I'm fairly dubious about the numbers of hot spots they're talking about rolling out. 25-50,000 acess points to cover major metropolitan areas (obviously nationwide doesn't really mean anything in this context) so that no one is more than five minutes away? I don't see how that is possible. DJ Unstrung
Re:Rector Park (Battery Park City)
on
The Wireless City
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· Score: 1
I think Tompkins Square park is reasonably well covered by NYCWireless anyway. Certainly I've been able to get connected to their nodes there. DJ Unstrung
Indeed - calling party pays - the curse of the US cellphone industry. I use SMS phones in both the US and UK. I think I'd prefer to get the minor amounts of porn and gambling SMS spam you get in the UK to polictical ads. Still it'll be an new artform for the politcial copywriter - how to smear and defame your opponent in 160 characters or less!
Sprint is stretching the definition of "nationwide" a little bit (as most network operators tend to) because they don't count towns or cities with a population of under 100,000, Which *could* mean that most of Utah isn't covered!
Hmmm
The ITU calls the CDMA2000 1xRTT spec "3G", but it doesn't meet the ITU's own requirements (2 mbit/s data transfer rates) for the third generation technology! It certainly doesn't meet the service availability and roaming requirements
I'd lump 1xRTT in with GPRS as a stop-gap technology (2.5G) between true 3G systems like W-CDMA/UMTS and CDMA2000 EV-DO.
Boingo is not quite the same thing. Boingo doesn't build their own hotspots, their software sniffs out existing free hot spots and partner networks. Too early to say if Intel and the others will partner with existing WLAN companies like Boingo and iPass or go it alone.
I'd suggest that some kind of wireless peer-to-peer mesh networking set-up like MeshNetworks or Skypilot are working on might help boost coverage. These systems use other wireless devices as nodes in a network, so they take data from a wired connection and pass it over the mesh of devices, like a soccer team passing a 'data ball' down a field. I doubt Project Rainbow will use this, but then, I expect that Project Rainbow is problably means nationwide in the sense of coverage in major cities. DJ@Unstrung
Only problem with that idea is that there isn't support for voice over IP in the 802.11 standards at the moment. Companies like Symbol do properitary voice extensions, but it isn't part of the standard. DJ@Unstrung
...And then think of the backhaul requirements as you're shuttling data between the 802.11 nodes and the wired broadband connection, it'd be a nightmare.
I think by "nationwide" we can safely assume hotspots in major cities rather than carpeting the US.
DJ@Unstrung
How so?
NTT DoCoMo has just started wireless LAN services. Voicestream (through Deutsche Telekom and its acquisition of the Mobilestar network) has been running them in the US for a while, as has Sonera in Europe, I'd hardly call that sooo far ahead.
However, it will be interesting to see if AT&T uses any of the NTT tech. NTT has a dual-mode card for roaming between 3G(FOMA) and WLAN networks (see http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?site=unstrung &doc_id=18192&page_number=5 for NTT's Shoji Suto's comments on they seeing working). NTT is an investor in AT&T Wireless and they tend to export some of their technology as well.
DJ@Unstrung
Slashdot Mirror
I'm fairly dubious about the numbers of hot spots they're talking about rolling out. 25-50,000 acess points to cover major metropolitan areas (obviously nationwide doesn't really mean anything in this context) so that no one is more than five minutes away? I don't see how that is possible. DJ Unstrung
I think Tompkins Square park is reasonably well covered by NYCWireless anyway. Certainly I've been able to get connected to their nodes there. DJ Unstrung
Indeed - calling party pays - the curse of the US cellphone industry. I use SMS phones in both the US and UK. I think I'd prefer to get the minor amounts of porn and gambling SMS spam you get in the UK to polictical ads. Still it'll be an new artform for the politcial copywriter - how to smear and defame your opponent in 160 characters or less!
Sprint is stretching the definition of "nationwide" a little bit (as most network operators tend to) because they don't count towns or cities with a population of under 100,000, Which *could* mean that most of Utah isn't covered!
Hmmm The ITU calls the CDMA2000 1xRTT spec "3G", but it doesn't meet the ITU's own requirements (2 mbit/s data transfer rates) for the third generation technology! It certainly doesn't meet the service availability and roaming requirements I'd lump 1xRTT in with GPRS as a stop-gap technology (2.5G) between true 3G systems like W-CDMA/UMTS and CDMA2000 EV-DO.
Boingo is not quite the same thing. Boingo doesn't build their own hotspots, their software sniffs out existing free hot spots and partner networks. Too early to say if Intel and the others will partner with existing WLAN companies like Boingo and iPass or go it alone.
I'd suggest that some kind of wireless peer-to-peer mesh networking set-up like MeshNetworks or Skypilot are working on might help boost coverage. These systems use other wireless devices as nodes in a network, so they take data from a wired connection and pass it over the mesh of devices, like a soccer team passing a 'data ball' down a field. I doubt Project Rainbow will use this, but then, I expect that Project Rainbow is problably means nationwide in the sense of coverage in major cities. DJ@Unstrung
Only problem with that idea is that there isn't support for voice over IP in the 802.11 standards at the moment. Companies like Symbol do properitary voice extensions, but it isn't part of the standard. DJ@Unstrung
...And then think of the backhaul requirements as you're shuttling data between the 802.11 nodes and the wired broadband connection, it'd be a nightmare. I think by "nationwide" we can safely assume hotspots in major cities rather than carpeting the US. DJ@Unstrung
How so? NTT DoCoMo has just started wireless LAN services. Voicestream (through Deutsche Telekom and its acquisition of the Mobilestar network) has been running them in the US for a while, as has Sonera in Europe, I'd hardly call that sooo far ahead. However, it will be interesting to see if AT&T uses any of the NTT tech. NTT has a dual-mode card for roaming between 3G(FOMA) and WLAN networks (see http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?site=unstrung &doc_id=18192&page_number=5 for NTT's Shoji Suto's comments on they seeing working). NTT is an investor in AT&T Wireless and they tend to export some of their technology as well.
DJ@Unstrung