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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.
Poor security didn't stop cellular adoption.
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.)
I believe there was a related article a couple of weeks ago where Google (?) was petitioning the FCC to require cellular networks to open their services to competitors - my speculation at the time was that they wanted to offer a full WiFi VOIP solution where you had cellular service when no WiFi was available.
To make my babble short, I think WiFi will expand cellular usage - not the other way around.
...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.
He himself admitted to using "dubious facts" in trying to prove his case... which is why I've tagged this article with "dubiousfacts" and read the rest of it after he said that with a grain of salt. He made huge generalizations about how people see the internet that I've never seen, and he himself is confusing the difference between the web and the internet.
Municpal governments don't provide food, yet the grocery stores are full. They don't provide clothing, yet I'm wearing a shirt. And unless you're homeless and it's a cold night, they don't provide shelter. Yet here I am with a roof over my head. Food, clothing and shelter are FAR more necessary to my well being than wifi, yet the market manages to provide those necessities to me without the help of municipal government.
For some classes of products, such as sewers and drinkable water, it may make sense to put your local conniving pocket-lining councilman in charge. But I'm far from convinced that wifi falls under that category.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's really not that simple. I used to live in a fairly small town (Galesburg, IL) where there was really only one provider for high-speed internet access. As a result, the price of broadband was very high, prohibitively so for most the residents in the town, which had a relatively depressed economy.
Several years back, the local government tried to set up a municipal ISP to provide cheap broadband for no profit. The final decision of whether or not to go for it was left to a referendum. In the months leading up to it, the local cable company (who would lose a lot of money if this went through) ran a massive campaign to turn public opinion against the municipal broadband project. At the same time, the law did not allow the city to run a similar campaign in favor of the plan. So the only information being disseminated to most voters was completely anti (FUD, mostly), and few of them got much of a chance to hear the other side of the story, let alone a reasoned and balanced overview of the pros and cons of municipal broadband.
Naturally, it got voted down. And it wasn't because the electorate was dumb. Due to the nature of the law and the fact that money is speech and the cable company had all the money, most voters simply were not informed on the issue - and it's a blue collar town, so most the people simply didn't have enough knowledge of technology to really be able to inform themselves. Maybe the plan still would have broken down had the whole situation not been a complete failure of democracy, but saying it's as simple as the electorate being able to ask for it if they're smart enough is a gross oversimplifcation of reality.
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.
This editorial in Forbes entitled "Wireless Shootout: Suits vs. Cowboys" points out that cellular carriers and next-generation WiFi technology may be replaying the past competition between mainframes ("suits") and PCs ("cowboys"). The cellular carriers are inherently limited in their ability to adapt to modern wireless requirements because they operate under three fundamental constraints: a build-out mentality, vertical integration, and complicated pricing. The author points out that this same mindset ultimately caused mainframe suppliers to lose their dominance to the more nimble PCs in mainstream computing, and predicts that for the same reasons, more adaptable next-generation wireless technology such as WiMAX and ZigBee will ultimately prevail over cellular infrastructure in the future.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
I'm sorry, but this article says nothing more than it's title.
There are no:
1) Facts
2) Specific instances of any wireless company activity
3) Conspiracy theories about how they might be going about this...
While it may be true that widespread wi-fi may threaten a part of the cell phone provider business model, the article makes no mention of any company doing anything about it (save the introduction of a couple data access cards).
The article also does not address the common-sense fact that Wi-Fi (as it currently exists) can't replace the type of coverage that the cell phone company can give you.
It seems that Dvorak's editors have even lower standards than those of Slashdot!!
Go here
http://www.fon.com/en/
get a damn wifi router, stick it on your cable/dsl (they give them away sometimes, too, but a few $ is worth it), now, you can get wifi from everyone else who is sharing their 'net.
I can walk a few blocks in most cities and get online. Help us (and yourself) out, m'kay?
The latest Slashdot meme.
If Dvorak had taken about ten minutes to learn something about the differences in infrastructure between cell services and WiFi (hint, it has something to do with frequencies) ...
Yes, that's right.
In physics there's measurement called "skin depth" which is the distance a wave travels before it's power level drops by 1/e or about 1/3. IIRC from my old physics 110A-B at Berkeley, it's something like wavelength/2*pi. So for higher frequencies (wavelength*freq=constant) the power drop of is greater. 802.x devices don't have much of a range because the FCC limits their frequencies in the GHz range.
A way to overcome this problem (partly) is to increase the power, but FCC uses the old 'inteference' argument to prevent this. The FCC allows 802.x devices only about 1mW/channel.
Cell phone companies on the other hand pay the FCC billions for the privilege of having exclusive rights (in the form of licenses) to low frequency 'prime' prime parts of the spectrum and with permission to use orders of magnitude more power than than 802.x devices.
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.
Now, if the FCC would only set aside a small part of that 'prime' spectrum for experimental devices and allow those devices to use the same power as cell phone networks, then perhaps we could begin to experiment with a new kind of network.
When you look at what some folks are doing with mesh networking and you combine that with higher power, lower frequency for 802.x-type devices, you begin to realize the potential of having a different kind of network, one that is neutral, one were you pay a wireless ISP for 'bandwidth' (just like you do for the wired Internet) and you access that network, with a device of your own choosing and use the bandwith you buy for voice, Internet, email, messages, video streaming, etc.. without any restrictions from the provider (unlike cell phone networks).
Of course, the cell phone companies are so influencial in Congress and pay so much money to government, it's difficult to see how this could become a reaility any time soon.
Are cell phone companies powerful?
Yes, of course
Do other companies, with political pull, have an interest in more global wifi access?
Yes, of course...
Will more global wifi access be free?
Not likely, but it probably will be available. Cell phone networks surely can profit from this and they already do. Isn't it lucrative to offer a cellular connection to the internet and then provide wifi from that location (shouldn't this be obvious to John)? I do believe that AT&T offered to provide me with overpriced wi-fi access the last time I walked into Barnes and Noble. I'm failing to find anything relevant in the entire article.
Well;
1. It's poorly written
2. PC Magazine does not hold any status for me, hence the kilo of salt is still burning in my belly.
Now, let's take a look at the general populace, and wifi as a whole. Cellular cards have to be bought and paid for over and above the laptop. Pretty much any laptop out today has an 802.11a/b/g chipset built into it and all versions of microsoft windows, be it XP or Vista will ask you if you want to "connect" to a public wireless network. so much so that it's considered a security risk by most companies.
Enter 3.5G and 4G. I'm no pundit but i've been in this industry long enough to see a failing standard a mile out, yes cell networks are liscenced, expensive and slow when compared with 802.11. Bell in Canada is rolling out 802.11 AP's on thier public phones. The cost of licensing the bands for 3.5G and 4G from the FCC and the CRTC in put the implementation of these networks into the billions. Where as a good metropolitan wifi implemenation will cost you back a few million.
It's called pervasive availability, and John needs to understand that people may be "STUPD" on a whole but he really should take his head out of his behind. if you have 3000+ laptops at any given moment and somones standing in a public area using it and they do not have a cellular card because they are "STUPID" they will proabaly notice the whole "Wifi" notice in XP when they sit in a coffee shop and start writeing, or when they are in a park outside.
EV-DO, EDGE and all those other toys require pre-requisite knoledge, ie: the client has to go out and become aware of these technologies before they can use them, they only compete where you have somone that flys a LOT.
My opinion shouldn't count as I am known to play with all the wireless networks I can find, and given the opportunity I'll use the 802.11. I guess i'm not stupid.
You make an interesting technical argument, but there are a few details I think you missed. The 2.4 GHz and the 5.6 GHz bands are license free ISM bands. They allow ANY device to operate, within reason, provided the device conforms to certain power radiation limits and stays within the ISM band limits. There are many different kinds of RF devices operating in ISM bands including (but not limited to) diathermy machines, induction heaters, cordless telephones, and microwave ovens.
There is a physical chemistry reason why certain frequencies were designated for the ISM bands; they happen to be frequencies that are not as useful as other (similar) frequencies for communication purposes because those frequencies represent electrical resonances in commonly occurring atmospheric gas molecules. These resonances cause excessive path loss in what would otherwise be usable free space paths. Water is one molecule that causes excessive path loss, but only at certain frequencies. The fact some of the ISM bands coincide with water molecule resonances is not an accident. Ever wonder why your microwave oven operates at 2.4 GHz in the ISM band and not some other frequency? The radio frequency energy absorbed by all those water molecules has to go somewhere....and the conversion of RF energy into molecular vibration (heat) is a good candidate for the cause of the excessive path loss at 2.4 GHz compared to path losses at 2.3 GHz or 2.5GHz.
The cellular companies all operate on licensed frequencies for which they have paid "Big Bucks" to the Federal Government and they need to make a return on their "Investment" for their shareholders. BTW, the fees the cellular companies pay to the FCC have been used by Congress to balance the Federal budget. There is a long story here that I won't go into now about spectrum use, but suffice it to say, the creation of the Cellular telephone" bands was not the first time, nor the last time, that Congress has "auctioned" off parts of the RF spectrum to the highest bidder, spectrum previously used for other purposes.
The cellular phone companies routinely disable features built into the hardware and software in many of the newer cell phones because they hope to force their customers into paying exorbitant prices for "enabling" those features, even if these are features that actually have almost no inherent cost. SMS is one example. SMS stands for "Short Message Service" and is actually the use of a very small portion of the bit rate available to cell phone users. SMS bits are like "space available" seats on airliners, they are used to fill otherwise partly empty data packets, so SMS should cost users almost nothing, but SMS users pay a higher price for SMS bits than they do for voice data bits when they talk.
I think the reason for this is consumer ignorance. Kids frequently "texting" each other have no idea how SMS works, nor do they know how much bandwidth they are NOT using when they send SMS messages to each other. SMS does not even have guaranteed delivery, unlike some other wireless messaging protocols. But don't forget that a corporation is legally obligated to make as much money as possible for its stockholders.
The infrastructure cost of an ad hoc 802.11x mesh network is "unfair competition" as far as the cellular operators are concerned because 802.11x access point costs only a few hundred dollars each. Site rent for them is also low because they usually are located on top of streetlight poles. But the cellular phone operators must pay rent for their sites on the order of $1500 each per month, on top of hardware investments in the many thousands of dollars. This "overhead" cost for the cellular operators must come from somewhere, or they will go out of business.
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.