I have to disagree with you on a number of levels. wifi is not, and will not, be doing to ev-do what cellular did to iridium. First point being, we are unlikely to ever see nationwide deployment of evdo. The only two carriers with the resources to do it (sprint and verizon) have decided to skip it and go straight to evdv. Now, comparing wifi against both 1xrtt (today) and 1xevdv (few years down the line), I'll say this. The difference is coverage, and consistency. Even if we see businesses everywhere throwing up access points like crazy, you're going to lose signal, get a new (private? public?) IP, and deal with different conditions, speeds, and routing every time you change locations. There is no way a free network would be able to be streamlined across the nation, and your coverage would be limited to within a few dozen yards, LOS, of where enough people congregate to make it cost effective for the business owner. With 2.5/3g cellular services, you get coverage just about everywhere you could possibly find yourself. Chances are if you can see more than one building by looking around you, you've got signal. No you don't need 1xEV-DO at work, it's not designed for that. Or your house. Or even your backyard. Your friend's backyard? yes. The beach? yes That neighborhood pizza place with the great pizza but a bit behind the times of the wifi revolution? you bet. WiFi does not destroy the business case for anything, except maybe slower wireless lan tech. I might also ad that your pop music comparison is invalid - since the invention of the internet, pop music has gotten bigger, crappier, and more pervasive than ever before. Not because of the internet mind you, but the internet certainly hasn't put a stop to it. The problem with voip, the universal saviour of the slashdot armchair economist is termniation and/or addressing. The fact is, phone numbers are convienent, and a accepted way of doing business. the phone network is relable and ubiquitous. consumers will not accept voip until they can punch their friend's phone # into it, and have it work, which would require termination into the pstn, which ruins the whole concept of wifi killing the telco. Cell phones are super cheap these days, and airtime prices drop monthly. I have yet to see a cheap, reliable voip provider solution that could hold a candle to my cell phone in terms of convience or price. WiFi is great for a house-area wireless network, and with fixed antennas on both ends it is great for medium distances. But for roaming? likely never. And for god's sake don't compare people to the riaa, unless they represent the movie industry. It just doesn't hold up.
the samsung i500 here Is a full palm pda + phone, and barely larger than my a500. if you want small, it seems to be the one to beat in 2q when it comes out.
I don't know about overseas, but my current cell phone provider has, and has for the 3 years I've been on them, had any and all U.S. long distance included in all their plans. I'm not gonna go so far as to get specific but maybe people should shop around instead of going for the first company that wings some cheap nokia at them as they walk by on the street.
Latency, and in fact bandwidth, is very very similar to dialup. Granted it's been a while since I had dialup for me to remember and compare, but I'll put it like this. With so-so signal, 1x is like semi-crappy dialup (which I was cursed with for sooo long), i.e. a bad phone line that forever connects at 26.4. With good signal, it is on a level with and will surpass a good 56k connection. That's my experience using my phone & data cable with Vision, hooked up to my laptop. The line speed is 144kbps. It's not as solid or low latency as a 144k idsl line, but its better than any dialup I've ever had. Sub 300ms latencies are normal, but you can't really count on 100ms. This may improve when they come out with 1x rev. A, but that remains to be seen. No wireless connection can really ever hope to compete with wired latencies.
Well good luck. I asked them about a line, and I'm about a mile away from the university of pennsylvania, who has a 1gb line from cogent, so I know their network is in my part of the city. The email response I got? some guy from psinet (a cogent company tm) offering me a t-3 for 10 grand a month. Some people seem to be getting these crazy prices, but I had no luck. the guy still hasn't responded to my email asking him what happened to the prices on their website.
That on my refresh which brought this story up on the home page, the banner directly above it was, for one dollar a month, the world's most reliable dns, ULTRA DNS!!! haha to them.
Fees like this particularly infuriate me. I am currently looking into other banks after first union(wachovia now?) decided to start charging 50 cents every time you pay with something with your atm card. This after they'd finally dropped their 1.00 fee in addition to the 1.50 you pay to atm owners for getting money at a damn 7-11. The article does make one good point though - companies that play their marketing off consumer frustration with fees can make a bundle. I recently stayed at a wyndham, the hotel chain listed in the article. It sounds stupid, but the fact that I signed up for a free program and now can count on free internet access, free ld phone calls (!), extra pillows, and a free (as in beer) beer whenever I walk into my room there will make me choose them over just about any other chain. Other hotels could take a big lesson from them, especially certain "luxury" hotels whose idea of "business services" is putting analog jacks on the sides of the phones so you can pay 10 bucks in service fees to check your email over dialup, and allowing you to receive faxes for a dollar. Give me broadband in the room and I'll stop bitching about how there's only 5 non-pay channels on the tv.
Slashdot Mirror
SHITBALL FIGHT!!!!!!! heh heh......doesn't have the same ring.....
I have to disagree with you on a number of levels. wifi is not, and will not, be doing to ev-do what cellular did to iridium. First point being, we are unlikely to ever see nationwide deployment of evdo. The only two carriers with the resources to do it (sprint and verizon) have decided to skip it and go straight to evdv. Now, comparing wifi against both 1xrtt (today) and 1xevdv (few years down the line), I'll say this. The difference is coverage, and consistency. Even if we see businesses everywhere throwing up access points like crazy, you're going to lose signal, get a new (private? public?) IP, and deal with different conditions, speeds, and routing every time you change locations. There is no way a free network would be able to be streamlined across the nation, and your coverage would be limited to within a few dozen yards, LOS, of where enough people congregate to make it cost effective for the business owner. With 2.5/3g cellular services, you get coverage just about everywhere you could possibly find yourself. Chances are if you can see more than one building by looking around you, you've got signal. No you don't need 1xEV-DO at work, it's not designed for that. Or your house. Or even your backyard. Your friend's backyard? yes. The beach? yes That neighborhood pizza place with the great pizza but a bit behind the times of the wifi revolution? you bet. WiFi does not destroy the business case for anything, except maybe slower wireless lan tech. I might also ad that your pop music comparison is invalid - since the invention of the internet, pop music has gotten bigger, crappier, and more pervasive than ever before. Not because of the internet mind you, but the internet certainly hasn't put a stop to it. The problem with voip, the universal saviour of the slashdot armchair economist is termniation and/or addressing. The fact is, phone numbers are convienent, and a accepted way of doing business. the phone network is relable and ubiquitous. consumers will not accept voip until they can punch their friend's phone # into it, and have it work, which would require termination into the pstn, which ruins the whole concept of wifi killing the telco. Cell phones are super cheap these days, and airtime prices drop monthly. I have yet to see a cheap, reliable voip provider solution that could hold a candle to my cell phone in terms of convience or price. WiFi is great for a house-area wireless network, and with fixed antennas on both ends it is great for medium distances. But for roaming? likely never. And for god's sake don't compare people to the riaa, unless they represent the movie industry. It just doesn't hold up.
the samsung i500 here Is a full palm pda + phone, and barely larger than my a500. if you want small, it seems to be the one to beat in 2q when it comes out.
I don't know about overseas, but my current cell phone provider has, and has for the 3 years I've been on them, had any and all U.S. long distance included in all their plans. I'm not gonna go so far as to get specific but maybe people should shop around instead of going for the first company that wings some cheap nokia at them as they walk by on the street.
Actually if they did it anywhere near correctly it'd mostly be protein.
Latency, and in fact bandwidth, is very very similar to dialup. Granted it's been a while since I had dialup for me to remember and compare, but I'll put it like this. With so-so signal, 1x is like semi-crappy dialup (which I was cursed with for sooo long), i.e. a bad phone line that forever connects at 26.4. With good signal, it is on a level with and will surpass a good 56k connection. That's my experience using my phone & data cable with Vision, hooked up to my laptop. The line speed is 144kbps. It's not as solid or low latency as a 144k idsl line, but its better than any dialup I've ever had. Sub 300ms latencies are normal, but you can't really count on 100ms. This may improve when they come out with 1x rev. A, but that remains to be seen. No wireless connection can really ever hope to compete with wired latencies.
We cue the pseudo-gangsta asian kid saying "Even mah pc is iced out FOOOL!"
Well good luck. I asked them about a line, and I'm about a mile away from the university of pennsylvania, who has a 1gb line from cogent, so I know their network is in my part of the city. The email response I got? some guy from psinet (a cogent company tm) offering me a t-3 for 10 grand a month. Some people seem to be getting these crazy prices, but I had no luck. the guy still hasn't responded to my email asking him what happened to the prices on their website.
That on my refresh which brought this story up on the home page, the banner directly above it was, for one dollar a month, the world's most reliable dns, ULTRA DNS!!! haha to them.
How much are they giving for the trade-in on your legs?
Fees like this particularly infuriate me. I am currently looking into other banks after first union(wachovia now?) decided to start charging 50 cents every time you pay with something with your atm card. This after they'd finally dropped their 1.00 fee in addition to the 1.50 you pay to atm owners for getting money at a damn 7-11. The article does make one good point though - companies that play their marketing off consumer frustration with fees can make a bundle. I recently stayed at a wyndham, the hotel chain listed in the article. It sounds stupid, but the fact that I signed up for a free program and now can count on free internet access, free ld phone calls (!), extra pillows, and a free (as in beer) beer whenever I walk into my room there will make me choose them over just about any other chain. Other hotels could take a big lesson from them, especially certain "luxury" hotels whose idea of "business services" is putting analog jacks on the sides of the phones so you can pay 10 bucks in service fees to check your email over dialup, and allowing you to receive faxes for a dollar. Give me broadband in the room and I'll stop bitching about how there's only 5 non-pay channels on the tv.