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How Africa Will 'Leapfrog' Wired Networks
umarkalim writes "In an interview with Al Jazeera, Les Cottrell at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory explains how Africa will actually 'leapfrog' the need to install hard-wired cables. He says it's often overlooked that the continent is huge and that the countries are diverse. He says, 'the cost of the infrastructure is quite high, especially if you have to connect every home with copper cables and fiber-optic cables ... I think in many cases Africa will actually "leapfrog" the need to install hard-wired cables everywhere, and will be able to use different techniques such as the BRCK modem, the low-earth orbiting satellites or the 3G solutions to get connectivity to where they need.'"
I still can't "leapfrog" wireless in my house. Running CAT6 all over the damn place.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
all the houses need power anyway... as my grandfather said if you're riding the hog anyway you may as well ride it to work.
...shouldn't they focus on law and order first?
Wireless gets them some access which is better than nothing but not even close to fiber. Your not going to magic around the spectrum issues .
No sir I dont like it.
Didn't we know this ten years ago? How is this news?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
They are leapfrogging wired because every time they lay down wires it gets stolen and sold on the black market. The news was talking about that years ago. It's forcing them to use wireless.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
In other news Africa is set to become the next world super power.
[ the cluelessness of some people is amazing ]
Yes, it is...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not necessarily.
You're sharing SPECTRUM with everyone and their brother. And that's actually even worse.
And building capacity for wireless is non-trivial as well. It's not just a matter of putting up another access point or uplink.
Example: GenCon.
Downtown Indianapolis has a plethora of connection options. Wired, wireless, cellular, etc.
On a Friday evening it just doesn't matter. Getting online via ANY means is a joke. You're better off with IP over smoke signal. As 50,000 people (over twice the population of the city I live in and an increase in Indy's total population to the tune of about 5-6%) in the area blitz the available spectrum for wifi and cellular, while wired connections in the hotels are drowned by rooms filled to capacity and everyone sporting a laptop/tablet/etc. And it's a static population increase for those 4-5 days.
Granted, in much of Africa, the population density is NOWHERE near that high. But you also have the same problems you would laying out a "universal" internet or power grid in the US. You have densely populated areas that are difficult and expensive to build capacity into. And you have very sparsely populated areas where people building the capacity likely will never see a return on investment. And the latter actually outnumbers the former by an order of magnitude or more. And Africa is the same thing, but with over 3x the landmass and population.
If something like this was going to be as simple as they're talking about, it'd have been done already.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Low orbit satellites are not going to carry a continent's worth of network traffic. On top of that you still need backhaul at your ground stations. All those cell towers, they need something for backhaul. Microwave repeaters are only going to carry you so far. On top of that fiber simply has the highest available and future bandwidth with the lowest latency of any available technology. Sure wireless may dominate the immediate future of Africa, but eventually they'll exceed it's limits and move to a wired infrastructure.
There is a system for subverting the system and you should use that system!
They said this about South American counrties over 10 years ago--that they aren't saddled with the developed world's copper infrastructure (as in North America, Europe, Japan, etc), and would innovate with wireless more thoroughly.Turns out the developed world can use wireless, too, as well as their wired infrastructure, to press forward.
I hope the Africain put down all the money - I'm not going to fund when my home internet is still pathetic at 1.5Mbps on a good day
Without a proper infrastructure, mobile internet was always going to be the only real option for Africans for the foreseeable future.
IMO OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) messed up a bit by concentrating on notebooks. If you want to provide educational material and a way to communicate, a generic cheap tablet with a custom OS and made-to-measure software is the best way forward. OLPC don't even have to supply the hardware.
In the late 90's several African countries were going cellular only, outside of major cities.
This article is 15 years out of date.
One of my company's clients at the time was the Republic of the Congo.
Nothing like first hand knowledge.
So, its obvious that this guy isn't a cellular engineer, nor is he a satcom engineer. A huge contingent of the 2G and 3G base stations in Africa are connected via satellite. Satellite spectrum is not only expensive (VERY, VERY expensive) but it is scarcely available in that footprint. As for using LEO satellites, he apparently has no idea how LEO works. The only viable "high bandwidth" (low bandwidth by many cable-modem users opinion) option would be the constellation that O2B is planning. They only have one bird in orbit though. Beyond that, the earthstation costs for an O2B installation are in excess of $1M USD just for the tracking antennas, let alone the SSPAs, modems, etc. I just love it when people talk out their asses.
Africa was indeed poised to leapfrog wired networks, but then they had to eat the frog.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I'm glad that the amount you care is above minimum (I believe the phrase you are too ignorant to quote is "coundn't care less"). To address your ignorance further:
* The commercials for African charities are not representative of an entire fucking continent.
* Telegraph came before radio (which was initially called "wireless telegraph") and what the hell does itunes have to do with wireless vs wired?
Are you 10 years old? What idiot modded you up?
Thought not...
Battle is going how to spy on Africa and countries that want invest there. Whether Africa has good Internet or not relevant to US sponsored agencies. It's about the money and natural resources.
Right, there's no profit to providing the internet to rural areas therefore no one will do it. We only got phone and electricity service to everyone in the US through strong incentives. I suspect it'll be like early days of mobile; the big cities will have it and no one else.
Still I think getting electricity strung out first will be much more important than some fluff like wireless internet.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetreeofliberty.com%2Fvb%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D142839&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=aGFAr9WTVQ2pUM&tbnh=184&tbnw=274&zoom=1&docid=IXBjg5RBkmFF0M&hl=en&ei=nrcmUoivGsrm2gWnpYD4BQ&ved=0CAMQsCU
Would you kindly pay a visit to one of the many url shorten services online ?
Right, there's no profit to providing the internet to rural areas therefore no one will do it.
But there is profit providing telephone services.
And these days whenever someone hooks up a cell tower the internet comes more or less by accident.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Downtown Indianapolis has a plethora of connection options. Wired, wireless, cellular, etc.
On a Friday evening it just doesn't matter. Getting online via ANY means is a joke. You're better off with IP over smoke signal. As 50,000 people (over twice the population of the city I live in and an increase in Indy's total population to the tune of about 5-6%) in the area blitz the available spectrum for wifi and cellular, while wired connections in the hotels are drowned by rooms filled to capacity and everyone sporting a laptop/tablet/etc. And it's a static population increase for those 4-5 days.
What you have described, Sir, is a problem of having not enough bandwidth on the outbound pipes connecting Indianapolis to the outside world.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Just get the best from both worlds: wired low orbit satellites.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I'm not sure which group has more balls.
I'll answer that for you: the group where the wires they are stealing are capable of killing them because they are hooked up to a functioning electrical grid. Three phase power will happily fry your ass, if you try and steal a live wire.
But you also have the same problems you would laying out a "universal" internet or power grid in the US. You have densely populated areas that are difficult and expensive to build capacity into. And you have very sparsely populated areas where people building the capacity likely will never see a return on investment. And the latter actually outnumbers the former by an order of magnitude or more. And Africa is the same thing, but with over 3x the landmass and population.
If you're talking about the U.S. with the Urban/Rural divide, I believe you meant to say the urban population vastly outnumbers the rural by a vast amount.
Urban population in the U.S. is roughly 80% of the total population. I don't know what the percentage is for Africa.
There is this false idea that wireless is better than wired, that we will all move over, everything will be wireless all the time and life will be grand.
Nope. You can always get more bandwidth, quite a bit more, out of wires than wireless. That pesky Shannonâ"Hartley Coding Theorem just keeps cropping up and getting in the way. If you want more bits per second, you either need more bandwidth (meaning more spectrum) or a better signal to noise ratio. When you are talking wireless the only thing you can do about SNR is to up transmission power, which is not without its own issues, and there is just only so much bandwidth you can have, particularly with given properties.
See part of the problem is that as you move up the spectrum to higher frequencies, it gets easier to have more bandwidth, of course. However your signal gets more and more directional, and has less and less penetrating power. VHF and UHF are really good for transmissions. They are pretty non-directional and can penetrate most buildings without a whole lot of issues. However if you are operating on, say a 700MHz carrier your bandwidth is going to be limited, particularly when you have multiple services that want to use it. Indeed in the US you find that it is partitioned up in to 6, 10, 12, and 22MHz blocks.
Now if you go way up in frequency, this isn't a problem. Go up to a few hundred THz, instead of MHz. Now bandwidth isn't a big issue. If you have a carrier of 700THz then you can have a few THz of bandwidth, no problem and thus tons of information... Only one issue. 700THz might be more popularly called "blue". You are up in the light range now, and of course light can't penetrate for shit. Even a piece of paper would be sufficient to disrupt the signal. It is also highly, highly directional.
Finally there's a big issue which is that everyone has to share wireless. Anyone on a given segment, node, access point, etc is sharing whatever bandwidth there is. You don't each get your own bandwidth, you all have to share. So the more users, the less there is for each and there's really no way around that.
And thus the problem. You can't "just get more" bandwidth when you are talking wireless. You run in to physical limits. Your SNR is limited by power considerations (and distance) and the atmosphere, your bandwidth is limited by what is useful, and not used by other things, and so on.
With wired, not such an issue. You can go way up in frequency, particularly when you are talking fiber optic. However the real thing is that you can just lay more wires. You don't have to send a signal down one pair, you can have multiple. Ethernet is a good example of that. Gig and 10 gig use all 4 pairs, two to send, two to receive. Need more bandwidth on the same tech? Just lay another bundle. 8 pairs, as in two Cat-6a cables, will get you 20gbps, 12 pairs 30gpbs, and so on.
That's all dedicated (and full duplex) too. Only the endpoints use that. You can have stacks of cables running right next to each other, connecting different devices, and none of them trod on each other, they all have separate bandwidth.
So while wireless is cool, and useful, if we want fast speeds, if we want the ability to transfer lots of data all the time, we need wires. Wireless won't cut it. For that matter to the extent we can make it work well, it needs to be short range. You can use higher frequencies, have better SNR, and have less people per segment if you build the segments out. However that means lots of access points all over the place and those need to have backhaul, and that is going to be wired.
There are two things that will make fiber optic cables the best medium for next 50 years. Shannon capacity theorem say Capacity=Bandwidth*log2(Signal_Power/Noise_Power). This can be multiplied by the number of individual channels we can create using e.g. MIMO. The, there is the free space path loss which is equal to (4*pi*Distance/Wavelength)^2. Now, if we want to increase the bandwidth, we have to increase the frequency, increased frequency means shorter wavelength and thus higher path loss. Wireless signals are use only for the last stage - e.g. between the base station and the cell phone. The base stations are connected with fiber. Building a high capacity wireless networks is _impossible_ without optical fiber backbone.
The urban population is only 80% if you count towns of 2500 or more as "urban".
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/
When you are talking shared wires like cable modems or PON there is always the solution of just add more frequencies. With DOCSIS 3, you can have an arbitrary number of channels devoted to cable modems. So if what you have isn't enough, you can add more. Now that means taking them from something else, of course, however there's likely to be plenty available. When analogue service is discontinued, well that's 100 channels you've got right there (on many cable networks the first 600MHz is analogue cable service, the next 400MHz is all the digital stuff).
With PON it is even easier: Just shoot another laser down the fibre. That is already how it works: You have one wavelength for downstream, another for upstream, and another for video service. Well WDM doesn't stop at 3 wavelengths, you can have more. So as needed, more wavelengths can be added, giving more throughput.
In terms of the sharing issues, well it is easy to see what wins on a busy campus, like where I work. We all share bandwidth, of course, the campus has a gig or two of total Internet speed, not a gig for each desktop. However for all that, wired access is fast all the time. We have enough. Wireless, well that's another story. You go to the student union at lunch time and you find it is really, really bad. Things load slow, if they load at all. You have to reload pages plenty and so on. There are just too many people fighting for what's there. It isn't for lack of APs either, the university puts hundreds (literally) in a building, but when people are all in the same space, all hitting the same APs, well it gets overloaded.
If something like this was going to be as simple as they're talking about, it'd have been done already.
It's as simple as embracing mesh networking, but that's hard because convincing people that they want to use their battery to act as a repeater for others is an uphill battle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why are you telling those that say "I could care less" the right way to say it? If they're not smart enough to understand what they're saying, why would they be smart enough to understand what you're saying?
If they think that wireless technology came after wired technology, they are very much mistaken. Perhaps they should focus on actually learning first.
[...]
For those as stupid as they are: over-the-air television came before cable. radio came before itunes.
Maybe you should focus learning first. The first news broadcast was wired, not wireless. It started operation 20 years before the invention of radio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefon_H%C3%ADrmond%C3%B3
interesting discussion and topic.
i wonder what the cost would be to outfit a small rural town with wired cable or fiber optic system. towns closer to a big city might be easy to wire.
come to think of it, it might be easier to use an existing 3G or some other wifi network in a small town. just a thought
I was expecting they were tying network cables to leapfrogs and letting them roam. Does that make me culturally insensitive?
In a country where the median yearly income is measured in hundreds of dollars, copper is relatively worth so much that you might as well be laying miles and miles of gold wire instead.
A man's first responsibility in this world is to keep his children from starving to death. Somewhere way, way after that comes his responsibility to obey laws that don't involve violent offenses.
If you want the real URL, you need to click the link and copy the result out of the address bar.
That's sort of hard for PDFs in some browsers because when you click the link, the result never appears in the address bar. Instead, the "Open With Adobe/Foxit/Sumatra Reader or Save File" dialog box appears. I had to break out Python.
I believe the phrase you are too ignorant to quote is "coundn't care less"
In practice, "I could care less" means "...but barely".
what the hell does itunes have to do with wireless vs wired?
Before digital audio players, FM radio and AM radio were the only choices for hearing a decent variety of music in a vehicle. In-car tape and CD players didn't allow for the sort of shuffled multi-hour playlist characteristic of commercial music radio. Even a strict top 40 station plays more songs than will fit on a single CD. And it was difficult to become exposed to new music in the car until smartphones became common.
not that there is a causal relationship, but we see Africa cancer rates leap frogs as well.
This is one way to handle high birth rates through the back door.
But there are many cases where there is no profit for hooking up telephone, and thus many people have no telephone service. Most corporations have no interesting in spending $100,000 to set up infrastructure so that a village of 10 people can spend $10/month to use a telephone, instead it takes government pressure or incentives to force the infrastructure for the good of the country. In many countries the will to do this just is not there.
The real reason Africa will go to wireless is because they steal the copper and aluminum cables and sell them to a scrap merchant. Often cables are removed within 24 hours of them going up. It is easier to guard base stations especially if they are put in a village and the headman is paid a few dollars a month to guard the installation.
However simple economics indicates that the first places to get supplied with any novel sort of service will be the areas of highest population density, simply because you can then reach the highest number of people for the smallest investment in fixed assets.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"