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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!
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.
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.