Free Nationwide Wireless Internet Access?

LiquidEdge writes "ISP-Planet is reporting that startup M2Z wants to offer 95% of America free wireless Internet access using the 20Mhz frequency allocation. They're backed by Kleiner Perkins, one of the most successful VC firms in history, and being started by the guy who built the @Home network and a former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief. 384/128 speeds will be free and they'll sell the higher speeds and the government will get a kickback of the revenue."

Comments

How do we make money?

[misleb]

Free internet access. How do we make money? Volume.

Ya, I know, just the low speed is free. But still, doesn't sound like a solid business plan. From what I understand, what people like most about broadband is the "always on" aspect.. not so much the bandwidth. I wonder if 384/128 is low enough to encourage people to pay for the faster service.

-matthew

Re:How do we make money?

[whyrat]

I'm reminded of the good old days of "shotgunning" modems together to combine the total bandwidth. Only now you don't even need multiple phone lines, just multiple wireless receivers.

What stops me from getting 20 free wireless hookups and running a shotgun program to effectively combine the bandwidth? Other than some sort of account creation requirements (one connection per address? or per Credit card?) I don't see how they could really prevent this.

Sounds like a future OSS project if this project goes through ;)

A common conversation

[devphaeton]

Here's a conversation I have increasingly often:

customer: I just bought a laptop and the wireless internet stuff only works in my apartment.

me: Do you have an account with ?

customer: I don't need one. It's free here in .

me: Sorry, you're not an customer. There is no wireless internet available where you are.

customer: Yes there is! Flip over the other card and read that. *duh*

me: ....

customer: All new laptops come with free internet.

me: Great, but you still need to contact the ISP that your laptop is partnered with and sign up.

customer: You must be new, or something. You obviously don't get it. I just start up my laptop, and it says "Successfully connected to the Linksie System thingy" and off i go!

Re:95 percent?

[tmasssey]

When the summary says 20MHz, I can't figure out of they mean a 20MHz allocation, or an allocation at 20MHz. I'd RTFA, but it's down... However, if it's an allocation at 20MHz, they won't need to put towers in the boonies.

20MHz is allocated as Government/Non-Government Shared Fixed (Primary), Government Mobile (Secondary). Right next to that at 21MHz is 450kHz of Amateur Radio allocation (the 15-meter band). You can do long-distance (DX) communications on 15-meter, including around the world, if conditions are right.

In other words, with an allocation in the 20MHz range, a user is theoretically capable of covering an entire continent with just a single tower. Even if they use a relatively small number of towers (which would be realistically required, if not theoretically), all of the towers will most likely be able to at least interfere with each other. So they'll all be using the same frequencies, and therefore all sharing the same bandwidth, even if there are multiple towers. This is unlike cell towers. Two neighboring cell towers may overlap, but a cell tower 50 miles away can use the same frequency (and therefore bandwidth) without a problem.

So, how much bandwidth will they be able to provide? Let's assume a fairly high-tech encoding: 64-QAM or OFDM. Nyquist tell us that bandwidth = 2 * bandwidth * Log2 (states/signal) bits/second, or 2 * 1MHz * Log2(6), which is 3.6Mbit. For the entire area served by each tower.

But remember that these towers will cover a huge area. States, easily, and the entire continent regularly. I live in the Detroit, MI area. That's 6 Million people. That's about *half* a bit per second per person... And that's with a high-tech encoding like 64QAM.

Now I am not an EE, so please check my math. And I haven't read the article (only the summary), so if it's a 20MHz allocation in some other region of the spectrum (instead of a 1MHz allocation at 20MHz), then the story changes. However, even then, it's not great. You're most likely going to be limited to line-of-sight frequencies (the DX frequencies are already taken).

So, if it's an allocation of DX-capable frequencies at 20MHz, you can get away with a few towers, but you won't have enough bandwidth. And even if it's a dedicated 20MHz allocation somewhere else, you're going to need a bunch of towers.

What is the advantage of this over something like 802.11? I just don't know. No matter what, it seems like you'll need a number of towers comparable to cell phones today, even with a dedicated 20MHz of frequency. 802.11g uses 20MHz channels to provide 54Mbit of bandwidth using OFDM. So even assuming that the entire 20MHz is allocated exclusively to them (so it's cleaner than the ISM bands 802.11 works in), you're still only going to have 54Mbit of bandwidth (and likely only half that usable bandwidth) for your users. At 384kbps/user, you're looking at a theoretical maximum of 140 users per sector per tower, and a likely limit of 70. That's comparable to cell phone towers (roughly 100 users per sector).

In any case, this does not seem like a brilliant flash of inspiration in bringing broadband to the masses. It sounds like an attempt to create a government-backed monopoly on wireless communication. At least the cell companies had to buy their frequencies. In the end, I can't see the difference between this and digital cell service...