniffers since they would have a harder time associating an IP with a location. Oh, well.

Re:Community networks

[E IS mC(Square)]

>>How hard would it be to design devices that would set themselves up in a self-managed mesh network which requires no centre?

You might want to check this out : http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php - esp chap#2. He talks about sefl-managed 'entities' without any central control.

Its a good read - esp in the light of web2.0 and social networking. So apt.

Re:Community networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark my words -- it will be criminalized. There is no way government is going to pass up the opportunity to rule over the most popular and effective communication network ever to exist. Control requires a centralized infrastructure, and that is exactly why government will make decentralized networks illegal. The scapegoats will be terrorism, child porn, drugs -- the usual.

I agree however -- a decentralized network of super hi-speed wireless (we're talking about the future) nodes is the obvious holy grail of networking, just like decentralized power, water, and sewer are the obvious holy grails of utilities. Decentralization is the future, the natural progression of technology (the correct solution), unless government succeeds in preventing it.

(For anyone who's doubting the benefits of decentralization, you need to experience a few good weeks without electricity like we do here in Florida during hurricane season. You would quickly realize what a bumbling behemoth of a half-assed solution the power grid is. Clumsy, inefficient, vunerable, high-maintainance -- it's almost as if it was designed to fail.)

Re:Community networks

[iminplaya]

I think the key here is mobility. Wireless provides the ability to reduce the dependance on fixed, corporate run ISPs. It has the potential to bring about a true peer to peer internet. The server-client model we use is little more than TV with a really fancy remote, and has proven to be not so robust after all. But then, that's not what the article is about. It makes a lot of noise about competition from small companies buying up spectrum. Well, for one thing, this is an auction. Most small companies will get priced out. If they do manage to get their hands on some spectrum, they will be bought out. The quote of the day, "It's a billionaires' high-stakes poker game...". Nothing's going to change. Some big companies will spin off or create "small" divisions to buy up what they can and then re-merge. Though it would be nice to have ubiquitous wireless. This does nothing to relieve us of corporate control. Only a loose community wireless mesh made up of hundreds of desktop and laptop machines run by our neighbors will do that. This is what can protect us from the snoops. I think things along the lines of VPN might help to keep nosy neighbors out. And the mobility will keep the spies off balance. I am on topic...right? Probably redundant as well...

Google (of course)

[electrosoccertux]

This could be the last ingredient Google needs to build their network. They've got the backbone, the fibre communications. Buy up a large enough chunk of the spectrum and they could give everyone 100Mbps wifi through a $10 software PCMCIA/PCI card. I, for one, welcome our new wireless overlords.

Re:Google (of course)

[Nutt]

I am not an RF engineer but from what I see on the bandplan on the FCCs site the frequencies range from 1710 to 1755 Mhz for mobile units and from 2110 to 2155 MHz for the base stations. I think most cell phones operate in bands around 900 and 1900 MHz so the range increase from switching frequencies would probably be minimal. Not to mention that the amount of bandwidth, the method of modulation/encoding, and the environment (urban/rural) is the usually limiting factor in being able to serve more consumers.

Upcomming Bidding war

[Taimat]

I wonder what type of turnout it will be when the UHF/VHF Bands go to auction. Even though the transition to all digital was to be completed this year. Completing the Transition to Digital Television ... It doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. We need to get away from 2.4ghz - way to crowded. Local ISPs are running freq. hoping on the full band, with illegal boosting ( >1watt) and claim otherwise when we complain about too much noise on a particular channel. Give me more freq!

One can hope...

[fossa]

Look out Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint-Nextel

I certainly hope so. I went to great pains to buy an unlocked phone to switch back and forth between the two nation-wide GSM carriers... Cingular and T-Mobile. Here's hoping for improved service through competition. I only know what people tell me about Europe, but I assume the system of "buy a phone, buy or recharge a SIM card" is superior to the "sign a two year contract" here in the US

Re:One can hope...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I had no problem getting Cingular to give me unlock codes the day after activation (that was a business acct, FWIW).

If true, you are possibly the first person anywhere Cingular has unlocked a phone for. I have never read anything anywhere about Cingular that has shown a willingness to unlock a phone. In fact, everything, and I do really mean everything, I have ever read about Cingular has stated that they will not under any circumstances unlock a phone. I'm curious to know if:
1) This represnts a change in Cingular's policy.
2) You just got lucky from someone who didn't know they aren't supposed to unlock it.
3) Cingular has different policies for business and personal use customers.
4) You are lying because we have no way to verify what you are saying.

No offense, but pardon my disbelief when Cingular has had a very firm policy for years of not unlocking their phones, so it's a little hard to believe it when some guy says they unlocked it the day after activation.

And these, too, will fail: bad backhaul

[postbigbang]

The bits per hertz problem throttles each and every kind of two-way wireless.

When multiple concurrent instances occur of those ugly, low-frame rate videos with the tiny rasters and 256-bit color, it's going to clog the backhaul. OFDM currently carries the best bit/hertz rate, and you can't make dense enough cells to support what copper or fiber carries.

You can get close, until the public uptake causes backhaul arterial sclerosis. Then you get the same problem you have today with EVDO, EDGE, and all of the other schemes--> unacceptable quality and carriers that have a telco mentality.

More spectrum != better quality, because the network backend hasn't been developed yet that meets future demands. These are all short-term plays with doomed future when they fail or have glaring delivery problems that can't be solved because of the bits/hertz problem. Until a miracle occurs in encoding capabilities, the front end fails; and if the front end works, then the backend infrastructure fails.

And organizations will go willy-nilly to the FCC and pay untold amounts of $$ to get spectra robbed from other services. And their stockholders will pray that it makes a return on the investment. And, like other schemes in the US, there will be bitter disappointment when people learn just how low speed these wireless 'broadband' connections actually are.

Until both the encoding schemes mature, and there's a re-investment in network backhaul, buying spectra isn't the answer, only a new set of problems.