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!
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.
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.
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.
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.