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The Assassination of Wi-Fi
justelite writes "John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine has up an article looking at the new strategy of American cell-phone-service companies. From article: 'There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi. After all, it is a huge long-term threat to them. We've seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone-service companies are no dummies.'"
I got "Nothing to see here. Move along".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
... how the purveyors of bottled water would like to see kitchen sinks banned.
If pretty much anyone else said this, I might take it seriously, however, it's coming from John C. Dvorak.
The range is ridiculous or requires big antennas, there is no handover mechanism that keeps connections, not even with hiccups, the total alotted bandwidth is a joke and in a band which is used by many other applications, including TV transmitters which use the whole available band. It's a completely different product.
By definition, PEOPLE alect muicipal governments. If they want wifi they can ask for it. If they're too dumb to ask for it, they're too dumb to deserve it. Same goes for sewers and drinkable water.
This is not a signature.
...Like GM killing the municipal trolley systems of the 50s. The idea that business can provide a "more efficient" delivery of some product is often total and complete BS.
I'm not convinced that the big, evil cell phone companys are really trying to kill WiFi. Nor do I think they will. But if the author does, where are the examples. Where is the smoking gun that some cell phone company or other has petitioned a municipality to kill the free WiFi in the community? An add that only shows that Sprint is trying to sell their product?
In all honesty, I think the author is having a slow news day and doesn't have anything else to whine (sorry, write) about. But then, I've not been a fan of his work for quite a while, and whining grates on my nerves.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
We've seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance.
How do we mark the summary as a troll?
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but come on.
When you say "if they're too dumb to ask for it, they're too dumb to deserve it. Same goes for sewers and drinkable water" I have very mixed feelings.
h tml
Most western Europeans didn't ask for sewers and drinkable water; they had them foisted upon them at tax payer expense in the mid 19th century. That is certainly true of the first modern large scale sewer system which was built in London. "The transcript traces more than 250 years of human misery, due largely to ignorance of the hazards of poor sanitation. Citizens, physicians, politicians, inventors and police provided vivid horror stories of 'miasmas, plagues and sudden death" in the homes of London.'" http://swopnet.com/engr/londonsewers/londontext1.
Ignorance is deadly but curable. Ignorance about the importance of sewers and drinkable water may seem inconceivable to many of us, but such ignorance in rampant around the world.
When I watch documentaries about poor ghettos in latin America, inevitably there are toddlers playing in open cesspools and teenagers standing around unemployed, uneducated, and idle. I see that and wonder why the teenagers aren't put to work digging sewers or at least keeping toddlers out of them. For the price of the cigarettes the teenagers smoke, children could be fed and sewers built and clean water supplies maintained. I always think to myself that people who prioritize cigarettes over sewers get what they deserve just like people generally get the government they deserve.
But then I am more charitable and assume that people live in horrid conditions because of ignorance. Ignorance causes poverty and death.
There was a documentary (I think on 20/20) about hunger in the U.S.A. A father was being interviewed and he explained that toward the end of the month, there is no bread left and the children have to go hungry for days. During the interview, the father was standing in front of his satellite dish and smoking. For the price of one pack of cigarettes, the children could have eaten basic stables like bread, potatoes, and canned vegetables for several days. For the price of the satellite dish and its likely monthly subscription, the children could have been clothed and fed.
I couldn't help thinking that the father's priorities were a little skewed and sad.
That aside, the article is off-base in my opinion. WiFi seems more likely to become a boost to cellular usage - expanding networks and lowering costs for providers. (IE: They combine their cellular service to work with WiFi VOIP - when a customer is in WiFi range, calls go over cheaper VOIP - when no WiFi is available it goes cellular.)
How do you price it? If I have a WiFi capable device loaded with VOIP software that I connect either via my own, or an open access point to someone else using a similar setup, there is no reasonable way for carriers to extort money from me. The do not control the network and they do not control my use of it. That is what scares the shit out of them. There is no way out for them except for forcing manufacturers to not add WiFi support to their devices. Which is the exact strategy the carriers by large are using. So far it has worked because manufacturers are wholly dependent on carriers to sell their phones.
Football Odds
The commonly-available "LINKSYS" Wi-Fi service won't be going away any time soon.
...same as when they killed CB radio. My response then is the same now - 300 watts of cold steel Palomar SSB amplifier.
So, "There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi." What evidence, where? No mention of any such evidence in the article, just some business analysis.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The article's title is the "Killing of WiFi" and there not one word about how the telco's are going to do it. Jam the 2.4 GHz ISM band? Sue cities that offer free WiFi? Get the Congress to ban free WiFi?
'prime' spectrum for experimental devices and allow those devices to use the same power as cell phone networks
With conventional technology that will only get you a screamfest where the devices can't understand one another among the devices which are screaming at some other device (i.e. interference). Sharing a frequency over a big area, without central control, is beyond the reach of currently available consumer technology.
"If I do trust it's legit, do I trust the people running it to not make critical mistakes that could compromise my data?"
I can ask the same of whatever data network the cell phone companies provide. What's their standard on encryption, authentication and other security matters?
Question for you: If you're that concerned about security, why don't use you a VPN or a SSH tunnel?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
4 years ago, my professor for personal mobile communications class said wi-fi and cellular complements each other. It was his first year at school after 5-6 years of experience in one of the biggest cellular (hardware) companies. Later, he corrected himself by saying both sides are trying to kill each-other: cellular is trying to provide higher data rates (and hence WCDMA etc.) and wi-fi is trying to incorporate mobility and hand-off which are essential for voice communications (and hence WiMAX, IEEE 802.20 etc.). I believe at some point both will merge if the IP rights issues could be solved.
Competition is always good for both end user and for engineers (and engineers to be like myself).
Bingo. The real problem with cell-phone data service is the ridiculous pricing regime. 10 cents for a 160 character text message? Get real. Lets suppose for a moment that audio consumes 10kbps and its latency sensitive. One minute retails for 30 cents... 10k*60/8b... you get the picture. Data rates are out of this world, disconnected from reality. That's the real story.
Although there's the problem for bandwidth (think baud) of being inversely proportional to frequency (the lower the freqency the longer the range but the less Mbytes/second you get), there are some techniques to overcome this and which the cell phone companies themselves use.
This doesn't make sense. If bandwidth was inversely proportional to frequency, then the lower the frequency the more MBytes/sec you would get. But bandwidth and frequency are actually two separate issues. The frequency refers to the carrier frequency. In case of 802.11, it is 2.4GHz or 5.8Ghz. Cell phones here in Canada use 800 and 1900 MHz (I think). But these numbers have nothing to do with bandwidth. The bandwidth is determined by how wide the channel is that is centred around that frequency. Take FM Radio for example. Stations are set 200 KHz apart, so you have say 98.3MHz, 98.5Mhz, etc... That means that each station has 200 KHz of bandwidth. Bandwidth does not vary with carrier frequency.
If I had the 800MHz frequency and 20MHz of bandwidth, that would mean that I would actually be using the frequencies from 790MHz to 810MHz.
So any government representatives that sold off the spectrum to the highest should be taken out the back and quietly put out of our misery. Why the hell the didn't auction it upon the basis of who would provide the cheapest service to the public, oh wait, I know the answer to that, GREED.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The air and water are public resources. Privatization of them is not a good thing, if you can't accept that stop reading and please shoot yourself now.
Sewers must use common pipes for many reasons, water as well. This requires a "neutral" area of land for interconnections. Nearly all roads are a public resource (well, the land is.) Typically, the pipes run on the land the roads also do. Depending on the wisdom & corruption of your local government determines how well it is managed.
Using the SAME LOGIC we regulate radio waves. Its a public resource and its quite limited. The FCC is doing a poor job managing OUR air waves. Cell phone companies are wasting good bandwidth with this so called "wonderful" competition. It would be better to force them to share a wide band, which would necessitate some sort of industry standard. Its not necessary to mandate specifics, but if competent at it, I see no reason why not to do so as well.
Its under this direction of management that it begins to make sense to have local governments setup more; depending on how much accessibility you want.
Given how bad cell phones and ISPs are today, I can't see how a somewhat corrupt government can't beat them.
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