Slashdot Mirror
Sprint Rolls out WiMAX Access
Tokin84 writes "Today, Sprint announced that it would pour over $4.5Bn into a 2.5Ghz WiMAX system to be rolled out across the country. From the article: 'Sprint Nextel, the nation's largest holder of radio spectrum in the precious 2.5 GHz band, has reportedly chosen to deploy Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access (WiMAX) as the foundation of its technology platform for the carrier's mobile broadband Next-Generation Network (NGN) build-out.'"
If you could use wireless reliably on a desktop machine over a equivalent or higher speed than your current wired connection, why would you say no to it?
How about fibre-to-the-curb or even better, to my demark point instead. Wireless is nice, but I spend 90% of my on-line time connected to a wire.
You obviously don't get out much.
I predict the logical successor to the 4x4 SUV will be a vehicle with a desk in place of the dashboard, because I swear more business is being done on the road than in boardrooms.
excuse me officer, do you have an appointment?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Cheaper to cover an area with radio signal than to trench cable any day of the week.
Filmo The Klown
This is very likely going to cause even more problems for the environment. Anyone care to comment on the recent heatwave that has swept the planet within the past month? Record temperatures on every part of the globe. With the worldwide deployment of WiMax, we'll be dumping even more energies into the environment that don't belong there. This isn't just AM or FM radio we're talking here. We're talking microwaves. The VERY SAME energy that's used to cook your food in a microwave oven! All we're doing is turning the planet into one big Amana Radar Range and global temps will skyrocket to new extremes of both hi and lo temps.
We've already done tremendous and very ironic damage with air conditioning. In our interest of keeping our working and living spaces comfortably climate controlled we forgot one thing: thermal energy is like water. If you take heat from one space and pump it out, it has to go somewhere. We've been using ACs in our houses, our cars, and businesses, and god knows where else to pump the heat out. Well, where does all that heat go? Into the outside air. And what happens when you pump water into the outdoors? You make ponds, lakes and oceans. Same thing with heat, only worse. All that heat is now coming back to get us. But, even more irony... because it's getting hotter out there, we're using our ACs more than ever before and pumping MORE heat out! I predict that by 2015, the typical summer temps on the equator will be 180F. They're already averaging about 140F and that's up from the relatively cool 95F they used to be back in the 70s. We've got a huge problem folks and WiMax is only going to make it worse. Stop them before it's too late.
Oh... and the internet is a series of tubes.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Because that would mean that there is something wrong with the wire and it needs fixing.
Evil people are out to get you.
Sprint didn't "roll out" anything. They announced their intent to spend money to do so.
Who said headlines had to be truthful? Besides, I can't count the number of times /. headlines made it sound like something has already been done when the summary admits it's "being developed", "in the planning phase", "talked about".
They do it for the clicks, man.
Review the Temporal Guide to Slashdot Headline Reading:
1. Present tense means wait a few years.
2. Future tense means it'll never happen.
3. Past tense means SlashBack.
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)