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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!
The 2.4 Ghz spectrum was opened up for general use because it has relatively poor long distance characteristics thanks to it being absorbed strongly by water. This lead to an explosion of use in the band where your average apartment building has dozens of devices competing for the spectrum. And now cell companies are coming full circle and stomping all over it themselves. Maybe the government could take the hint that maybe another ISM band or two would be highly welcome. Maybe they could skip selling off spectrum for billions of dollars to enormous companies and instead open it up the way they did the 2.4 Ghz band? Spectrum seems a bit over regulated at the moment, there's barely any room for entities that aren't massive corporations with billions of dollars to do anything.
Over regulation is stifling innovation.
I read the internet for the articles.
killing wifi with high cost low cap cell is good for the carriers and bad for the uses.
Also just wait for the Mexico towers near the board to up there power as they rake in the roaming that goes as high as $20 a meg.
This is just a spectrum grab by the telcos. The key thing about this technology is that it requires a small control channel in the frequency range "owned" by the telco, but blasts all sorts of data over the unlicensed 5GHz spectrum.
It would be one thing if the entire connection was done in the unlicensed spectrum, so anyone could set up an LTE network (like wi-max), but to require licensed spectrum just to require it should not be allowed.
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.
Holy crap. This is completely disproved cable company funded research. Basically the cable companies are not only seeing cord cutting in the realm of people cutting their TV cables but also now many people are going with tablets and phone only internet connections and are cutting their local wi-fi/cable internet connection. This is a disaster for the cable companies.
So they are doing their damnedest to keep the wireless companies from being able to use the bandwidth that is becoming available as various old technologies such as analog broadcast TV frees up more and more of the spectrum.
On top of that any new frequency opened up to wireless will often then be used by the newest and best data technologies so a given bit of spectrum used in 4G will of course pack in way more data than a 3G spectrum of the same "size" and 5G will probably pack in just that much more into anything that newly opens up for it.
Eventually the 2G spectrum will be retired for use for maybe 6G sort of stuff but it is the new spectrums now that are used for the newest and best data streaming.
If you look at a graph of the spectrum opening up, combined with existing spectrum being re-purposed, combined with the ability to not only send data down that spectrum, but cool things like phased array antennas that can basically laser the data directly at a customer that graph will actually show that the typical netflixing customer could potentially go entirely wireless in not that many years.
This basically takes the whole "last mile" concept out and shoots it in the face. Then the last-mile turns into the-last-pile-of-expensive-crap.
Yes there will be some customers who need such absurd amounts of bandwidth that wireless really won't be it but for the average person watching netflix; they really will hit a limit where they then only slowly increase their demands.
So again I cry a little bit for slashdot to see this sort of corporate shilling happening again.
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.
Hi everyone, Since the article was one-sided and didn't ask for comments from Qualcomm, I thought I would offer everyone a chance to ask me question regarding LTE-U. Please go ahead. Regards, Sherif
LTE-U is not transmitted by big cell towers. It's a "small cell" technology - i.e. it is transmitted from small boxes that are no bigger than a Wi-Fi access point, and transmit radio waves at the same output power as Wi-Fi access points.
I'm not saying you won't pick up Mexico towers or be unable to use them. Of course you can. I'm just saying Mexico can't unilaterally boost their power, contrary to what the OP was suggesting.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Depending on your T-Mobile plan, it might not cost you anything - their current plans include 2g roaming in several countries at no extra cost, and you can't roam above 2g unless you sign up for a paid plan that gives an allowance of faster roaming data.
It offers greater network capacity, and thus by extension, better user throughputs.
For the cellular data customer. It does this at the expense of the private citizen using unlicensed spectrum for his personal WiFi router. This is "better user throughputs" in Qualcom-speak, being spoken by a Qualcom employee who is probably being paid to post here.
LTE-U is not a wide coverage technology.
At the frequencies in use no LTE is "wide coverage". That's why there are so many cell towers all over the place. Just as "many hands make light work", "many cell towers make wide coverage".
The LTE-U small cell would not be able to transmit at power levels higher than is allowed by the FCC,
That power level should be 0, or as close to it as possible under the unintentional radiator standards of commercial electronics.
But so what? You put one "small cell" here, you put another one there, you put another one next to that, and eventually you're covering a broad area with signals in an already overpopulated public unlicensed band. Who cares if it takes one or one hundred Qualcomm systems to blanket an area and make WiFi unusable for the private individual? Pretending that there will only ever be one system and it will only ever be in one place away from all private users is just pathetic. And factor in that the LTE-U protocol will not LBT and has a shorter holdoff and you have a cancer.
But where it does have coverage, it'll provide additional capacity boost that improves the UX for all users.
Yes, all CELL CUSTOMER users, but at the expense of the private citizen already using that band. And the correct way to improve capacity is to reduce the footprint of the existing cell site and reuse the frequencies by installing more of them. A hundred micro-cells using your existing licensed frequencies will provide a lot more service than one cell covering the same area. You DO NOT "improve cell system capacity" by sucking the unlicensed spectrum away from the existing users. You don't need to.
Oh, but it would cost more to do it the right way, so that way is impossible.
Everyone I know, even the cheap types, keeps some kind of wired Internet. It is usually faster than wireless and always cheaper per GB. If you were an EXTREMELY light user I suppose you could go all wireless all the time, but even for the casual user who likes to surf the web on a daily basis and watch cat videos, you'll easily use more data than a wireless provider is interested in letting you have cheap and they'll charge and/or throttle.
Simple example: T-Mobile gives me phone, text, and 1GB of data for $50/month. It would run me $30/month more to get unlimited data (they'll throttle if you get too excessive though). That's for a single device, and gives 7GB of tethering. Speeds are in the realm of 40mbits max, 20-30mbits normally. So that'd work only if your phone is going to be the one-and-only device you use for most things, and do a little surfing on something else. If you want to add a tablet to it you'd be talking adding another line/device which brings it up to about $100/month with 10GB of data per device.
Ok well then having a look at the cable company for about $60/month they'll sell you a 50mbit connection with a 350GB soft cap (meaning if you go over they complain at you and try to upsell you, they don't charge or throttle). You'll really get those kinds of speeds too, pretty much all the time.
That's more money, but not a ton more. Presuming you would have the basic phone plan anyhow you pay about $30/month more than the unlimited or $10/month more than the two devices. With that you get a faster connection, the ability to connect as many devices as you like, enough data to watch Netflix, download games, and so on. Also, you can, of course, upgrade your speed. They'll happily sell you 100mbit or 300mbit for a bit more per month (about $75 and $100 respectively) whereas the mobile speed is what it is.
Not surprising then that all the people I know keep a wired connection. Personally I don't find I need much LTE data, I use WiFi most of the time at work and home, so the 1GB cap is fine for me (more than fine actually) but I need a lot more on another connection. Looking at my usage I used about 350GB last month. Not the kind of thing a wireless provider would be ok with.
The companies that will use this already have frequencies dedicated exclusively to them. In fact they have a huge amount for their exclusive use. I as a consumer have a limited number of frequencies available for my purposes. I have to share them with every other person around me.
There is absolutely no need for cellular operators to start intruding on unlicensed spectrum. If this truly is about "fair sharing of a shared asset," then when can I expect an equivalent amount of spectrum to be opened in their bands for my uses? If I have to share with them it's only fair they share with me, right?
I realize that this is completely legal by current regulations. It's probably past time to review those regulations to keep commercial operators on the parts of the spectrum they already own. If you have dedicated frequencies allocated to you, then there is no reason to spread onto shared frequencies as well.
No, you cannot. Part 15 has some very specific language about intentional interference. You might want to read the regulations before pointing a dish at someone else's tower without having another dish to receive it on the other side. I'd further say that using a dish is about the worst way to do this, since the signal would be highly concentrated at the ranges you can legally push 2.4 GHz (~60 dBm) it will be very obvious that you're intentionally interfering with someone else's signal.