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Using WiMAX To Replace a Phone?
vigmeister writes "I've decided to explore the possibility of using a netbook/MID as a phone while eschewing the services of a cellphone provider. Now that Atlanta (where I live) has WiMAX from Clear, I ought to be connected to the Internet everywhere within the city (once I sign up). Theoretically, this should mean that I will be able to use my netbook as a cell phone. Of course, there are some very real issues to overcome and I am simply putting this experiment together to see if it is something that is realistically possible.
This could possibly extend to uncapped 3G connections (if they exist any more) as well. Are there any obvious problems you would foresee? Is there anything I have missed or any other questions I should attempt to answer in this 'experiment' of mine? A major issue is, of course, the fact that my pseudo-netbook has to be carried everywhere and always left on."
A lot of voip services don't support 911 calls, which is something you can ignore 'most of the time' but would certainly want in some situations.
How about the fact that you'll be walking around talking into a very slim brick?
You don't *honestly* think that you're going to get WiMAX coverage everywhere you go, do you? WiMAX isn't magic. It has most of the same limitations that regular 802.11 b/g has. It's an *improvement*, but you still aren't going to get good signal inside of most public buildings.
Are there any obvious problems you would foresee?
How are you going to dial 911?
I believe there will be too many retransmissions on Clear's network to make mobile voice a good choice unless they are somehow prioritizing the packets for you.
Fixed voice may be workable though...fewer reflections and no roaming.
Even the most frugal netbooks don't run a whole day on battery power if a wireless network module is in active use. In my experience, 3G is a little less heavy on the battery than 802.11g. It still cuts the battery life of my Asus 901 by 20%.
Unless you barely use your cellphone, you'll find that the netbook's battery is
your biggest limiting factor. Particularly if you use a bluetooth headset so you aren't walking around
with a cabled headset plugged into the netbook. There are 802.11 based SIP phones that can serve the same purpose.
I think you are going to find that, compared to cell phone makers who have pretty much figured out power management, the netbook makers are still figuring it out. But YMMV, I've only used Asuseseses and Dellses.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I think an important thing to consider is the ability to forward your number. I'm thinking of doing that in general. If I have one number which I can forward different places, I can give that out to people who want to call me and I can have it forwarded to a prepaid cell phone, my work phone or other devices as needed at any particular time. It makes your idea much more practical and I think it's how people will do things in the future. It also helps enable more competition in the market for mobile phone devices.
Having to leave the netbook on with an ACTIVE WiMAX connection. Enjoy your cell phone with a 2 hour battery life, when not using it to talk.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
You say:
Are there any obvious problems you would foresee?
and then a sentence later:
A major issue is, of course, the fact that my pseudo-netbook has to be carried everywhere and left always on.
I would consider this a pretty big obvious problem.
Because they're not ubiquitous. You will end up somewhere where coverage isn't so great for your new protocol. If you can handoff to an older protocol, you will keep your connection. So this is why even a few years ago you could get Verizon phones that still supported AMPS, why every phone that supports EV-DO also supports 1X (and older standards), and why every phone with WCDMA/HSDPA/HSUPA/etc still supports plain old GSM/GPRS/EDGE.
It's also why it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a WiMAX only phone. You need at least WiMAX+GSM, or WiMAX+CDMA1X. You need to be able to hand off to the older interfaces. And probably you want to support everything... WiMAX when it's available, HSDPA or WCDMA when that's available but WiMAX isn't, or GSM/GPRS/EDGE when that's all that's available.
Or maybe you never leave downtown Atlanta. Then maybe WiMAX-only would be fine, assuming you trust the reliability of the relatively new network.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I guess I would first and foremost look at their coverage map for Atlanta, and see all the sections, even in the middle of the city, that are marked as "coming soon", and make darn sure that I would get a signal in the areas I needed it. One thing i've noticed with sprint(who owns a big chunk of clear), is their coverage maps (and I'm assuming all the companies do) Lie on the maps. just cause the map says its good signal there, doesn't mean it really is.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
To use a netbook as a true phone replacement, you need battery life of 24 hours (what happens if a call comes in while you are switching battery packs?) Also, what is the battery life of your bluetooth headset? In addition, I believe most netbooks shut themselves down when the lid is closed; you need to either figure out a way to defeat this or figure out a way to carry it around with the lid open.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I use Clearwire's regular wireless internet here in Seattle. They block Skype traffic to promote their own VIOP plan for an extra $10-15/month. They might not let you use your netbook as a cell phone without ponying up extra $$.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
The CP Lawn Bowling Club in Victoria, BC has done this. WiMAX -> Buffalo AP -> Linksys PAP2T -> SIP provider. Bringing the monthly bill from $54/month with Telus on copper pair, to $35/month for unlimited long distance and broadband/wifi as well. http://cplawnbowling.org/
Are there any obvious problems you would foresee?
Battery life is going to be a big one. Netbooks have better battery life than, say, full-size laptops... But it still isn't much compared to your average cell phone. Especially since you're going to have to keep the thing powered up at all times. No sleep, no hibernate, nada. And wireless connectivity typically drains the battery faster.
You'll want some kind of headset/earpiece/whatever... Unless you're just going to do the speakerphone thing all the time. If you go with bluetooth that will be another wirless connection, which will drain your battery faster.
Dialing 911 will be an issue. I don't know what you plan on using to terminate your end of the call... Skype? Some generic SIP provider? But you'll want to make sure they've got some way of handling 911 calls.
Also, depending on who's terminating your end of the call, voicemail and whatnot could be an issue. If you wander out of coverage, or run out of batteries, or drop your netbook down a flight of stairs what'll happen? Will people get voicemail? Or will it just ring forever?
And that raises the question of coverage... You indicate that there's city-wide WiMAX now... But cell phones can roam nation-wide. If you travel much this could be a real issue.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Are there any obvious problems you would foresee?
"Oh my god, someone call 9-1-1!"
"Hang on, let me get my computer out of suspend...
And put my headset on...
Ok, I am dialing...
Hello, yes, emergency-- What? You are the 9-1-1 dispatch center where? Tulsa?"
Probably a better choice than a netbook, since it's closer to cell phone size. Battery life is probably still an issue, however. I'm also not sure how possible it is to obtain one anymore, so you probably shouldn't procrastinate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N810#Nokia_N810_WiMAX_Edition
I like this idea, but I am more enamored by the idea of a Wimax enabled phone. HTC will be offering a Wimax Android phone soon I believe. This is cool, because the it's carriers can't lock down the phone since it's OSS. A even cooler solution would be deploy your own Wimax router at home and have free Internet/Voip service miles from home. When you are out of range you could use a prepaid phone.. I do think laptop Wimax Voip solution would be good especially for outgoing calls.
But I would use the Google Voice service to try your laptop first and then fall back to a cheap pay-as-you-go cellphone number, for all the times when you don't have your laptop conveniently available.
davecb@spamcop.net
I wasn't familiar with MID, so I googled it. I have my doubts that your Modesto Irrigation District will function as a telephone, and anyway it doesn't look very portable.
Is there a possibility of latency issues?
I (my workplace) uses one of the local wireless internet providers and I've seen ping times (3 pings, average time recorded, done every 5 minutes to the default gateway, www.yahoo.com, and www.google.com ) and the extremes go from 50-60 ms to 3000 ms over the course of a day. (Yes, all three increase and decrease at the same times). You can tell when there are more people active (late afternoon to about midnight) because the ping times go to crap (500+ regularly, those times are were the 2000-3000 show up), and when people go to bed (2:00 to 8:00 are the lowest normally).
I've looked at our bandwidth use and there is no correlation between in/out and ping times. (Yes, that was my first thought when the high pings showed up. I've looked and our bandwidth doesn't seem to have an effect on the ping times.)
Average ping times over the course of several days is around 120 ms IIRC (been a while since I've looked, might have been 90ish, but it was kinda high in any case) as opposed to my local home which is using a DSL connection which averages 40-50 ms. (Min about 35-40, max about 400) (High uploads are most likely to effect the ping times at home, although some QOS on the firewall has fixed that)
Luckily you can make 911 calls from payphones.
Now if only there was still a payphone somewhere.
Portland, Oregon, also has WiMax through Clear. There are decently large sections of Portland (including my house,) that do not have WiMax coverage; and larger sections with very spotty coverage. Admittedly, Portland is a much "hillier" city than Atlanta, but it only stands to reason that some parts of Atlanta would have coverage that leaves much to be desired, as well.
The 911 problem others mention can be resolved by picking a VoIP provider that has 911 service; or by manually bookmarking your local phone number for emergency dispatch.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
911 is overrated.
The chances that you are going to really, life-or-death, need it are pretty small.
Maybe if you live with a bunch of people who've already got medical conditions - maybe.
But I'm pretty confident that even in almost all of those cases, a delay of a couple of minutes wouldn't make a bit of difference.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
WiMAX was designed to handle VoIP traffic, and has specific traffic categories on the airlink for isochronous flows, like RTP and other VoIP payload streams. Unlike something like Ethernet, which is CSMA/CD (carrier sense multiple access, with collision detection), traffic is scheduled by the carrier network. For uplink data, your WiMAX card goes through a process of requesting bandwidth on what amounts to a hailing channel, and then gets a bandwidth allocation it can use. In theory, a small but constant amount of bandwidth can be allocated for VoIP at the airlink level, resulting in low jitter, low latency, and low frame loss.
There are a couple of problems with this.
The first problem is that not all WiMAX cards on the market today (in fact, quite possibly none of them) have sufficient sophistication in their device drivers and microcontrollers to send the RTP (or Skype, or whatever VoIP protocol you're using) packets on an isochronous service flow while the balance of the packets travel on a general-purpose service flow. As a result, the RTP (etc) packets have to compete with whatever else your machine is doing, either stuff you're initiating with the browser, or background things like checking email or updating the Vista weather widget, or checking for updates of one kind or another. It doesn't help matters that no operating system has a network stack that implements the service flow concept.
The second problem is that low-speed isochronous flows over the WiMAX OFDMA airlink depend upon sharing a fairly large timeslot with other users transmitting simultaneously on the uplink using a different set of carriers, at least if the system is going to be economically feasible for the carrier. Allocating an entire timeslot often enough to keep the delay below half a second or so would result in considerable wasted bandwidth, so the idea is to have users share a timeslot by have each one use only a fraction of the available carriers. Decoding the resulting burst at the base station then depends upon maintaining orthogonality between OFDM carriers, which means that exact frequency synchronization is required between multiple users. While each user's WiMAX card synchronizes its clock with the base station, doppler shift due to changes in speed or direction or a changing multipath environment can change the received frequency at the base station enough to compromise orthogonality and make the burst impossible to decode.
The result of all this is, from your perspective, is that your VoIP traffic could be jittery and have long delays and high packet loss, especially when the carrier's network is heavily loaded.
Wireless technologies depend too heavily on environmental conditions for good quality of service. I don't know how reliable WiMAX is in actual deployments, but every wireless data technology I have seen so far suffers from a variety of problems associated with being wireless. I can't say that WiMAX has managed to overcome the problem of being wireless, but I seriously doubt it. My point here is that trying to do VOIP over a wireless link will not likely be reliable or acceptable.
Hello, yes, emergency-- What? You are the 9-1-1 dispatch center where? Tulsa?"
Or just dial 404-658-6666, which is the direct line to City of Atlanta 911. (Useful to know when your cell phone happens to connect to a tower outside the city limits, and 911 routes your call to the county emergency services, but the county won't send anyone to your address, because you live inside the city limits, and your call is disconnected when the county operators attempt to transfer you to the correct call center ..... four times in a row ..... )
I thought the same thing when I saw that my PPC phone supported wifi. However, the battery on the phone has a very limited life when I have both wifi and bluetooth running. I'm lucky if I can get half an hour out of a fully charged battery. Also, the problem with non-EVDO wireless ISP's is that they are really designed for fixed wireless, not roaming. If you think you see to many dead zones with your cell phone, wait until you try WiMax.
I may be wrong, but it doesn't sound like they're ready to cancel their cell service. This seems like a great experiment, and you should definitely go for it. You'll run into some of the limitations described above, but this could be a viable solution down the road, with the right modifications. Do it, document it, and have fun with it.
It seems like the arguments against this can be put in 3 categories. 911, battery life and coverage.
I would think that if you are viewing this as a "cell"phone replacement then it would obviously fail on all 3.
I remember being able to live without a cellphone. In fact, I miss it. I find it very annoying that in our cellphone enamoured society my friends and relatives feel "entitled" to talk to me whenever, wherever I might be. I don't want to talk to someone as I go through the checkout line in the grocery store. I find it annoying to try to understand someone who will not speak up when I am driving my Jeep. It's loud in there. Let alone the safety issues! I'd rather call people back when it's convenient for me. Just like I would have with an answering machine and a landline about 12 years ago. Does this make me old? I am only 29.
That in mind I too have considered what the author is asking though I would use a more portable form, some sort of PDA rather than a netbook.
I would keep separate power adapters in my office at work, one at home and a third in my car. Most of the time I would be in one of those places and could plug it in. Don't want to be tethered to the plug? Use bluetooth! If I don't get a signal in my car then oh-well. I know how to change a tire! That about takes care of the power problem. It just doesn't have to be on every moment I am not in one of those places. If I need to make a call, that's when I would turn it on and use the battery.
As for coverage... wifi at home and work are easy. Your mileage will vary at work but I doubt many on this site don't have it at home. Anywhere else it works... that's just a bonus.
Think you have too much of a social life to not be always connected? Do you think you will miss too much because you're out? I think not... you are on Slashdot! Seriously though, I was a college student with one of the busiest lives I knew just before I got my first cellphone. Missing calls didn't stop me, if I missed it then I was already busy! If I missed too many calls then maybe I would have ended up at home, but then I wouldn't miss the next call. See how that works?!
Now, 911. This issue has been brought up against every form of VoIP since the begining. I have to ask... does it really matter that much? Honestly, I don't know the answer to this but don't the 911 operators have the ability to transfer to one another quickly? If not then this is a problem the public should be crying to see addressed! What if a call was coming in via radio or some other third party method where the person making the call is not in the same local as the emergency. Hasn't there always been a need for 911 calls to be transfered?
I've always theorized that there's nothing like a good, old-fashioned PHONE. I've known people want to get rid of their phone lines because "I'll just use Skype and the neighbor's wi-fi".
One word here: reliability. I don't want my phone line to be reliant on either [1] the electrical main working at my home, or [2] my computer being powered on and working.
Back in my landline-only days, I always had a cordless and corded phone, so I could make and receive calls during a power failure. Now that I'm cell-only, the problem is taken care of, as long as I keep my phone charged.
"Honey, call 911! The neighbor's house in on fire!"
"I can't! I've been mooching their wi-fi and the fire already destroyed their WAP, so I can't Skype!"
Tell that to anyone who lives in or near the downtown area of any major city. My wife works as an MT (Medical Technician) near downtown in a city that only has a population of about 200k people, and they get gunshot and trauma victims all the time based on 911 calls (because they are informed by the 911 people that the ambulance is enroute, and they are the priority trauma center for this county) and most of the time these people live. It's the random off the street victims who stumble into the ER where 911 isn't called that die, usually by bleeding out while trying to make it to the hospital rather than having an EMT get them into a state where they can at least survive long enough to get into the capable hands of a trauma surgeon.
Agreed, the 911 fixation is a pretty lame objection. What's the chance of being in an emergency situation where there is nobody else and no other phone around? In my many years I sure haven't seen it. I think this obsession with 911 availability that always crops up in voip discussions is just another consequence of the TV news-driven mass hysteria that's taken over the US psyche. The world really ain't that scary, folks.
Now, the battery life and the ungainly size, those are serious problems and I'd think they'd make it an obvious non-starter right out of the gate.
I have a netbook with wimax, and I use it when I go down to the corner bar to shoot the shit with the local drunkards but need to stay in touch with work (since work is an international call away and voip is cheaper than using my cell phone). The limited battery life is actually a good thing in this case; when the battery dies, it's time to pay up and go home.
Lots of people laugh at it but sitting at a table in a comfortable space it's fine. Trying to use it walking down the street or in a crowded shop would be absurd. You'd need a very particular kind of life to make this your primary phone.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I'm surprised I'm seeing not a lot of comments here about latency issues. I live in Baltimore and I also happen to live in an area where we're stuck with a single provider for broadband internet (a condo with an exclusive contract to a horrible, horrible ISP. No, not Comcast or Verizon... MDU Communications). Before WiMAX came along, I had no option but to stick with the horrible ISP or deal with dial up. When I found out WiMAX was available where I live, I was excited. I went to one of their booths at a mall and played with it, but I was a little concerned with the latency. I was pinging google and wasn't getting a response for ~250ms. This isn't horrible for such a service, but even MDU gives me less than half that for most sites.
You might want to stop by a WiMAX booth in a mall like I did and try and make a few calls and make sure everything works as expected. They let me do pretty much whatever I wanted (in fact, the sales guy pretty much left me alone).
FWIW, I work for a telephony provider and we see approximately 1 call per day to emergency services per 1k lines.
Across the air interface - WiMAX can support VoIP calls without problems. There are two scheduler types that are good for this - UGS (Unsolicited Grant Service best for G.711 codecs and no voice activity detection) and ERT-PS (Enhanced Realtime Polling Service - good for compressed codecs that do silence supression). Even with an unloaded WiMAX cell the Best Effort scheduler type isn't so hot due to the SS BW-request, BS grant, SS transmit sequence for uplink traffic which means there is a fair bit of one way latency and jitter in the uplink direction. All scheduling activities get controlled by the Base Station which is good, however most service providers will over subscribe the best effort data queues meaning that you probably want to avoid BE traffic.
If configured to do so, the WiMAX network can support dynamic service flow creation, so when your SIP message says that a call needs to be set up, the controller will find out if the user's profile supports QoS and whether or not there is bandwidth available on the air interface, a service flow for the RTP stream can be created for the duration of the call - however it is unlikely that the service provider would allow that for competitors voice calls and things like Skype would be battling other customers traffic in the BE queues, giving a richer experience if you use the network providers voice services.
WiMAX is smart enough to change which radio modulation scheme is used (QPSK 1/2, QPSK 3/4, 16QAM 1/2, 16QAM 3/4 in the uplink direction for instance) depending on packet error rate (mainly impacted by signal quality though signal strength is also impact) so in poorer conditions a more robust but less efficient scheme is used. Even so, there may be a point where coverage just isnt reliable enough for a phone call to work even with signal coverage (some of this may depend on codec selection)
It is unlikely that WiMAX will give ubiquitous coverage, so having a netbook as your primary portable communications device may not be a good idea if you always need to make/recieve calls on the fly. That said, with client based Mobile IP and multiple access technologies WiFi/WiMAX/CDMA your applications can be unaware of which connection is in use at the time which might be good enough for some purposes (continuous shell sessions), however it would seem unlikely that such a thing would be good for voice with acceptable quality.
and most of the time these people live.
And, as I emphasized in my original post, how many would have died if they were just 5 minutes later getting to the hospital?
That's the key - is the cost and worry about all the infrastructure really worth the results?
The choice is not between emergency services and no emergency services, it is between getting emergency service and getting emergency service a few minutes sooner.
None of the pro-E911 information I could find ever bothers to frame the question in that manner, its always one-sided statistics about all the calls that came in or at best all the cases where an ambulance took someone to the hospital. Never is it about the actual trade-offs that have been made in the real world.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You're describing the same sort of stupid thought process that leads people not to vaccinate, "everyone else gets vaccinated so I don't have to since the disease won't hit me". The problem is if too many people get service that doesn't provide 911/don't get vaccinated then the coverage starts to break down and you get to a tragedy of the commons result which is that everyone is relying on a shared good but unwilling to pitch in to support that good.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Well, if someone has an uncontrolled bleeder, 5 minutes usually makes a difference between life or death. I'm not talking about the "Oh my god I broke my leg" situations but the "Oh my god my boyfriend stabbed me in the fucking stomach and now I have an uncontrolled GI bleed." Trust me, it's all too fucking common (which is why my wife wants to get a job with the city's only private hospital that is not a trauma center).
I've been considering this, and through my research. Most capped 3G connections (data plans) are still cheaper than cellphone service if all you want to use is voip. Skype doesn't use too much bandwidth. 2000 minutes of talking on skype is about 1GB.
The 911 fixation is a real concern for mass replacement of a existing technology that had 911, no concern for just a few people wondering around a big city, they'll likely run into a cell phone user often. Obviously once VOIP looked to be replacing a significant amount of phones, 911 needed addressed to move forward there.
Since most in-active cell phones can dial 911, it is a free solution to keep the old cell charged in the car, small compromise for a person willing to lug around a laptop 24/7.
Good point. Perhaps we should also all become heart surgeons, midwives, and bomb disposal technicians. After all, if every single person doesn't do every single thing to prepare for every single rare possibility, we are all totally and irrevocably doomed. DOOMED!
How do you feel about people who dare leave the house without carrying a cell phone at all? They are also unable to call 911. Do you spit in their faces as they pass, or just silently seethe at them, knowing they'll burn in hell for their negligence?
P.S. I don't believe any voluntarily non-vaccinated person had the thought process you describe. They don't do it because they think it'll make them sick, or that it will let the CIA read their thoughts.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
You might get more milage out of a nokia n810 than a netbook. Mine has a battery life similar to that of my cell phone. And there's a skype client for it.
You forgot, he's probably got a motor/generator connected to the beanie propeller on top of his head. So, battery power isn't a problem. If there's not enough wind, he runs around in large circles.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
http://lifehacker.com/378511/turn-your-ipod-touch-into-an-iphone
Of cause there is Skype as well (Skype-In, Skype-Out) and Gizmo
No I can't think of any problems. Reportedly ~60ms pings, and plenty high enough speeds. If it delivers as promised -- if the coverage isn't as good as promised, well, then you'll have phone service with all these gaps in it. Do realize, a lot of wimax is deployed in the 1700/2100mhz spectrum, and I think Clearwire had some 2.5ghz too, the in-building penetration will be more similar to 1900mhz service than to 850.
When I heard about WiMax I was excited about the idea of long range WiFi as that's what the name and technology implied. But reality killed that when I found it was licensed space so could not be freely used like WiFi and name was a classic case of false advertising. I'm not sure who owns the spectrum where you are but the cases I have heard of are all telcos are buying the rights. Given the screw every cent you can out of the customer attitude of telcos in this part of the world it's clear that WiMax will offer nothing that G3 doesn't already. I couldn't care less what happens to WiMax, it's just another acronym in the soup of big business.
Sorry, what percentage does "all too fucking common" work to?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The chances that you are going to really, life-or-death, need it are pretty small.
Yeah, but when you do, it's life-or-death.
Or to put it in Slashdot terms: I don't keep backups because I expect my hard drives to crash all the time, I keep them because just one crash would be very, very bad.
"Hang on, let me get my computer out of suspend...
And put my headset on...
I'm going to put on my robe and wizard hat...
A bigger problem is that the VOIP telephone may not work because of poor internet service.
Clear is owned 51% by Sprint. In my experience, Sprint is not a company that takes honesty seriously.
Last Sunday I tested Clear's 768 kilobit service with the DSLReports.com speed test. Clear was providing a little over 200 kilobits, even though there are very few subscribers. There is no law that says internet service providers must be honest, so they aren't honest.
Your Atlanta WiMAX is from Clearwire:
They charge an extra $25/month to unblock VoIP, and they are currently only trialing in Portland, Oregon right now:
http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/clearwire-tests-wimax-mobile-voip-phones/2009-03-20
If you want VoIP from their service, you will need to use their routers and their software, which apparently makes a TCP connection to a back-end server, and then VoIPs from there (this also lets them comply with CALEA wire-tap orders from the authorities by making sure your connection is in the clear, the same way it is for AIM internally to the AOL servers).
For the people talking about 911, the 911 service in Mobile phones is on a different, higher-power, prioritized frequency supporting triangulation of the signal source, rather than trusting a GPS in the phone. Since Clearwire is talking to handset vendors about hand-off between WiMAX and the proprietary cell networks, it's pretty clear that they are not intending to position themselves as a cellular service competitor, which probably means both vendor agreements and that the VoIP-enabled handset, when used to dial 911, will go through the standard cellular network.
The most likely vendor agreement would be a "network sparing" agreement that kept you off VoIP if a cellular network was available to be used instead, which would be used to lock you into a cellular service contract, just like any other cell phone (why would they give up their business model if they didn't have to?).
If your Netbook runs Windows, then you might be lucky enough for it to run Clearwire's proprietary VoIP software; if you are on Linux, you are out of luck (the articles I read on this didn't mention Mac OS X, so using the "corporate rule of lazy", that's probably not supported either.
-- Terry
Use an unactivated cell phone that uses traditional services (CDMA, GSM, etc). Use that to dial 911. Also why can't a VOIP client look at say a client's IP to figure out their location? I have banner ads letting me know that singles are in my area and I should act immediately.
I was at CTIA this year looking for Wimax enabled devices and release schedules, here are some relevant links from people I saw on the show floor:
http://www.runcom.com/sitefiles/1/3310/19046.asp
Go to the part about Wimax Phones. There are also Wimax video IP phones and wimax based surveillance systems shown there, see a product announcement here from Feb.
https://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3042555
I don't see details on their site, but the handset I have a flyer for was called the Sting, and was dual mode Wimax/GSM.
Also saw one called the wiofone: http://www.wimax.com/commentary/blog/blog-2008/wimax-blog-wimax-desktop-phone
Placeholder website here: http://wioline.com/
Samsung was also present displaying a number of devices with embedded Wimax chipsets in them, intended to use VoIP as part of the connectivity, such as the PDA (SCH-M830 and M8200), an UMPC or 2 (all of which were Windows based devices), and some standard laptops with wimax chipsets in them.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem still, since the devices will become more common when there's more coverage, more markets, and more possible subscribers, but people will fund the growth of the network when there are devices available which use it. It seems pretty obvious from investments that Intel/Motorola et al are both trying hard to lock in a future where many devices will have embedded wimax chipsets simply included as bluetooth and wifi chipsets are today. And not just laptops, but cars, washing machines, refrigerators, anything that would benefit from network access.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
take your cell phone and duct-tape it to your netbook. Voila!
Honestly, though, trying to replace your working and well-proven cell phone, and tryingt to use two very unstable technologies in it's place, is extremely stupid. Netbooks and all laptops have the terrible condition of high breakability, and WIMAX isn't everywhere. In fact, I've never even been to a place that had WIMAX service.
My three year old cell phone weighs three ounces and has a battery life of almost a week.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Those IP-location databases are okay for ad targeting, but woefully inaccurate for anything that matters. For instance, I am in Kuala Lumpur, but Google thinks I'm in Germany.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Cell carriers used scheduled access to the wireless channel, which provides guarantees on bandwidth and latency so that your speech is understandable. 802.11 provides random access, which is great for bursty Web traffic but terrible for voice when multiple people use it simultaneously (and undoubtedly you would not be the only one using VOIP over your WiMax AP).
For example, an 802.11b network can handle ~140 simultaneous Skype calls in theory, but only about 6 in practice. For a more detailed analysis, see this paper
0 < all too fucking common <= 100
Where I am there is no tower hopping protocol implemented for Wi-Max the tech rep said that if I were driving through traffic I might be lucky to connect 30 seconds before I am out of range.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
I will be able to use my netbook as a cell phone
if you carry your netbook wherever you go, then chances are high for you to drop it down. is your netbook that tough ?! :)
My company sells a 3G voice encryption system ( http://www.secvoice.com.br ) and our system works nicely with 3G networks, the quality is fine. Probably the main problem WiMax will have is with the quality of service, like signal coverage and so on.
Another problem is fine tuning the system to optimize the battery use, because if the system is not fine tuned, the battery will discharge with few hours of use.
why not instead of carring your netbook around, get a wifi enabled phone (Omnia). Just shut the phone feature off and enable wireless and work it that way. This way you don't have to lug a laptop around all day.
uh, I dont rely on my neighbor having 911...
Let's remember that Wimax deployments are fairly new.
So basically your data pretty much doesn't support your argument.
Kinda expected there would be a couple of those kinds of responses.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah, but when you do, it's life-or-death.
False dichotomy - there are all kinds of life-or-death situations that we don't spend hundreds of millions of infrastructure money on in each state and interfere with the market for related devices.
Or to put it in Slashdot terms: I don't keep backups because I expect my hard drives to crash all the time, I keep them because just one crash would be very, very bad.
Nor does the government require every hard disk you buy to come with a second one just for backups of the first.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And found Skype to be very reliable on my 3.6 yo 7.2Mbps Vodafone 3G connection on the EE PC. The only downsides were obvious: a) It's still a very bulky phone. b) You look a right dork talking to your computer in a coffee shop, unless you have a headset, and even then, it's fairly unsociable. I suppose the solution is to carry a Skype handset with you at all times too! c) Here in the UK you can buy from 3 (network) a mobile/cell phone with built in WiFi and use that. Now, this is where it gets interesting! The Nokia E71 plus Fring was excellent using the included free data allowance thought Vodafone. The call quality was BETTER across Fring and Vodafone's data than making a conventional voice call. The only downsides to all this was as someone else has mentioned, the battery life is massively reduced because your phone and data connection has to be 'on' all the time. However, with wearable solar panels, one day, this problem will be dealt with. We're just a few years away from making mobile always on VOiP a reality.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Ok,
I'll bite. I have eMobile 3G wireless and a small netbook. The old one was 8.1/384, which had issues staying connected on skype. Specifically the outbound UDP buffer would fill up. I suspect that 384 is plenty enough but in areas with worse signals it might get much less than that for periods of time long enough to cause issues...
They recently switched to HSUPA which has now 8.1/5.8, which is more than enough to keep skype happy (even skype video!) I have a netbook, and yes, now I can use it while walking around outside, on the train, wherever. In fact, this one even is slim enough to fit in my pocket of a coat AND it has bluetooth, making it more realistic to use than most... but a few issues:
a. you need to set windows (or whatever) to NOT sleep when you close the lid if you want it to be able to close the laptop and carry it around while talking.
b. obviously the battery won't last as long as a cell phone, but if you keep the screen off and the HDD spun down it should last a while
c. When you get an incoming call, you might have to open the laptop to answer it. To make an outcoming call you certainly will, unless you have one of those USB skype handsets or something.
WiMax.. the speed is better but the coverage is not nearly as good, so I expect as you are walking around it has a much greater chance of cutting out. probably better to use stationary.
"while eschewing the services of a cellphone provider" => obvious problem: You need a phone number from a cellphone provider. :)
The point is that any percentage is simply too much. We're talking about the possibility of saving human lives here (even one more life saved is a victory), not arguing over statistical expetancies.
The first problem mentioned is not a device issue, but an operator decided limitation. The specific WiMAX scheme to support latency sensitive traffic like VoIP are UGS (Unsollicited Grante Service) and ertPS (extended real-time polling service). In the first one, the BS provides grants without the MS needing to ask for them at a regular pace (typically every 20 ms or 4 WiMAX frames to match VoIP condec). The second adds support to turn off this allocation during silence intervals common in voice, to optimize system capacity. Both features are already part of the WiMAX certification and operators tests, so all existing WiMAX devices do support this.
Now nothing is needed from the OS to support this. The classification of packets to the proper WiMAX service flow is done by the device itself, based on filtering information configured by the backbone.
The reason that it's not supported yet is that for best results is that operators don't care (push complexity for later on), or don't want to do competition to partners lucrative voice business. But there's certainly no limitation on the devices.
For the second point, this is a non-issue really, except maybe for a corner case. The allocation in WiMAX is done on a 2D grid, with subcarriers and timeslot axis. The unit is the slot. In the UL the system do the slot allocation time-first, so when there are several MSs doing traffic, they naturally share timeslots. This requires tight frequency synchronization, but that's part of the WiMAX challenge and properly handled by BS receivers. The only trickier part is for a feature called "collaborative MIMO" where two different MS transmit on the same slots, on each path of a spatially multiplexed encoding (MIMO B in WiMAX). Then if one is at high speed, it will probably degrade the CINR of the other MS.
So really, the current limitation for VoIP support is just to limit the upfront complexity (deploying best effort only is certainly simpler) initially, and business protection.
And all this will apply to LTE too later on BTW.
I just want to know if I can use an iPod Touch as a wifi phone :P
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And I can tell from your responses that you are not in the medical field. You wouldn't understand unless you worked in a hospital. My wife runs labs for them and when working blood bank, must type blood for people bleeding out. Sometimes she comes home emotionally wrecked from working all night trying to help save a patient. Sometimes they win and sometimes they don't. Trust me, it makes a difference.
And I can tell from your responses that you are not in the medical field. You wouldn't understand unless you worked in a hospital.
You keep digging that hole deeper. I wouldn't understand the numbers because I'm not emotionally invested? What, do you think the E911 system runs on happy feelings? That if we just wish hard enough everybody will be saved? Can we wish just a little bit harder for extra ambulance-only lanes to make sure nothing impedes victims getting to the hospital as quickly as possible? Maybe we should just wish all the ambulances into medivac units while we are it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The point is that any percentage is simply too much. We're talking about the possibility of saving human lives here (even one more life saved is a victory), not arguing over statistical expetancies.
You think this shit is FREE? How many other lives are lost because the resources to save them were spent on E911 calls about non immediately life-threatening situations?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
911 saves lives. Period. You can keep trying to talk around that fact, but it's not going to change it.
Have had this discussion with Clear already. You can roam anywhere on their networks - as long as you're in Atlanta or Portland Oregon, the two cities where they have a presence.
Was thinking about WiMax as a solution to mobile connectivity for my laptop, until I realized I'd have to set up different service in the different cities where I want to work (and would have to wait until some of those cities have WiMax in place). FAIL.
Not like I want to pay for 3G, either.
I figure in 10 years, a lot of this gets sorted out. I'll put the MacBook Pro on standby 'till then, k?
I have used thwe regular N810 and use 3.5G via my phone. And I always call using Skype or the Google voice program which is built in and the calls are clear and it is a great alternative. Of course since I already have a phone it doesnt make sense for me for domestic calls - but all international calls I use the N810.
The batter life on the N800/N810 series is great - in fact phenomenal. It stays on all day long - thjere is no suspend and restart needed. Charge it every other day. The N810 wimax version is your chioce as a SIP/SKYPE phone. In fact for video calls you can also use Gizmo on it.
911 saves lives. Period. You can keep trying to talk around that fact, but it's not going to change it.
911 kills people. Period. You can keep trying to talk around that fact, but it's not going to change it.
Could you please be a little MORE irrational in your next response?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
When I first moved out of my hometown to another city after graduating, my first concern was staying in touch with friends and family without using my phone to save on long distance calls. I also wanted them to be able to call me without extra costs. So here's what I did. Using my laptop I was able to get a full "voip" line using Skype with the Skype-Out service and getting a phone number through DID Worldwide. Skype-Out costs around 3$ a month and the DID number costs 5$ a month. This way for approx. 7$ I was able to make and receive calls through Skype. To go a step further, you could get a Skype Phone so you won't have to carry around a netbook or a laptop.
911 doesn't kill people. People (and disease, war, drugs, etc) kill people. I've never heard of anyone dying because they called 911. Unless the phone was laced with some deadly poison that can be absorbed through the skin. I'm starting to wish I had mod points, I'd mod you Funny.
911 doesn't kill people. People (and disease, war, drugs, etc) kill people. I've never heard of anyone dying because they called 911.
Gee, you haven't paid attention to a word I wrote. What's the problem, too mesmerized thinking of the children?
911 kills people because the money spent on it almost certainly can better spent on other things that save more lives per dollar - like better nutrition in public schools or cheaper medicines or broader health coverage or even just cheaper cell phones - what good is a cell phone with federally mandated E911 gps location if, because of the cost of all that extra mandatory functionality the price is too high for someone to purchase in the first place? Which is better - a great E911 system and a victim with no cell phone at all, or a scaled back system and a victim with a cell phone that doesn't automatically send location data?
Based on all you've written so far, I'm sure that paragraph went right over your head. No need for you to respond, I'll just think of the children for you this time.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You could say that money spent on anything might kill someone because it isn't spent on something else. Money spent on education kills soldiers because it's less money to spend on things like armoring HUMVEES, money spent on the military kills kids because of less money spent on safety on school buses, etc. You're making a huge leap by saying that 911 kills people because it is money that could be spent on something else, but try telling that to the people whose lives are saved because an ambulance got to them in time. I have family members (my father included) whose lives have been saved because paramedics got to them in time.
Judging by your arguments, I'm not going to bother responding to any more of your posts because obviously you are just arguing for the sake of arguing without having valid points, facts to back up your arguments, or simply possessing enough intelligence to create a justifiable argument, period.
I almost forgot, there are plenty of charities that take used cell phones and normal wired, ensure they are working properly, and then donate them to people who cannot afford phone service (cellular or land line)to use for 911. Both cellular and wired phone networks send 911 calls through even if service is not active. This is why you and I and others who have active phone service pay for 911 calls, so that those who cannot afford to do so have that service. Do a modicum of research before you decide to spout off.
I tested Clear's 768 kilobit service with the DSLReports.com speed test. Clear was providing a little over 200 kilobits, even though there are very few subscribers. There is no law that says internet service providers must be honest.
Expect much worse service when there are more subscribers.
You could say that money spent on anything might kill someone because it isn't spent on something else.
No, YOU could say that if YOU weren't paying attention. There difference between your bullshit understanding of what I said and what I actually said is one key phrase - MORE LIVES PER DOLLAR.
but try telling that to the people whose lives are saved because an ambulance got to them in time.
Try telling that to the families of people whose lives were lost because there wasn't enough medical staff in the ER. There you go again with the emotional think of the children bullshit. Just like I predicted you would, funny how I understand your own arguments better than you do.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I am quite aware of such charities, I have given them every single phone I've ever discarded.
That does not change basic economics. SOMEBODY has to pay for the phones. If the price is increased due to government mandates, then LESS phones are purchased and probably even LESS phones are handed down to those charities because people can't afford to upgrade as frequently and thus even LESS people have cell phones.
Do a modicum of research before you decide to spout off.
You have so clearly demonstrated your fail at math and simple economics that such a command from you is rather humorous. In your lalaland it all runs on good intentions, those same intentions being the ones that pave a certain road you probably never heard of.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Google will give you a free incoming number, and transfer (actually, reroute/repeat) to any number you choose (and many more goodies)
If you're going to be "mobile" while on a call, you might have issues with your connections/calls-dropping as you move from tower-to-tower. We have experienced this in-house dealing with TCP-type applications. They lose the handshake.
Parent & grandparent posts have some excellent info, thanks!