Yes, I realize calls were made on 9/11. I realized that it's practically possible. How long did those calls last? How was the voice quality? How well (if at all) did those calls hand off to the next cell site?
And to answer your second question, yes, our antennas and towers work mainly on a line of sight basis. Buy why on earth would we aim our antennas up? You really think that we use an omni-directional antenna? Heck no, all of our antennas are high gain, direction antennas, pointed horizontally, or downtilted to further aim them earthward.
Being 50k feet above a cell site, and you're going to have shit signal, and it's not going to last very long at all.
There's no way that our network (nor anyone else's) would be able to handle calls reliably from an airplane.
Our cells typically only cover 3-5 miles in an urban area, and 20 in a rural one. As fast as a plane travels, you'll be changing sites very quickly.
Add to that the fact that our network is designed and optimized for ground level users, and you're looking at a crappy call, assuming you can even orginate one.
IMO, a possible better solution would be a micro-cell installed on the plane that would multiplex the calls back to the PSTN.
100k feet = 18 miles. Currently, the cell sites that I'm responsible for are at maximum 20 miles apart. A site 18 miles distant is going to provide zero coverage to anyone inside a building.
In addition, 2 balloon sites, is going to have jack sh!t for capacity. Assuming these weather balloons are even capable of lifting our smallest GSM equipment (which is far more than the 6 pount limit mentioned in the article), each ballon would be have a maximum of 29 voice channels. That's enough to cover a busy city block, or a tiny town.
Each of the weather balloons could provide service to an area of about 100,000 square miles
Well duh. Are there going to be more than 30 people using their phone in that 100k square miles? You betcha.
Not for Verizon, but another wireless company that begins with a V.
Thankfully, I don't do it full time. I do do it several hours a week when troubleshooting.
It's pretty boring. But it does make for some impressive phonebills.
Our local paper had an article about the person in Minneapolis that does this for Verizon. She doesn't sound like she knows what she's talking about, but unless you're interpreting the data, basically anyone can do the driving.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/2260767.h tm l
If I were a CS rep
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 5, Funny
"John Katz? THE John Katz? Sure I can cancel your service, please hold for one minute"
I'm a RF engineer with a major US wireless provider. I do this on a day to day business.
The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station.
True. However, it doesn't much matter most of the time. We monitor the usage of our sites, and expand those that require it. We also preemtivly expand those that are predicted to require it, and those that we know are going to cover major events, IE concerts, conventions, etc.
And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls.
If this is happening, your RF engineer is an idiot. The process of planning what sites use what frequencies is somewhat intensive, but putting the same frequency on two addjacent sites is a complete fsck up. More typical is a site overshooting and interfering with another one several miles away.
But with dozens of base stations, each broadcasting with six of the 29 available frequencies
I know that BT has alot more capacity problems than most places here in the US. However, my company uses 3 frequencies per site, from a list of 24. Each site also freqency hops on a list of 18 more freqencies. Hopping really makes all this possible.
Details of arrest of Dmitry Skljarova from July, 11 till July, 16 I was in Las Vegas on conference Defcon 9 together with the employee of our corporation Dmitry Skljarovym who addressed to on conference on the report. In the morning, July, 16, we together with Dmitry have quitted from hotel and were going to go in the airport. Before flight remained about one and a half hours. Directly at an output(exit) from a door to us two young men, with shouts " hands on a wall, FBI came! ". Having decided(solved), that is whose unsuccessful joke (and of conference rather frequently joked concerning ôåäåðàëîâ), Dmitry has burst out laughing and even something has tried to tell in the answer. However to it(him) in some more rough form it was told " hands on a wall! " . For me have asked a key from a hotel room and have invited for conversation. Hardly later into number have entered Dmitry. It(he) was already in handcuffs. Two more employees of FBI who probably, inspected street came. Dmitry has asked to move handcuffs forwards as with the hands connected behind it is very inconvenient to sit. To it(him) it refused. The employee of FBI was presented and has told, that to me claims are not present, and they came to arrest Dmitry. In the polite form it was offered to have a talk. On my question " for what have arrested Dmitry? " The answer was given, that to it(him) accusation of violation DMCA is showed(presented) (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is the American law on copyrights. The initiator of litigation and consequence(investigation) is Adobe company. More employees of FBI have not informed any details, referring that they only fulfil the order. To me formal questions on which they certainly already knew answers were given some. Have asked to take with itself things Äèìû, motivating it is that, that " as though they were not lost in America ". A question on further destiny Äèìû have answered, that right now it(him) will take in local office of FBI where will clarify still any questions, and then to the judge who will make final solution. All above described has taken place in Alexis Park Hotel, Las-Vegas, staff(state) Nevada. On road to Los Angeles me watched(kept up), and rather roughly. As soon as I at the airport have answered the phone the officer of police has on the spot run up and has pretent, that wants to call from the adjacent phone. Anywhere it(he) and has not called. The details concerning conflict ElcomSoft with Adobe, you can read on a site of ElcomSoft company. The official official report of the officer of FBI which delayed Dmitry, it is possible to look here. Andrey Malyshev, ÝëêîìÑîôò company, July, 18, 2001.
These pathetic graphics are grounds for inclusion in Edward Tufte's "Chart Junk" chapters.
For those that haven't read his book, I highly recommend all of them.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/people/faculty/tufte.html
Sure, on a smaller scale. 5 bored students, a couple cases of beer, and some, uh "creative" parts gathering.
Took us a weekend, but we built it. Teflon barrel was about a foot long. Shot a 1/4" by 1/2" magnet about 75 feet. Would have gone farther had the dorm hallway not had a door on the end.
I'm a Radio Frequency Engineer with a major US PCS company. I design new cell sites, the great majority of which are now aimed at improving in-building coverage.
If you're asking what you can do by yourself, the short answer is not much. If you're realitivly close to an area of good reception, you could string an external antenna along, but I can't see that being terribly practical. Also, call up your provider, and tell them that you have no inbuilding coverage at your location. I recieve these reports, and use them to assist in locating new sites. Better yet, do it a couple of times.;)
If your company owns the building you work in, AND it has a fair amount of phones from whatever provider you use, then talk to your building managment, and give your provider a call. My company has build several microcells upon the request of companies that have bought phones from us. If you can get that accomplished, you'll almost certianly get excellent coverage.
Do what I started doing last year...Work for them!
I figured I spent so much time at my local Borders last fall, I might as well work there. Filled out and app, and now for a measly 8 hours (two nights a week) of my week, I'm the computer book man. Weee.
The pay sucks, but I get 33% off all books/movies/CDs that I want. What a deal!
Do what I started doing last year...Work for them!
I figured I spent so much time at my local Borders last fall, I might as well work there. Filled out and app, and now for a measly 8 hours (two nights a week) of my life, I'm the computer book man. Weee.
The pay sucks, but I get 33% off all books/movies/CDs that I want. What a deal!
Disclaimer: I work for a GSM company in the US. Oh, and GSM rules.
The whole G3 tech process is a mess. No one has decided squat yet, mainly because everyone has to agree.;)
If/when G3 gets worked out, and when equipment starts being produced, you can bet your ass that every digitial carrier in the US is going to change over. Perhaps slowly, but they will.
Slashdot Mirror
*smack*
It's John Conner. If you're going to make a Terminator reference, atleast get the name right.
Yes, I realize calls were made on 9/11. I realized that it's practically possible. How long did those calls last? How was the voice quality? How well (if at all) did those calls hand off to the next cell site?
And to answer your second question, yes, our antennas and towers work mainly on a line of sight basis. Buy why on earth would we aim our antennas up? You really think that we use an omni-directional antenna? Heck no, all of our antennas are high gain, direction antennas, pointed horizontally, or downtilted to further aim them earthward.
Being 50k feet above a cell site, and you're going to have shit signal, and it's not going to last very long at all.
I'm a RF Engineer for a major US PCS carrier.
There's no way that our network (nor anyone else's) would be able to handle calls reliably from an airplane.
Our cells typically only cover 3-5 miles in an urban area, and 20 in a rural one. As fast as a plane travels, you'll be changing sites very quickly.
Add to that the fact that our network is designed and optimized for ground level users, and you're looking at a crappy call, assuming you can even orginate one.
IMO, a possible better solution would be a micro-cell installed on the plane that would multiplex the calls back to the PSTN.
If you've been living under a rock, now is the time to realize how deep it really is in Washington now.
This is complete and utter bullshit. My money stays home if this passes. Anyone read any good books lately?
These owls are much, much cooler than this one.
100k feet = 18 miles. Currently, the cell sites that I'm responsible for are at maximum 20 miles apart. A site 18 miles distant is going to provide zero coverage to anyone inside a building.
In addition, 2 balloon sites, is going to have jack sh!t for capacity. Assuming these weather balloons are even capable of lifting our smallest GSM equipment (which is far more than the 6 pount limit mentioned in the article), each ballon would be have a maximum of 29 voice channels. That's enough to cover a busy city block, or a tiny town.
Well duh. Are there going to be more than 30 people using their phone in that 100k square miles? You betcha.This is a moumentally stupid idea.
One Good Turn: A History of the Screw
A surprising search for the orgin and inventor of the screw and screwdriver. The Screw is named the most important invention of the past 1000 years.
Very intresting.
But then again, so it you 'I' key.
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
Not for Verizon, but another wireless company that begins with a V.
h tm l
Thankfully, I don't do it full time. I do do it several hours a week when troubleshooting.
It's pretty boring. But it does make for some impressive phonebills.
Our local paper had an article about the person in Minneapolis that does this for Verizon. She doesn't sound like she knows what she's talking about, but unless you're interpreting the data, basically anyone can do the driving.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/2260767.
"John Katz? THE John Katz? Sure I can cancel your service, please hold for one minute"
*click*
Bwahahahahaha!
Most consumer grade DSL and Cable Acceptable Use Policies prohibit re-selling of the service.
Something for you to think about before you start charging by the hour for bandwidth.
Bring a plastic bag with you, and pick up some trash as you play.
Keep your courses clean!
The configuration of base stations in cell phone networks has always been problematic because you can never predict how many phones will connect to which base station.
True. However, it doesn't much matter most of the time. We monitor the usage of our sites, and expand those that require it. We also preemtivly expand those that are predicted to require it, and those that we know are going to cover major events, IE concerts, conventions, etc.
And sometimes adjacent antennas will use the same frequency leading to dropped calls.
If this is happening, your RF engineer is an idiot. The process of planning what sites use what frequencies is somewhat intensive, but putting the same frequency on two addjacent sites is a complete fsck up. More typical is a site overshooting and interfering with another one several miles away.
But with dozens of base stations, each broadcasting with six of the 29 available frequencies
I know that BT has alot more capacity problems than most places here in the US. However, my company uses 3 frequencies per site, from a list of 24. Each site also freqency hops on a list of 18 more freqencies. Hopping really makes all this possible.
Wonder how many kkeys/sec it could do on distributed.net
Laserdisc?
It's *analog* for god's sake. Gimme a break.
Quick and very dirty:
Details of arrest of Dmitry Skljarova from July, 11 till July, 16 I was in Las Vegas on conference Defcon 9 together with the employee of our corporation Dmitry Skljarovym who addressed to on conference on the report. In the morning, July, 16, we together with Dmitry have quitted from hotel and were going to go in the airport. Before flight remained about one and a half hours. Directly at an output(exit) from a door to us two young men, with shouts " hands on a wall, FBI came! ". Having decided(solved), that is whose unsuccessful joke (and of conference rather frequently joked concerning ôåäåðàëîâ), Dmitry has burst out laughing and even something has tried to tell in the answer. However to it(him) in some more rough form it was told " hands on a wall! " . For me have asked a key from a hotel room and have invited for conversation. Hardly later into number have entered Dmitry. It(he) was already in handcuffs. Two more employees of FBI who probably, inspected street came. Dmitry has asked to move handcuffs forwards as with the hands connected behind it is very inconvenient to sit. To it(him) it refused. The employee of FBI was presented and has told, that to me claims are not present, and they came to arrest Dmitry. In the polite form it was offered to have a talk. On my question " for what have arrested Dmitry? " The answer was given, that to it(him) accusation of violation DMCA is showed(presented) (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is the American law on copyrights. The initiator of litigation and consequence(investigation) is Adobe company. More employees of FBI have not informed any details, referring that they only fulfil the order. To me formal questions on which they certainly already knew answers were given some. Have asked to take with itself things Äèìû, motivating it is that, that " as though they were not lost in America ". A question on further destiny Äèìû have answered, that right now it(him) will take in local office of FBI where will clarify still any questions, and then to the judge who will make final solution. All above described has taken place in Alexis Park Hotel, Las-Vegas, staff(state) Nevada. On road to Los Angeles me watched(kept up), and rather roughly. As soon as I at the airport have answered the phone the officer of police has on the spot run up and has pretent, that wants to call from the adjacent phone. Anywhere it(he) and has not called. The details concerning conflict ElcomSoft with Adobe, you can read on a site of ElcomSoft company. The official official report of the officer of FBI which delayed Dmitry, it is possible to look here. Andrey Malyshev, ÝëêîìÑîôò company, July, 18, 2001.
I've always wanted to be the Chief Rocket Scientist.
These pathetic graphics are grounds for inclusion in Edward Tufte's "Chart Junk" chapters. For those that haven't read his book, I highly recommend all of them. http://www.cs.yale.edu/people/faculty/tufte.html
There exist Dvorak layouts for both right, and left single handed keyboards.
l
http://home1.gte.net/bharrell/kbdtxt.htm
There also exists this nifty page about single handed typing:
http://www.arlido.com/zijianhuang/onehanded.htm
And atleast one company makes half keyboards:
http://halfkeyboard.com/
Sure, on a smaller scale. 5 bored students, a couple cases of beer, and some, uh "creative" parts gathering.
Took us a weekend, but we built it. Teflon barrel was about a foot long. Shot a 1/4" by 1/2" magnet about 75 feet. Would have gone farther had the dorm hallway not had a door on the end.
I'm a Radio Frequency Engineer with a major US PCS company. I design new cell sites, the great majority of which are now aimed at improving in-building coverage.
;)
If you're asking what you can do by yourself, the short answer is not much. If you're realitivly close to an area of good reception, you could string an external antenna along, but I can't see that being terribly practical. Also, call up your provider, and tell them that you have no inbuilding coverage at your location. I recieve these reports, and use them to assist in locating new sites. Better yet, do it a couple of times.
If your company owns the building you work in, AND it has a fair amount of phones from whatever provider you use, then talk to your building managment, and give your provider a call. My company has build several microcells upon the request of companies that have bought phones from us. If you can get that accomplished, you'll almost certianly get excellent coverage.
Do what I started doing last year...Work for them!
I figured I spent so much time at my local Borders last fall, I might as well work there. Filled out and app, and now for a measly 8 hours (two nights a week) of my week, I'm the computer book man. Weee.
The pay sucks, but I get 33% off all books/movies/CDs that I want. What a deal!
Do what I started doing last year...Work for them!
I figured I spent so much time at my local Borders last fall, I might as well work there. Filled out and app, and now for a measly 8 hours (two nights a week) of my life, I'm the computer book man. Weee.
The pay sucks, but I get 33% off all books/movies/CDs that I want. What a deal!
Disclaimer: I work for a GSM company in the US. Oh, and GSM rules.
;)
The whole G3 tech process is a mess. No one has decided squat yet, mainly because everyone has to agree.
If/when G3 gets worked out, and when equipment starts being produced, you can bet your ass that every digitial carrier in the US is going to change over. Perhaps slowly, but they will.