2.4 Megabit Cellular Modem

lew writes: "Ars has a review of a cellular modem that provides 2.4 megabits / second downsteam and 153 kilobits / second upsteam... and it works! Check it out" How much for unmetered service on such a system? :)

that's PER CELL

[Syre]

What that article doesn't mention, and what people usually don't know when discussing 3G mobile is that the data rates quoted are PER CELL not PER USER (unless only one user per cell is active at a given moment).

This is the big lie of 3G mobile. In cities, it will never support the data rates they keep talking about because of the duty cycle: the number of users per cell at any one moment.

Re:that's PER CELL

[Control Group]

Yeah, but think about what most of those users are going to be doing with the connection: looking at web pages, reading email, and instant messaging people.

None of those are terribly bandwidth-intensive...the average user will probably feel pretty much exactly like they were sitting on a consumer broadband line.

Of course, if you mean to use it for downloading a DivX;-) version of LotR, you might run into (and cause) some problems...

Re:unmetered.

[grungeKid]

I have unmetered GPRS (aka 2.5 G) access right now, real cheap as well. Of course, this is partly because my carrier wants people to become used to the service, then they will probably start some sort of metered access... then again, maybe not, as one of the virtual carriers here in sweden just introduced unmetered SMS service. I don't find it improbable that specialized virtual carriers will offer unmetered data transfer.

2.4Mbps? Well, Not Actually

[dmccarty]

Ars has a review of a cellular modem that provides 2.4 megabits / second downsteam and 153 kilobits / second upsteam... and it works! Check it out

That's the optimal, best-case, never-gonna-see-it-in-real-life (unless you're testing the system before it's released to the public) speed. In real life use you'll be sharing with everyone else on the cell, just like a neighborhood of cable modems.

From the article: Which brings us to the next point: that 2.4 Mbps is shared among all users on a cell sector, just like cable bandwidth is shared by everyone in a neighborhood. What's a sector, then? Cell sites are generally divided into three sectors that each cover different parts of the surrounding area, so each site can have up to 7.2 Mbps of bandwidth to play with.

And FWIW, latency: Round trip times were in the 110-120 ms range on average, with the minimum I recorded coming in a bit under 80 ms.

This is the best bet for home broadband

[drew_kime]

As much as rolling this out will cost, it's still going to be less than rolling out high speed land lines. In places where local conditions (terrain, politics, the whims of Time Warner) make DSL or cable unavailable, this may be the way brodband finally comes to the consumer market in big numbers.

The most compelling reason to suspect this may happen is that you can do an incremental buildout. Put up a few cell towers in an area and sell service. As enough people sign up to demand more bandwidth, you can add towers. You can't do that with land lines.

Ricochet?

[jchristopher]

Just wondering if anyone has any inside information on the Ricochet network. They were purchased by Aerie networks, who claim they'll be offering service again "soon", for less than it was before!

At $50 a month for unmetered 128kbps (many subscribers got faster than that, too) Ricochet is easily the best way to get wireless data.

I see their transmitters hanging off lightposts all over my neighborhood, too. Every time I drive past one I'm reminded of what could have been...

GPRS

[cefek]

In Europe we have GPRS (aka 2.5G, or Generation 2 and-a-half) system. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is an extension to widely-deployed GSM system, which allows you to be online for as long as your cell phone is turned on.

The only thing that hurts, is that you pay for data transmitted, not for duration. That's good unless you really want to do something more with your cell phone, that just check local cinema's "now playing" web page via crappy WAP.

I guess we're gonna wait for 3G for some time more. Here in Europe, every country tried to maximize revenue paid by cell operators for spectrum band that can be used to offer UMTS. But prices were so horrible and technology is so weak, that we'll have to wait until they get enough money from current installations.

And they don't hurry, because why offer more and make costs, if one can offer less with no investments in new infrastructure?

Re:Slow transmissions.

[zeno_2]

I think a lot has to do with the fact is that every ISP that sells bandwidth (cable, dsl, wireless) will have plans in place for a buisness account, one that provides a much higher cap for upstream, but at a much higher price.

What kinda ticks me off is that with my cable modem, its against the 'rules' to host ANY sort of server. Here is a clip from these 'rules' (this is adelphia.net by the way).

v) to run a server of any type in connection with the Service, nor may you provide network or host services to others via the Service. Prohibited uses include, without limitation, running servers for PPP, FTP, HTTP, DNS, POP, SMTP, NNTP, PROXY, DHCP, IRC, TELNET, TFTP, SNMP and multi-user interactive forums, or remapping of ports for the purpose of operating a server on the network.

I can understand some of those, but I really dont see what the problem is. I myself run an ftp site, as well as a webpage from my computer with the cable line. I have to use port 8080 for my webpage, but port 21 works just fine for ftp. I maybe transfer.. 10mb of data a month using those 2 servers. Usually im just messing around with apache and php from work on a page hosted on my home machine.

If im only using about 10mb a month of transfers there should be not a single problem in what I am doing. If I dont configure my server right, and it gets attacked, its my fault, id sign a paper saying so if thats what they are worried about. Why not just close the accounts of those who do use too much bandwidth.. Now the other thing is that last october, a month or two after I got my cable modem, I had a total transfer of 40gigs, about 20 up and 20 down (from audiogalaxy.com =). I never got a single complaint or anything from adelphia.. Even though this is another 'rule'.

(A) excessive use of bandwidth (e.g. exceeding 2.5GB of traffic in a given month);

This is a joke really, I dont think they check anything unless they get complaints.. Not a very consistant set of rules, some of them half the rules apply, some rules are just there to be there, and are not followed..

Anyway, one quick question. My friend has a site up on geocities.com, they tell him he has a monthly transfer limit of 1gb. He has had the page up for a few days and is already getting it shut down because he has already transferred over the limit, even though its been a week. They seem to have a scale that goes along, so if your first day, you transfer 100mb you might get shut down.. Anyway, I told him that he could host it off my computer, and its only going to be about.. 100-300mb of transfers a month, so I doubt they would care.. Anyway, port 80 is blocked, any way that I can use some sort of system like no-ip.com has that will forward someone from another machine to my machine on port 8080, without having the user having to manually type www.whatever.com:8080..

And yes, I want one of those phones =)

Re: Metered service

[letxa2000]

If there was a flat rate for long-distance, it would certainly be higher than I'm paying now. All that would do is anger the 80% of people who use a less than average amount of long distance. (Yes, my math is right - the top 20% of long-distance callers talk five times as long.)

That assumes that the flat-rate amount multiplied by the number of customers would have to equal what the long distance companies currently earn.

The parent post was correct. Things are expensive because LD is still (comparatively) expensive.

LD used to be expensive because the COSTS were high to provide it. Laying the lines, relatively low number of users, etc. Now, telephones are virtually everywhere. Local calls are unmetered, but long distance is still relatively expensive mostly because people got used to paying for it. They value the service monetarily because they are used to paying for it.

LD no longer is as expensive as it used to be to provide. In fact, technically, it can be provided almost free. Most of the actual telecomm costs are in "the last mile" (read: the local telephone service that you already pay a monthly bill for).

Believe me, in 10, maybe 15 or 20 years max, there will be no "long distance charge" per-minute nor per-call and the companies providing them will either be much smaller and paid some monthly amount by local providers paying for international connectivity (like ISP access to the backbone).

Why? Because the price we pay for long distance is a perceived cost based on habit, not based on the actual real value or cost of the service. The price is, thus, unnaturally high. It may take time, but the free market will ensure that an unnaturally high price comes down. And it will.

While VoIP seems to have lost it's dazzle (with the dot com boom), I think VoIP is really what's going to eventually lead to free long distance. VoIP is in its infancy. When there is more infrastructure VoIP will be able to charge less than long distance companies. To compete, the long distance companies themselves will have to resort to VoIP. And, at some point, the local telephone company will end up simply being the local POP for the VoIP network... and the long distance companies will no longer exist.

That's my guess, anyway.

Re: Metered service

[Xenographic]

Umm, you do realize that in places like the UK, unmetered access like we enjoy in the US doesn't exist--you don't even get unlimited local calls, for crying out loud :[

E.G. we *already* have a very real reason to make spam illegal. Granted, this may not affect many US users, save to waste their time, but just because it doesn't affect the US doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people with a very real reason to make spam (UCE) illegal.