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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.
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.