Slashdot Mirror
Worries Mount Over Upcoming LTE-U Deployments Hurting Wi-Fi
alphadogg writes: LTE-U is a technology developed by Qualcomm that lets a service provider broadcast and receive signals over unlicensed spectrum, which is usable by anybody – specifically, in this case, the spectrum used by Wi-Fi networks in both businesses and homes. By opening up this new spectrum, major U.S. wireless carriers hope to ease the load on the licensed frequencies they control and help their services keep up with demand. Unsurprisingly, several outside experiments that pitted standard LTE technology or 'simulated LTE-U' technology, in the case of one in-depth Google study, against Wi-Fi transmitters on the same frequencies found that LTE drastically reduced the throughput on the Wi-Fi connection.
Now hotels will have a legal way to jam your personal hotspot!
Do wifi routers have their own spectrum? Perhaps there should be a set-aside just for short range, get-along-nicely protocols.
The clogging varies with the square of the range. It is stupid to allow a handful of transmissions to clog up a million houses in a city.
Alternatively, disallow telcos from charging for data sent over this spectrum. There you go!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think it is time for amateurs (hams) to step up and develop more 2.4GHz applications for networking. It would be an interesting side-effect if those apps happened to destroy LTE-U performance at the same time. As TFA points out, the "fairness" algorithm is at the discretion of the user, not mandated by law, so the carriers would have no problem if the hams develop a system that is fair to them but screws the carriers, right?
Who has links into Meshnet, and can you get them doing that? I'll happily devote a couple of old Linksys routers to Meshnet for the right cause.
Over regulation is stifling innovation.
I've got news for you: keeping spectrum open for unlicensed use by small players IS regulation. Without regulation, giant telcos and broadcast entities could stomp all over whichever spectrum they choose without regard to whether it's ruining your WiFi.
Stop arguing against regulation and argue against poor regulation.
Do you have anything to support this claim? I know numerous people that have cut the cord regarding cable tv but kept internet, but no one that has dropped their traditional broadband for only wireless. The only two people I know that have cellular-only internet live out in the sticks where traditional broadband doesn't extend to and there is no other practical alternatives.
Welcome to your oligarchy ... if it isn't designed to benefit massive corporations with billions of dollars, it isn't happening.
They're the ones who have the elected people on the payroll.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Bandwidth is perhaps the most poorly utilized resource. There is tons of spectrum, the vast majority of it locked up for historical reasons. 2.4GHz has been so incredibly useful to humanity. We could do even more with wireless if most of the spectrum wasn't locked up. I work with some ISM and people are generally limited to 151MHz / 433MHz / 915MHz / 2.4GHz in the US with the other frequencies used for special applications and in some cases only certain companies. To make the future better you have to sometimes break from the past and frequency allocation is an excellent example of this.
There should be a quid pro quo rule: If you use a particular frequency band, then anybody who is allowed to use that band is also allowed to use all bands that are licensed to you. If the telcos want us to stay of their licensed bands, then they need to stay out of the bands that we are allowed to use.
Are you a fucking idiot? If I send a continuous spike through an entire range of frequencies, that'd kill your "spread spectrum. Sure, you can go use other frequencies, but I can generate noise or just overwhelm any signal you can put out.
Yes, if someone is actively trying to prevent me from talking to my wi-fi base station, they can do that. But what kind of idiot would throw gigawatts of power across gigahertz just so they'd interfere with my signal?
They don't need to continuously jam it, they just need to make it drop out enough to be obnoxious. Sending out a pulse crafted to disconnect people from their wireless access points several times an hour would be enough to annoy the non tech savvy into just buying a 4g connection for everything.
You're portraying one side of the problem. The issue is, there is not enough room within the current parameters given to the market. The elephant in the room is the entity holding it. That would be the FCC. And this idea that large corporations would dominate the wave spectrum if given the chance ignores the loss in the market by doing so. If they were to purchase (the extremely expensive) band and not make use of it, they would be losing their money. Why would a sane company buy a wave spectrum and then not use it? Another question would be, why would they buy it and use ALL of them, when they could rent out or sell the ones that are going unused.
This is the type of illogical approach most people take when they're unaware of the costs associated with actually purchasing the spectrum, and they just assume that once it's purchased it's done. WRONG. If they're not using it, and just sitting on it, that is economic suicide. Every other company that would be interested in that spec would want to purchase it from them, and this supposedly evil corp would say NO, I want to spend BILLIONS of dollars for this spectrum, and DO NOTHING with it.
Now here is when you say, "They won't do nothing with it," to which I would say, the gov is. To which you would say, "Well all of these companies would come in and just hoard all of the spectrum." To which I would say, the gov is!
If any person or entity is doing the hoarding, it is the FCC. Your fantasyland of non-government sanctioned monopolies/oligarchies ignores the world realities that occur on a daily basis where corporations trying to improve the lives of millions by selling them a product they are willing to pay millions for are unable to continue to advance or lower prices because of the increased costs of doing business because of the artificial scarcicity imposed on us by the FCC and other Federal agencies.
It's not that simple you say, yet you claim that giant telcos will come and steal all of the spectrum and leave nothing for the little guy. Yet you ignore the ridiculous costs of buying spectrum BECAUSE of its scarcity (BECAUSE the government hoards it).
http://dailycaller.com/2012/09...