AlanBarber.Org
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
802.16a - The Last Mile Solution?
In the May 19th, 2003 issue of InfoWorld there was a short insert about a new wireless standard in the works called 802.16a. It's suppose to have a 30 mile range and peak out around 70Mbps, shared-data speed. It's being touted as the solution to the last mile problem for those areas without dsl or cable.The obvious question is when will we see it and according to the article probabbly not till early 2005.
To me it just sounds like another far off promise that will never get fullfilled. When dsl first came out everyone was saying that most of the coutry would have access very quickly. Yet several years later I'm still "just" out of the range. Then cable came along with similar promisses and it's no where near my house.
Lately there's been talk of net access of power lines. But other than a few test markets it's no where near rollout and honestly I don't think it'll get much use.
Finally there's the wireless solutions like satallite or fixed wireless. Satallite is useless for anyone but the most average of surfer/email users. There happen to be two different fixed wireless companies offering service in my area, in theory. One is offering T1 speeds at T1 costs. ~800 bucks for 1.5Mbps up/down. It's really being offered as a business solution though. The other just says it's faster than dialup and they charge around 70 bucks a month.
So perhaps this new standard might help me out. With it's larger service area, in theory, it might provide a cheaper and faster service to the poor saps like me that live just out of range of any real broadband solutions.
I'll be waiting I guess...
I think they're going about things all wrong. All these wired and wirless services are fixed, slow, and expensive. I belive the real solution is in the hands of the cellular phone companies. It's a simple although rather expensive idea.
Simple put they need to develope a very high speed network that provides both mobile voice and data service. Cellular coverage is very widespread. Far more than any broadband service to date. If all the phone companies used the same network that would provide excellent voice quality and a data network that could provide up 10+Mbps at a viable flat rate and they'd own the broadband arena. DSL, Cable, satallite, fixed wireless, etc would all go the way of the dinasaur!
I know the prospect of having a wireless card that could plug into any computing device and allow for high speed mobile use would be a huge seller.
Obviouslly even better would be if the cards would also provide ad-hoc networking so devices close to each other, say 50-100meters, would send data through this local public netowork without sending it over the cellular network. But not only direcctly connecting two devices together. Even if the two devices are out of range but a 3rd party system can talk to both then it'll work to forward the data so it can stay off the cellular network. Think about the possiblities of all computing devices connected in a system like that.
Let me give you an example.
You pick up your cell phone and dial your friends cell number who's two floors up in the office building. The devices are smart enough to know they're within direct connecting range so instead of sending voice data over the cellular network they just talk to each other directly. The great thing about this is since you don't use the celluar network you aren't paying for the time either!
Now as you're talking you decide to walk down to the coffee place a few blocks away. As you get out of range of your friend the system notices and starts using 3rd party devices between you and your friend to keep the connection active. If however it can negotiate a stable enough network then as a last resort it will start using the cellular network.
In this theory if there are enough devices cross connected it could be possible for two devices to communicate over very long distances without ever actually using the central cellular network.
Just think that considering just about everyone has cell phones now. Every congested highway or city sidewalk in the world could become a sorta of free-forming data network to link devices over extreamly long distances.
Obviouslly there are lots of technical issues to deal with but the idea is cool non the less.
on 05/21/2003 at 12:33 PM