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

Not if the Cell Companies...

[AKAImBatman]

...have anything to say about it. This effectively proposes enough bandwidth to eliminate the need for a traditional cellphone. Instead, you'd be able to carry around a Voice over IP phone that gets you the same coverage everywhere, with no "per minute" fees. The likely extension of this would be that a new telephone network would emerge that wouldn't even bother with POTS compatibility. Just assign your phone a DNS name, and you can start calling "l33tdude.myphone.net" instead of a horribly abstract phone number.

Give it enough time, and the POTS system (as well as all those expensive cell towers) would go away permenently. The result would be a network with communications that are as free as instant messaging from your computer. Certainly an attractive world for the consumer, but can we really expect to get there without interference? Not to mention that this would mean the end to phones subsidized by cell phone connectivity. Net phones would sell for what they're actually worth as opposed to being "free" or "discounted" with service.

Not that this isn't without its advantages. I don't know about anyone else, but my cell phone never truly feels like it's "mine". Its linkage with my phone carrier makes it feel more like a device I've rented. Especially when carriers like Verizon go out of their way to disable features like the USB connectivity on the Razrs. Sure, in theory you can pop in a new SIM card. But because of network differences and technology changes, it usually ends up being easier to get a new phone and throw your old one in a landfill. What a waste.

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[interiot]

Even without inexpensive wireless, sooner or later POTS numbers will be supplemented and ultimately supplanted.

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[lawpoop]

Certainly the telecommunications industry has a vested interest in not seeing this come to fruition. However, given the recent efforts by the government to build massive data-mining operations, we now have the government emerging as a player not interested in seeing this happen.

If we have a VOIP cell phone that has secure communications, then the government has no way of listening in on calls ( with or without a warrant). If we have some kind of onion-based routing of calls, the government is no longer able to do its social network mapping (who called who, how often, and how long) that it purportedly uses to detect terrorist cells.

So, while it's a great idea, it's unlikely to happen. The future is looking more and more dystopian, at least in this country.

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[thedletterman]

Actually, you would probably wnt to call l33tdude.mobi

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[natedubbya]

but can we really expect to get there without interference?

No pun intended.

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[nxtw]

I think you're looking for things to complain about.

You don't have the issue that you have to replace your phone every few years because the technology, service plans, and network differences have made you obsolete?

No. Cingular and AT&T have used GSM here since 2002. T-Mobile also entered this market in 2002. Phones from 2002 still work, but I upgrade regularly. That doesn't stop people from using old phones. If people have no interest in using GPRS/EDGE based services, they don't need to upgrade. But GPRS-based services still work on phones that are 4 years old. Assuming they haven't been abused and the battery still works, GSM phones from five years ago should still work.

However, with upgrades allowed every 2 years, why not get a new phone?

You don't have the problem that your service provider is soaking you for every little service above and beyond "voice call time"?

No. I have a $20/mo text, data, and picture plan (1500/unlimited/200), mainly for the unlimited data. I never use 411. Of the 3 other lines, two of them never use more than 20 text messages a month. I download my own ringtones and games via BT/USB.

You don't have the problem that you have to worry about whether your network covers an area instead of Sprint Nextel, Celluar One, or Verizon? (I remember when you used to be able to at least roam! Good luck on getting that to work right these days.)

No. Coverage is decent enough. If I need to, I can roam all I want on T-Mobile here and Cellular One where needed. I haven't been on a carrier other than Cingular since they combined AT&T and Cingular's networks at the beginning of this year.

While ubiquitous GSM has been slowly making it easier to switch services on a whim, it's far from practicable.

I haven't been outside of GSM service since 2004. That was for about 15 minutes in rural North Carolina. I could sign up for T-Mobile (prepaid or regular) and use my current phone right now.

Now imagine that you have a phone that can work anywhere there's a network. It doesn't matter who's it is, as long as it's an Internet network. And not only does your phone work, but it can also do Internet, Instant Messanging, Games Downloading, etc. without all those silly fees that today's carriers charge you. In fact, you never even sign up with a carrier. You just purchase your device, assign it a dynamic DNS name, and turn it on. THAT is freedom, and THAT is what everyone should have. Good luck on getting that from Cingular. (Who I'll agree is the best of of the cell carriers ATM.)

Doesn't sound realisitc. Such a change in the carriers' business model wouldn't be acceptable to them. That's barely practical with wired interweb connections right now (Skype & the IM services doesn't count; they're way too closed). There are some SIP providers that provide calls on their own "network"/numbering plan, and offer PSTN connectivity and are relatively open, but many are unreliable (and, since they're not P2P at all, are funded only via PSTN connectivity charges or donations). Most other VoIP players provide wholesale connectivity or service designed to emulate regular phone company service.

An open, secure, as P2P as possible system would be ideal.

Re:Not if the Cell Companies...

[mungewell]

Well people are good at remembering telephone numbers....which is where 'enum' comes in.

see http://www.e164.org/

You register your VoIP account (etc.) under your land line (or allocated VoIP) number and when someone calls you their system does a look up and routes the call via the cheapest (nominally VoIP) route.

The nice thing is that they don't need to know where you are, or what method is used. They just pick up their telephone device and dial....

Simon.

Sounds like a dot com idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. They'll make up for it on volume.

Re:Sounds like a dot com idea

[Pope]

Ah, yes, I remember the very successful @Home network, the one that tanked, bleeding money from every orifice. Sounds like a sure-fire winner!

Re:Sounds like a dot com idea

[smackt4rd]

I heard they're going to get $1 for every brain tumor.

Intriguing, but...

[TripMaster Monkey]

...it also sounds strangely familiar, somehow...

From TFA (emphasis mine):

"M2Z's goal is ... provide free high speed connections to 95 percent of U.S. consumers without any recurring fees. This is a grand undertaking."

Translation: We won't see it in our lifetimes.

I hope I'm wrong, but this sort of thing has been tried before, with less than satisfactory results.

Re:I'm confused.

[AKAImBatman]

I'm confused.

No wonder you're confused. You've gone from "not reading the article" to "not even reading the summary"! News these days will soon be nothing more than a cheap headline! BWHAHAHA!

Hint: If you want more bandwidth than the default (e.g. enough to watch internet television on the go), you'll need to pay.

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?

[Red Flayer]

With more video and audio being delivered, you can bet that 384/128 is too slow. Hi-def streaming video (eg, pr0n, the driver of internet technology) needs bandwidth.

Re:How do we make money?

[AKAImBatman]

I wonder if 384/128 is low enough to encourage people to pay for the faster service.

Generally I would tend to agree with you. IMHO, 128/128 would be a better bandwidth point. However, with the rise of Hi-Def media and multimedia over the Internet, it's only a matter of time before Hi-Def over the Internet becomes the standard. When that happens, I imagine that you'll see a lot of users looking for more bandwidth to power their in-SUV televisions/radios, their video-conferencing cellphones, and their on-the-spot videoblog reporting. All these concepts need is a network.

Err, on second thought, that's a rather scary thought.

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 ;)

Re:How do we make money?

[MobyDisk]

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

That's genius! You can get a quiet phone call for free, but normal phone calls would cost 1 cent per minute, and loud phone calls 2 cents per minute. If you want speaker phone, that's 3 cents per minute, or 1 center per minute per person within audio range.

Re:How do we make money?

[MountainLogic]

The use of Law is correct in this case. While it is not a physical law it is a fair to describe it as a technological law derived from repeated empirical observations of technological development behavior.

From the Wiki:

A physical law, scientific law, or a law of nature is a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior. They are typically conclusions based on the confirmation of hypotheses through repeated scientific experiments over many years, and which have become accepted universally within the scientific community. However, there are no strict guidelines as to how or when a scientific hypothesis becomes a scientific law.

snip

Physical laws are distinguished from scientific theories by their simplicity. Scientific theories are generally more complex than laws; they have many component parts, and are more likely to be changed as the body of available experimental data and analysis develops. This is because a physical law is a summary observation of strictly empirical matters, whereas a theory is a model that accounts for the observation, explains it, relates it to other observations, and makes testable predictions based upon it. Simply stated, while a law notes that something happens, a theory explains why and how something happens, in terms of the more fundamental laws.

Not just the cells

[wiredog]

The cable companies (not much difference between them and 'traditional' telcos) will also want to stomp his idea flat.

Re:Not just the cells

[twistedsymphony]

indeed, especially considering a system like this wouldn't have any need for net-neutrality laws and the whole telco ideal of throttling bandwidth to sites or consumers that don't pay up would only hurt them further.

If they really want to sell this they'd just have to promote the angle that a government controlled network would allow the government to much more easily spy and monitor that network... then knobbiest be damned because legal power is worth more then bribes at that point.

This *is* just another greedy cell company

[dsginter]

From what I can gather, any cell company would want the sole control of some UHF bandwidth in exchange for offering "free" entry-level wireless internet access *in exchange for* the right to offer premium pay-for / high-performance service.

Its a trick. Get an axe!

No sir. If anything, just open the entire UHF spectrum for municipal wireless internet access. We don't need to assign control to a single entity (e.g. - two or three companies would be able to compete for both free and pay-for service). Yes, you'd still have to regulate it a bit since the spectrum is too valuable to be clouded up by the general public but single-source is just too dangerous. We've already learned that most anyone will take a few dollars in exchange for their corruption (e.g. - the "free" service has high-latency that prevents VoIP and other value added services).

No different than normal

[chundo]

and the government will get a kickback of the revenue.

That's called "lobbying".

Not enough bandwidth

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I didnt RTFA (probably slashdotted anyway). IBut if they're using 20MHz carrier frequency then they won't be able to stuff many bits down that pipe. To get, say, a 1Mbit channel is going to require a reasonably large bandwidth. Bigger than you're going to be allocated at 20MHz.

Perhaps TFA means a 20MHz wide band at some vastly higher frequency. In that case I guess things are possible. Still, all those free users will very soon choke the channel and if you're paying nothing you can't exactly demand any performance level.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[ZombieWomble]

Yes, TFA is incorrectly worded. They applied for the 2155 to 2175MHZ band.

Interestingly, they reason they're offering the government money is not as a 'kick-back', but to actually pay for the allocation, since they aren't offering any money to purchase it up-front.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[MoOsEb0y]

A single 802.11a channel occupies 16.6 Mhz of bandwidth. This gets 54 mbps using QAM. Look it up on wikipedia if you don't believe me. Using CDMA and directional antennas, the issue of signals jumping on each other could easily be solved. 20 Mhz is plenty of bandwidth for 384kbps wireless. I pay $15 a month for this already with Sprint, so handing it out for free would be great.

Oh, and yes.. TFA is slashdotted.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[tinkerghost]

Ummm, that FCC charge is a surcharge that goes directly into the pocket of the Telco.
It's there as part of the settlement that made everyone open their networks to competition. In exchange for that & loosing part of the very lucrative LD business (local/last-mile can be a loss leader in rural areas - which is covered under grants funded by the FUSF fee), the telcos get's to charge everyone the FCC charge.
So, no the FCC charge doesn't go to the FCC - stunned me to find that tidbit out.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[Kadin2048]

They are definitely wrong; 20 MHz really isn't any good for the type of bandwidth they want, unless they took a huge swath of spectrum.

I noticed however that aside from what I knew was down around 20MHz (namely the 15m amateur band), there is a chunk of specturm that's just allocated to "Fixed" and "Mobile" operation (20.010 to 21.0 MHz), so it's not wholly unbelievable. That's the same allocation as the frequencies they're actually asking for, which is a 20 MHz block up at 2155 MHz.

Anyone with an interest in IT these days owes it to themselves to take a look at the Freqency Allocation Chart. Most people I've showed it to (I have a large printout on my wall) are generally surprised at the huge swaths of bandwidth taken up by commercial broadcasting allocations that are barely utilized today. By far the most obvious hog on the chart is the AM radio spectrum, but the VHF and UHF TV bands are pretty bad, too, for what most people get from them.

Of course, I'm probably deluding myself to even imagine that whatever purpose the FCC is going to put them towards, if/when they're reallocated, will do any more public good then sitting there un/under-utilized, like they are right now.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[scoove]

They are definitely wrong; 20 MHz really isn't any good for the type of bandwidth they want, unless they took a huge swath of spectrum.

It's an interesting band as well. I'd love to see how they deal with it during more active cycles. Your 1 MHz slice might suddenly propegate for a few hundred miles - not exactly the kind of frequency you want for cell-based coverage (unless that is their plan - to only use a couple of nodes per state for "384" divided by tens of thousands of customers. I've been working 17 MHz an increasing amount as the solar cycle begins to wake up a little bit - from the middle of the USA, I had a long PSK-31 contact in Pittsburg PA. It works when your protocol is 31 baud (remember 300 baud modems? or 1200? Yea... that slow). Sharing 1 MHz over a thousand mile radius when the band is open would truly demonstrate some fascinating issues (and you wanna talk about problems with hidden nodes or implementing polling mechanisms over a 1000 mile radius?).

I'm mostly surprised that there are still believers in the dot-com model. Capacity gets paid for regardless of how you fudge the numbers. Either you buy the backbone capacity to feed it or you don't - and towers, trunking, engineering, licensing, compliance all cost real money. Ask a Level3 exec if they ever considered giving free dialup to "pay" for their national fiber rollout and watch their reaction.

This seems more like a frequency givaway scam in search of an engineering solution than anything. Remember that Internet CP80 Port stuff that was so unworkable and absurd to anyone that actually understands anything about IP engineering? Our US house representative has indicated those people are still pushing and they claim their engineers have looked it over and haven't had a credible complaint about their proposal. (Note: The CP80 people haven't gone away and have enough Congressmen that actually think their proposal is a good idea - good time for some followup!)

And if the discussions of the bandwidth utilization were correct, I'm curious where all that higher capacity stuff will come from that is necessary to revenue-share with the FCC. Or is that going to be an oops after the frequency gets allocated - guess we didn't have any left to sell and share. Thanks for the free frequency givaway for a single company. Now there's a scheme I can believe. Just send your Senator a few thousand dollars and get it earmarked. One of our own Senators was kind enough to find $50 million for a rainforest in the middle of flyover USA for a couple thousand dollar donation, so anything's really possible.

Re:Not enough bandwidth

[scoove]

And not to mention that 20MHz propagation carries it all over the world.

Exactly. Lots of folks don't realize we're in the bottom of the solar cycle. It's freaking dead on 10 meters (28 MHz) right now - I made a PSK-31 contact a month ago on 10m only because some other guy 40 miles from me was as curious as I was as to how dead it really was.

But the old hams talk about when the cycle wakes up. I mentioned in a previous post about working 17m (18 MHz) two nights ago for a 800+ mile contact. I picked up CW (morse code) from southern Mexico about 1300 miles south of me this weekend on 15m (21 MHz - just above the proposed frequency). I deal with wifi broadband engineering as part of my job and have enough to contend with in 802.11n/g/b/a, contention, collisions, etc. - spread my signal out and give it an occasional atmospheric skip and my network would be hell.

The point some of the "RF aware" are making is that taking a slice of 20 MHz isn't like taking a slice of 2400 MHz, or 20,000 MHz (which was what I originally thought they were talking about - great frequency for this, but requires *massive* cellular infrastructure - literally tens of billions of dollars to get decent national coverage).

Under 1,000 MHz, signals tend to start doing non-line-of-sight things, and depending upon how active the sun is, the lower you get, the more things get unpredictable.

Consider this: tonight we've got a storm system moving in. We were picking up solid traffic on 145 MHz (again, higher than the proposed 20 and less prone to these problems) from 300+ miles away. This is called tropospheric ducting - it has to do with warm air near the ground and frequencies travelling in a trapped manner within that warm air mass. This 20 MHz proposal would be amusing to watch it fail if it wasn't for the failure occuring during an abuse of the public commons.

There's already a free nationwide wireless ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

It's apparently called "linksys"

Hmmm...

[lorcha]

Looks like isp-planet.com should have paid for the faster link!

Frequency Allocation

[Detritus]

According to this, they plan to use 2155-2175 MHz, not 20 MHz. After all the nonsense with BPL. I was afraid that someone else was stupid enough to propose using HF for short-range data transmission.

Like getting the Three Stooges to do your plumbing

[Rob T Firefly]

They're backed by Kleiner Perkins, one of the most successful VC firms in history

Oh, that's good.

and being started by the guy who built the @Home network and a former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief.

Oh, that's bad.

Re:95 percent?

[digitaldc]

So, will this be 95% of the population of the U.S., or 95% of the geographical area?

It will work in all areas except the ones we live in. There it will be $59.99 a month for AOL Dial-up access.

20 MHz *Bandwidth*, not Frequency

[Parker51]

"20Mhz frequency allocation"

More precisely, a 20 MHz *bandwidth* of frequencies in the 2155-2175 MHz band. I did a double-take when first reading this article, because it almost reads as though this service will be operating on a center carrier frequency of 20 MHz. That wouldn't make sense, as that's smack in the middle of the High Frequency, or "shortwave," bands. Not only does that provide worldwide propagation at modest signal powers (as little as a few Watts), users of those frequency bands would be limited to at most a few hundred kHz of bandwidth, which would be unusuable for high-speed computer networking.

So, the M2Z service is proposing to run on a microwave band, requiring lots of infrastructure and towers, like WiFi or cellular telephone.

Re:20 MHz *Bandwidth*, not Frequency

[dubbreak]

I read it as "20Hz" the first time and was thinking "All our bass belong to M2Z".

Um Excuse me?

[Mantrid]

Um, the 1990's called, they want their business model back!

Re:Um Excuse me?

[hackstraw]

Um, the 1990's called, they want their business model back!

Oh, and this is started by the guy who built the @Home network. This is the same guy that had a pretty much monopoly on high-speed, almost nationwide coverage, that everybody wanted, but just couldn't seem to make any cash off of it.

I want the 90s back!

And it'll fall apart...

[nbannerman]

... the minute ISPs get together and decide to traffic shape, shoving VoIP to the bottom of the list. A nice idea, and certainly it has it's merits. But can anyone else expect ISPs to tolerate a massive increase in end-to-end communications like this? Especially when some of them (Verizon, I'm looking at you) have a vested interest.

If they'll do it for bit-torrent, they'll do it for VoIP.

Ok, working link finally

[lorcha]

In case anyone wants to RTFA, I was finally able to get Coral to cache a copy of it. You can view the article in all its glory here.

But...

[Instine]

...will I be able to use it in my flying car?

More LEO and other trash; slower than EVDO, too

[postbigbang]

Fooey.

Still another plan that will fail out of the starting gate. How about blimps, covering the horizon? 384k is barely usable. If you want it today, get an EV-DO card from Verizon or Sprint... or maybe an Edge card from Cingular/T-Mobile downstream-- once they can cover more than a few sq mi at a time.

This is not only money down a rat hole, but the announcement is also designed to queer all of the WiFi providers trying to build business cases across the country.

Not going to happen. Worse, it's obfuscation at its pinnacle.

Eventually a flat-rate thing is going to happen.

[thealsir]

The whole idea of "long distance" went away with the net. Since then, it's just been phone companies that have gotten in the way of progress. Internet == phone. Will happen soon. Why not yet? Pigopoly.

More Info on M2Z

[theGreater]

M2Z Networks, Inc. 2800 Sand Hill Road, Suite 150 Menlo Park, CA 94025
M2Z's website
M2Z FCC application

-theGreater.

Or 95% of the web sites

[PIPBoy3000]

It looks like they'll be implementing an "always on" filter. From their filing:

Mandatory Filtering of Indecent and Obscene Material. M2Z commits to mandatory filtering of indecent and obscene material for the National Broadband Radio Service. This will be accomplished through a compulsory setting on the service that will utilize state of the art filters, taking every reasonable and available step to block access to sites purveying pornographic, obscene or indecent material. Like the free service itself, M2Z's content filtering will be "always on." Moreover, National Broadband Radio Service customers will be unable to alter the filters as they constitute an essential element of that service. To accomplish these critical filtering functions, M2Z plans to route National Broadband Radio Service traffic through a set of servers that can examine the traffic flows for improper activity and restrict access as required. Thus, the nation's children -- and their parents -- will have free access to broadband that is not only very affordable but also family-friendly and free from pornographic and other indecent material.

Think of the children . . .

Re:Or 95% of the web sites

[ender-]

Although I think it would be great to have free nationwide 384/128kbps wireless, I see two issues:

One with the filter they want to implement. If this becomes ubiquitous then anyone who pays for another ISP may be assumed to be doing so for 'porn' purposes. So you might want to keep your non-NBRS ISP connection to yourself.

Also this is a big-brother wet-dream! Especially if people start using it for unencrypted voip traffic. No need to bug people's houses. Just get anywhere within x-miles of the target and you can read everything they send out. And it will be easy to find them using a triangulation of multiple towers in the area. At least in heavily populated area's; it might be alittle more difficult to triangulate someone's position using the single tower in BFE, Kansas.

Anyway, in the past I would have considered someone crazy if they really thought these things were an issue. Unfortunately recent history is making me more and more concerned.

Re: Or 95% of the web sites

[Electrum]

No porn? It says a lot about their lack of business sense that they're deliberately blocking the content that has driven most of the technological innovation of our times.

From the above linked document:

Adult consumers providing M2Z with appropriate proof that they are of the age of majority, for example through the use of a credit card, can subscribe to a premium product.

Re:Or 95% of the web sites

[glindsey]

Dear NBRS:

Please feel free to try and examine the traffic flows from my SSH-tunneled connection to a box at home with a wired broadband connection.

Sincerely,
glindsey

I'm torn...

[ag-gvts-inc]

If it works, it'll be extremely useful. Combine it with either webmail or webmail via pop3, and my parents'll never have to pay for an isp again. Unfortunately, it'll also probably kill the local wisp. Which would be quite a shame, those guys have nearly succeeded in covering the last mile here where I live. And they're affordable too (ie, they're not making much off it.)

I for one...

[soft_guy]

I for one would like to welcome our new free wireless overlords. May death come quickly to their enemies!

384k is barely usable?

[jgoemat]

EVDO isn't much better now. A lot of DSL subscribers are still that slow. 384k is perfectly usable for most things you need to do on the net (email, remote desktop, web browsing, game playing), it just takes longer for downloading large files or watching streaming video. Tell my parents out in the boonies that still use dialup that it wouldn't be an improvement, or people that can't afford the rates for cell-based wireless. Also, 95% sounds pretty dang good for driving around the country.

Not going to work the way you think it will..

[Svartalf]

"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."

Well, that would sort-of work. You might be able to get multiple transmitters to send on each one of the frequency slots on a given channel set. The largest problem to that really working is that you're going to have a hell of a time getting the transponders to sync up nicely and not collide and interfere with each other. The second problem is that "shotgunning" worked mostly because you were using multiple independent channels (Seperate phone lines...) and hooked in at the lowest device driver levels and aggregated the total bandwidth in a just so way so that parts of packets could be sent down one wire and other parts down another. You have only ONE channel and you're not going to very likely get the level of device access that you had with the dialup modems. You could get BGP to probably handle all of that if it's exposed only as an network type connection to the user, but since you're a freebie account, you're probably not going to get BGP to readily work because their routers won't acknowlege your router on the recieving end of the multiple recievers.

"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."

Well, the above items cause their own set of problems- but there's one more. If you succeed in doing this, you're guilty of theft of service- which is a felony offense in pretty much all of the US as a whole. If you encourage this practice, you're inciting to commit a crime- also a criminal offense in most states. Sure, you're not as likely to get caught doing it as with some other things, but I'm not one for commiting felonies just to get bandwith. Perhaps you don't have those moral qualms?

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:A common conversation

[bmalia]

My girlfriends sister told me that cable internet sucks, because it only works when the neighbors internet is on too.

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...

Kleiner Perkins?

[mapkinase]

Kleiner Perkins, one of the most successful VC firms in history

Here is their portfolio

Why I am not impressed?

Re:Kleiner Perkins?

[Andy Dodd]

I suggest you click on the "Public Companies" link to the left on the page you linked to.

Your opinion might change.

Re:Like getting the Three Stooges to do your plumb

[ichigo 2.0]

He built what? Dude, if this guy can build his own FCC Wireless Bureau Chief, he can do anything. --Joe

I know this is Slashdot, but that isn't as difficult as you make it sound. ;)

Re:Not really

[Agripa]

Channel Capacity (bits/s) = 0.332 x Bandwidth x SNR (db) from Shannon-Hartley theorem is a rough estimate but assumes better conditions then they would likely get. Pessimistically, 10MHz and 10db gives 33.2 Mbits/s total. A lot depends on the details like cell size, transmit/receive turn around time, and transmit power.

AT&T/NSA offer free/unlimited e-mail & P2P

[CranberryKing]

Just register with your address and valid SSN. And photo.

Remember free dial-up?

[cafucu]

Yeah, that worked...for about a year. Ask altavista, netzero, or anybody who worked for one that went under (like me). Nothing is free.

Re:My experience: ~550kb or 120kb

[nasch]

Bad idea. Bad cost, and the 95% is a pipe dream-- a pipe full of drugs.

Glad you cleared that up, I had no idea what kind of pipe you were talking about. Oh, and please adjust your sarcasm meter and re-read my comment.

Getting started on your own large-scale network

[Douglas Simmons]

Linking up a router to a bunch of routers is called point to multipoint networking and if you want to wirelessly wire up your neighborhood you're going to need routers that can do this. The most economical and possibly the best option that I have found is the Buffalo NL-3054CB3. (If you google the model number, other brands pop up, apparently the identical device -- saw one deal for under $120 each). It sounds a little too good to be true, but according to this website, http://www.buffalowireless.net/wireless_equipment/ wireless_equipment.html, this can transmit data up to 1.2KM (line of sight) and it can function both as an access point and bridge simultaneously (it can talk to routers and regular laptops and computers).

If you wanted to use a familiar brand, Cisco's Aironet 1300, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5861/product s_configuration_guide_chapter09186a008021e5ca.html , looks like another option except it costs ten times as much and I'm not sure what advantages if any it has over the aforementioned device other than perhaps the support you'd get from a larger company like Cisco. When you deploy a network on such a scale, you're going to get people who use it to download movie after movie, so advanced bandwidth throttling (prioritizing certain types of traffic over others) would be key, and you might have to pay up for something like this Cisco device for the traffic shaping. Not sure about that...

For mega long range antennae to scatter around the neighborhood, as with the city of Cleveland which went wireless, have a look at this to learn more about the WISP (wireless internet service provider) deployment and equipment you'd need: http://www.trangobroadband.com/products/atlas_ptp. shtml.
That company sells products that can beam twenty miles (line of sight, of course).

Re:I'm confused.

[cez]

just have to sit through anoying lil pop-ups, tracking software and cookies that will be necessary to use the service...hell they'd probably change VOIP phone call rings to ads to supplement income...instead of rrrrrring...rrrrrring...it will be "Hey check out that Planet Pizza behind you! Rocking meatball subs. Hey check out that pizza place behind you! Rocking meatball subs"

Re:On the other hand

[coastwalker]

Theres plenty of non traditional suppliers lining up for the auction with similar aspirations to unwire the States. This particular idea has probably arrived too late to be considered by the Government, which will have already lined up some very agressive bidders with very deep pockets for the spectrum sale.

Its an appealing business model though, because it matches the price of the spectrum against the revenue that can be earned from it rather than the crazy bids for 3G mobile which IMHO was partly to blame for the tech crash in 2001.

Re:poles or buried

[dgatwood]

The real problem with buried cables is freezing.

Oh, yeah, and backhoes. Forgot about those. :-D

Re:I'm confused.

[kenj0418]

The missing step 2 can be found in appendix 3 of their proposal "M2Z'S COMMITMENT TO PROTECT MINORS...".

Unfiltered sites are free. Porn costs extra.

So their business plan must be:

1. Give away free broadband access
2. Charge for porn
3. Profit

kenj0418
--
This week's message brought to you by the numbers 0 and 1.

Author Dave Burstein here, agreeing

[Daveberstein]

Dave Burstein here, author of this one. Comments are right on target, so I thought to stop by with some followup.
1- The business plan sounds dubious, but heck, let's let Kleiner Perkins pay the bill to find out whether they are chasing a dot-com model. May or may not be decent business (smart folk like Dewayne Hendricks are skeptical), but it's good policy to get it built. They are only asking for a 15 year license, not perpetual.
2- The existing carriers will fight like hell to stop anything like this, as noted. So instead of whining, do something in D.C.. I hear more people making noise on these forums than I ever hear in Washington. I know you think Washington never listens, but I've seen ideas of mine in FCC regulations and congressional statements. You may not have the $million AT&T gave to Congressman Bobby Rush, but may of the people making decisions are honest and will listen to you as well. Email me daveb at dslprime.com for some ideas.
3- "So, will this be 95% of the population of the U.S., or 95% of the geographical area?" They are aiming for 95% of the population, with a sensible excuse not to get to the other 5%: excess cost of fiber to connect the towers to the Internet backbone. So my next editorial will be: Serving the next 10%: FCC needs to bring down the cost of backhaul Revive tough "special access" rules where broadband is hard to get (suggesting that if the local carrier isn't offering DSL, make them lease fiber cheaply to someone who will.)
4- All that said about universal broadband coverage on land, some small portion of users (my guess is 1-3% but no one has hard data) are best served by satellite because of terrain/distance problems. Policy on that is to find a way to bring down the price/bring up the speed of satellite service. I always prefer to do that by competition when that can work.
Dave Burstein
Editor, DSL Prime

Spectrum Cash

[TubeSteak]

Its an appealing business model though, because it matches the price of the spectrum against the revenue that can be earned from it rather than the crazy bids for 3G mobile which IMHO was partly to blame for the tech crash in 2001.

Spectrum sales have much more to do with stuff than just the tech crash.

One of the secrets to the Clinton Administration's projected budget surplus(es) was they expected a lot of cash to come in from future spectrum auctions.

The specific auction (I think) that you're talking about was for the 2500 MHz to 2690 MHz band & they were planning to auction it off "no later" than 9/30/2002. There was a lot of problems with the plan, partially because the military uses a lot of those frequencies.

Anyways, Clinton was expecting that there would be big bucks made when the FCC auctioned off the TV spectrum after they switched over from analog to digital broadcast.

If you haven't noticed, that switch never happened, the FCC never got to auction off those frequencies, and the next President didn't have all that extra cash to play with.

I'm not blaming/defending either President, just pointing out that the future Clinton surpluses were heavily dependant on FCC spectrum auctions.

Blocking "Indecent Content"?

[Mozleron]

Did any of you happen to read the Executive summary of M2Z's proposal? Their goals are: "(1)provide nationwide boadband service with no recurring costs to all users that pruchase and register an M2Z certified device; (2)construct its network so that at least 95% of the U.S. population - in urban centers and rural communities across America - can avail themselves of the service within 10 years of license grant and commencement of operations; (3)block access to indecent content for all free access service users;(emphasis added) (4)provide public safety officials with access to an interoperable secondary data network, with appropriate consultation with such officials as to their needs; and (5)submit a voluntary payment to the U.S. Treasurey of 5% of gross revenues generated from the subscription services that it will offer in addition to the free National Broadband Radio Service."

Quoted from http://www.m2znetworks.com/pdf/Application.pdf/

I'm not too sure if i'm okay with giving this agency the power to decide what is "indecent" or not. China's government has assumed that 'right' and look at what they consider "indecent". While this is America, the pandering tone of this application makes me think that the currently Bush stacked F'nCC will jump all over that "indecent Content" bit and have a field day with it...

technical complexities

[lon3st4r]

the notion and idea is a really good one. i for one, however, am not sure if the existing WiFi standards can support such a large scale deployment.

for starters, the 802.11 standards do not have a large number of channel models for open-space deployment. each nw access point will be shared by a number of people - so for example, if 54 MBps has to be shared by each laptop @ 512 Kbps, you can theoritically have only 108 people. In a real world scenario, due to contentions and access clashes- this number usually drops down to ~50 people. Assuming a ratio of active users to total users as 1:10, each nw point would support 500 users. So essentially, you'd need to put a access point for every 500 individuals. That is a LOT of access points jam-packed together.

i'm not sure if the access points can even run at their maximum supported speeds at such high densities (there will be a lot of co-channel interference from nearby access points). effectively, the available bandwidth per person will jack down to nothing.

this is not a new phenomenon also - a lot of people have reported this problem in tech-conventions where there are such a large number of access points that nothing works. even google is reportedly having trouble setting up a WiFi cover at mountainview!

to sum up - it looks like a good idea; but it requires a lot of work from the technological perspective. * lon3st4r *

Re:384/128 is low speed?

[windex]

The whole play is a hack on teleco system inefficencies.

If you order 5 or more phone lines, the ILEC is going to run a T1, because a T1 uses less copper than 5 analog lines.

The CLEC is then going to get the other end of that T1, and is going to offer to sell you cheap data on it, since hell, it is taking up a switch port anyway. And since the CLEC controls the circuit, hell, let's turn the whole thing over on ATM and do everything on demand, so you can get that full 1.54mbit of use out of it, eh?

No one winds up paying a circuit charge, because it's saving the damned teleco money at the end of the day. :)

I learned this trick working for a CLEC. They started quoting T1's with integrated voice lines to data customers who never used or even knew the voice lines were part of the circuit, just to cut costs.