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Technology

Yet Another "Last Mile" Option 191

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-that-be-special dept.
Jay writes "This article on Yahoo talks about the FCC looking into licencing the 70 - 95GHz bandwidth spectrum. Which would provide "12.5 gigabyte Internet access to homes or businesses as many as 12 miles away from an antenna." Another option for bringing bandwidth over that last mile?" And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.
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Yet Another "Last Mile" Option More

Yet Another "Last Mile" Option

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  • Doesn't radio at such high frequencies require all sorts of funky hardware that's strange and expensive to operate reliably?

    If the barriers can be overcome, wireless delivery is really an ideal networking solution, though.

  • wait til 2003 and you will stop worrying... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and you can stop worrying about last mile and crap like that....

    why? check this:
    http://armageddononline.tripod.com/planetx.htm [tripod.com]
  • The question that I keep saying raised and being answered (not the favor of home users) is what happens when bandwidth becomes more and more available and the end-user starts getting charged for it.

    Here where I live, I've been asking business to consider installing a wap11 to allow customers surf while they have a cup of coffee, but all of them have refused because they fear the increased costs. At home, if I tried to set up my own wap11 for use outside my house, and let a few people start using, what would be bills be? I wouldnt mind paying a little more, but I keep reading the the cost of bandwidth is really going to start to get expensice so that ISP's can make their money ( no problem with that)

    Thanks for reading

    • As pointed out in many of the various replies under this thread [slashdot.org], ISPs make tons of money. Perhaps they aren't making as much money as they could in other sectors, so their economic profit is negative, but their accounting profit is through the roof. Sure, a tiered bandwidth plan is justified for the small percentage of users that use a large percentage of bandwidth, but that is not to evidence that the ISPs are going broke or anything, it's entirely the opposite in fact.
    • P2P networks are not only are revolutionizing file sharing, but also dynamic routing and load balancing. As soon as these devices start to talk to eachother with that much bandwidth, people will be able to look at it as a viable medium to express themselves and the content will flow from those with the biggest pipes.
    • Strange, that things are so twisted. In a supply and demand economy, the introduction of more "supply" should act to reduce costs. We claim to be such an economy. Let's take a look at how it applies to this situation.

      Joe Sixpack decides to set up a WAP to let his beershop customers browse the web for porn, while drinking brew. He's hardly building a major fiber optic trunk, so how could this affect the price of bandwidth?

      Well, for starters, he's bringing in just a bit more business to his ISP, which might make the difference between bankruptcy, and breaking even. Or maybe the ISP is doing well already, but the extra business means they get better volume discounts.

      And then, there is the fact that the customers might be less inclined to use some cellular internet connection that costs a buttload. Competition might end up forcing them to lower prices. All sorts of effects might come into play, if you simply put up that wap11, that in the long run will only make things cheaper for everyone.

      However, the reality of it is, it will cost you extra now, and probably forever. Demand is screaming at the top of its lungs, but no one listens. They aren't interested in making a comfortable profit meeting our demands, they are more interested in stalling the inevitable, and making a killing slowly starving us of bandwidth. Sound farfetched? Then consider...

      What situation is more lucrative?

      A) Some yuppy at 7-11 buys a 20oz bottle of water for $1.29, on his way to work, or...

      B) The same yuppy, stranded in the desert for 2 days, on the verge of death, willing to sign over his life savings for that same 20oz bottle of water?

      Suffice it to say, that the telecom companies are busy little bees building an artificial desert, and herding us all into it.

  • Another secret auction? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @10:44AM (#3721856) Homepage
    I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me on this (as always), but didn't the last time the FCC "open up" bandwidth, it did it in a secret auction that only the "baby bells" could attend?

    Now, if this auction were fully public so local folks could actually get a bid in and, oh, I don't know, fucking compete, then I'll get excited.

    Until then, I'll keep up my plans to lay my own fiber in my area (and hope my neighbors stop reporting me for trespassing.)

    • I'm not familiar with how the FCC auctions off the EM spectrum.

      It sure makes sense to me if they opened it up for free usage as long as the TX power was low enough, a lot like 800-900 MHz and 2 GHz usages for cordless phones, garage door openers, etc..

      I like the idea of last mile wireless that is not hamstrung by fixed costs of providers that bought up the spectrum license.

      Then, I'd be willing to pay for a contact point to a local communications provider that relays my wireless traffic on and off land line optical fiber.

    • Ummm, okay, they could open up the auctions to everyone, but not that many "local folks" have like a billion dollars lying around that they could spend on the bandwidth. I don't know how well you could compete against someone who has 1000x your resources. I'm in the same boat, and so are all the other "local folks." If you get my drift.
  • Every couple of days /. reports on someone solving the last mile problem.

    Wonder when there actually WILL be a solution?

    Us rednecks are tired of waiting so long for our our porn and Britney Spears songs to download.

    • Instead of downloading porn and Britney songs, just combine them. Download Britney porn, and reap the savings.
    • well, being that it's the FCC looking into licensing it, it may not be more than a few years before ISPs provide it to home users.

    • How about this last mile solution: wrt the recent report of laser tunneling from Australia, how about simply providing users with a data laser and setup a receiver near a landline optic fiber backbone. User encodes their laser beam and tunnels it the arbitrary distance to the receiver laser which injects it into the fiber optic line. Upon receiving data, the laser near the fiber (a laser router) tunnels the appropriate beam to the appropriate home.


      Get a pcmcia network laser or a usb or firewire laser (big pcmcia card or periph) and tunnel your connection that "last mile" to the net. Screw paying for a T1 line, or holding your breath for some ISP to provide a wireless link, or a DSLAM for DSL. Tunnel your internet.

      • This assumes that information can survive the tunneling process. There's been several quantum teleportation stories over the past few years. One feature I remember from each of them is that it tends to work well with things like lasers because unmodulated lasers have a minimum of information content. What I think your hypothetical hardware may do is provide a featureless laser at the other end of link that shares a few characteristics of the transmitting laser. That is the receiving beam may have the same frequency, polarazation, etc minus any modulation that was induced in the transmitting beam.

  • Thank god (Score:5, Funny)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @10:45AM (#3721858) Journal
    Now my microwave will not cause packets to drop on my network. All I have to worry about at that high a frequency is solar flares, the voice of god, and flying saucers.
    • I always thought the voice of god would be at a pretty low frequency. The only voice I can think of that might be this high was Alvin the Chipmunk. Shudder.
    • You do realize that since your microwave is causing your wireless (2.4ghz) to drop then it's leaking radiation... time to get a new microwave. Mine has never caused a problem with my wireless network.. the 2.4ghz phone, well that's another story..

      I wouldn't be standing to close to that microwave while heating up a burrito..
  • And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.

    If the telcos buy the frequencies (likely), for sure.

  • It seems like if these radio beams are so hard to generate and focus then it isn't going to be possible for each home to have one.

    Perhaps you can communicate between the ISP and a neighbourhood, with a centralised antenna, and then try and solve the last quarter mile problem between that and the homes.

  • Telepathic Network the way to go (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I definitely think that Bell Labs needs to work on using people as a way to transfer data telepathically. With all the electricity going through the human body it only stands to reason that we could pass data from human to human eliminating the need for these technologies.
  • So, who,s going to pay for all the traffic produced and for expanding the backbones???
  • Why the hell not just use line-of-sight laser? Radio at these frequencies has nearly the same properties as light. It would be absorbed by trees, buildings, the air, and nearly everything else. You would also need very high power output to keep it from being completely scattered. This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.

    • Re:95GHz? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Microlith ( 54737 )
      Light is in the hundreds of terahertz. Not only that, but this doesn't have nearly as hard a line-of-sight restriction as a laser.

      Close, but not quite.
    • This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.

      Oh lord, it took 12 different techs 6 tries over 4 months to get my 1 cable modem working... Imagine if something actually had to be PROFESSIONALLY installed!

      :)
  • The phone monopoly? Or the cable monopoly?

  • 12.5 gigs and they want to stop mp3 sharing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kipple ( 244681 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @10:48AM (#3721891) Journal
    This is a good one. They want to stop mp3 sharing BUT wants to provide customers with larger bandwidth.

    Let's face it - what is broadband used for? You can download a webpage on an isdn line (64/128k) almost as fast as you can on a DSL line (640k) due to the fact that by the time the traffic flow has got to its peek, all of the data has been transfered.

    So, what about digital video and streaming? Cool. DSL could easily be used for that. But what is the percentage of people using broadband to see video streaming (except pr0n) compared to those who download 'piracy' music/movies with it?

    It's ok if they provide businesses with broadband (they have lot of users, plus mail must have a reliable link). Ok for VPNs. Ok for websites.

    But the whole purpose of giving broadband with dynamic IP address (and sometimes not allowing the customer to put on its own service, like mail, www, ftp...) could be nothing else than giving users a way to download files. Nothing else.

    It's like giving citizens a REALLY fast car and REALLY good freeways for a REALLY cheap price, and telling them not to go fast. Why not? You don't even got hurt if you download music!

    This looks just like another contradiction of Capitalism, to me. [and yes, after this sentence, this comment will be modded down to -6]

    just my .2 euros

    cheers

    • I can think of a few things:

      - video telephony -- you will be able to call people on your PC phone and talk with real time motion video. Fax/voicemail/email will all be in one inbox. No need for a conventional POTS landline anymore.

      - movies and "internet TV" -- we already have internet radio, this is the next logical step. Goodbye Blockbusters. You can watch movies on demand; what a great business model that would be--no tapes/discs to return, no deposits; just pay $2 for 48 hour access to your favorite movies.

      - faster downloads. This would encourage, for better or worse, more resource-heavy web sites. Probably we'd end up with a dichotomy where almost every major location would have a high and low bandwidth version. High bandwidth would have video, high resolution graphics, interactive audio, perhaps speech recognition for navigation, etc. (well speech recog could be a local thing but if you just build it in to your site via a java applet or something people won't need to install viavoice or whatever)

      - synergy -- you can work from home, have real time high quality video conferencing to multiple locations.

      - virtual applications -- you won't need heavy duty office software installed at home; you can do practically everything over the network, and your home terminal can be a slimmed down, thin client. How this pans out economically is another question; software rental is an icky concept, but the capability will be there.

      this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I agree with you however that fixed IP will be useful in the future; maybe with Internet2?
      Cheers,
      Terry
      • Ok.. I agree with what you're saying. But my point is that *now* none of your points really justify broadband. VOIP is for few geeks around, Internet TV will probably fail (what a ./ effect would be if even 10% of the people watching the Superbowl will connect to the website AND wants to receive live high-quality broadcasting of the show!), internet radio works even with slow modem connections, and the downloads... ok I agree but I don't think that daily you download a whole ISO.
        Unless you apt-get upgrade, of course, but that's a consequence, not a need :)

        also, working from home is not a big issue with a modem: for example, windows 2k terminal service is usable at 1024x768 on a 64k link, and for the virtual apps.... hmmmm... nah, do you really use them? :)

    • "They" (Score:3, Informative)

      by sulli ( 195030 )
      There ain't no they. Disney wants to stop sharing. The Baby Bells (and most other isp's) couldn't care less about it. The cablecos would like it if they weren't under bandwidth pressures (shared media performance sucks when a few users are up/downloading isos and boxset zip files).

      Anyway there is a ton of legal and non-useless content out there. emusic and mp3.com are but two examples. Universal also just announced plans to sell mp3s of its library IIRC. Even if all the sharing utilities/services died tomorrow (HA!) these would still be there.

      VPNs are incredibly useful for telecommuting. It still amazes me that some cablecos block VPN traffic - causing users to disconnect and switch to DSL! - out of some weird view of the world that includes not selling as much service as possible. BUt I digress - again, VPN is another killer app.

      And in any case the demand for bandwidth and network capacity continues to grow, just as the demand for computing power continues to grow, the current telecom shakeout notwithstanding. So I suspect that we will see more, not fewer, of these developments in the next several years.

    • WHEREAS Congress notes the slow take-up of broadband internet services in the US, we reccommend that copyright protection be reduced to three (3) years, so that people can buy lots of WiFi kit to share newly public-domain films, music, and artwork...

      Nah, that would be too much like common sense!
  • Yes another technology that, although useful to people in rural areas, will be restricted to towns and cities. (Well, Tele2 here in the UK could bring broadband to rural areas (ie 30 miles away from London) but they've instead chosen to concentrate solely on cities. Whoopee.)
  • I was hoping that they would use the that specturm for cordless phones so I could finally build that 12 mile long Beer Pong tourtement hall I've been aspiring to make... But I don't want to miss calls... So I guess it'll have to wait.
  • I'm troubled with the suggestion that we use still more of the precious limited radio spectrum. What will we do in 5 years when any device you buy intereferes with some other appliance? For Christmas sake, my corded phone sounds like a cell phone thanks to the damned DSL.

    When will it end?
  • With such a high frequency, line-of-sight would be required. So the only real advantage over 802.11b is the bandwidth.
  • And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes.

    And knowing how old you are, those times are not far off!
  • Sad, but true is that it'll take a lot of forward-looking folks to bring this to the fruition. As much as Verizon, Qwest, Bell South, and the other Baby Bells complain that they have to bear the costs of maintaining the copper, it is essential to their business future. If they didn't have that cross to bear (that is, if wireless were available), then what would they have to block out competition as effectively [isp-planet.com] as they can today?

    Wireless would be wonderful. But only companies such as Sprint, who is a minority player (relatively, on a national level) in the local market anyway, can actually afford to offer it [sprintbroadband.com]... And even they've given up. The rest simply don't want to challenge their business plan that much. And can you blame them? The investors would have the head of Ivan Seidenberg [verizon.com].

    Face it, we're stuck.

    jrbd
  • The US Government hasn't bothered to use this spectrum because it is too "difficult"... I read that as "too expensive to be worth the investment"... so how could that possibly filter down to be financially viable for any residencial customer other than Bill Gates??
  • Yeah, you don't want to miss this part of the article. Supposably another important tech has already been approved.

    In related news, the FCC recently approved the commercial use of ultrawideband, which provides a fast and secure way of sending wireless transmissions.

    If I'm not mistaken, ultrawideband elimates noise problems and allows gigabyte size transfer rates.
  • Seems to me that 71-95Ghz wouldn't work through walls or trees. Maybe satellite? Anyone with enough knowledge of radio waves willing to comment?

    • Re:LOS? (Score:4, Informative)

      by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @11:18AM (#3722119) Homepage
      A few jobs ago, my wife worked for NOAA in the passive microwave radiometry group, which is fancy words for a bunch of folks who listened to clouds.
      90Ghz is one of the harmonics of H2O molecular vibration, so it's one of the key discriminators to tell between ice, liquid and vapor forms of water.
      This area of the spectrum has a few frequencies which are easy for H2O to absorb, but assuming that the FCC has half a clue to avoid those specific frequencies, the band as a whole should be able to penetrate humidity just fine.

      IANAEE, but I'm married to one.

  • The bandwidth isn't the point! (Score:5, Informative)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @11:01AM (#3721991) Homepage
    I hope that most of you do realize that the high bandwidth offered by these services isn't it's biggest feature.

    DSL has a max throughput of somewhere around 10mbps. Virtually all ISPS cap it at 1.5mbps or lower.

    Cable is a bit different: sometimes it's capped at a set rate, or it's evenly distributed throughout all the active users (evenly in theory... somehow, it doesn't seem to work out that way). Even so, it maxes out at around 10mbps as well.

    T1 is.... awesome. Unfortunately it's quite expensive to run, even though it's available virtually everywhere (remember that the T-1 system has existed for well over 20 years).

    The other factor is the 12.5 gigaBYTE limit. Is the article wrong: most network transmissions are measured in bits. If it is in bits, you only get 1ish gigabytes per second.

    Simply put, the 12.5 gigabyte limit may be for everybody within the 15-mile radius of the antenna. If so, users will be severely limited. If each user has 12.5 gigabytes, it will definitely be capped. SLASHDOT probably couldn't handle that much load (poor fellow whose server gets slashdotted by thousands of users on 12gigabyte connections). Think about it, there are about 20,000 people living 15 miles from my home. The article says it's 1,000 T1 lines. that's 1/20 of a T1 for home users. FYI, that's slower then 56k.

    Finally, how expensive will this be? Will it go through walls? Will it be fixed-point (ie. you must be aimed directly at the antenna, making use of this with laptops/pdas/phones impossible.).

    High-frequency transmission equipment is expensive. Possibly this would use a one-way connection with a 3G type system as the upstream connection.

    In conclusion, I must add that ISPS need to realize that they don't have to cap bandwidth for their users if they simply provide services (ftp mirrors, gaming servers, etc) to their LOCAL networks so that their users can have fast internet for those services without having to cap their bandwidth or waste excess bandwidth over the backbone.

    • 56K connects at 48,000 on a good day. That's about 5.2k/sec on throughput.

      A T1 is 1.54megabits. Divided by 20 yields 77,000. Thats about 8k/sec on throughput.

      How is 1/20 of a T1 slower than 56k mr math?

      Also, do you have any familiarity with how wireless works, in that cells can overlap, and not everone has to use the same one? Just because it has a 15 mile range doesn't mean that everone within 15 miles is forced to use the same antenna. And you're assuming a 100% adoption rate.. not even TVs are that prevalent.

      In short, your math is ... different from what I would use.

      • True. True.

        I just estimated in my head. As for the adoption rate. I have no clue how many internet users live near me. I just know that in a survey showed that well over three quarters of the population in my area had internet access.

        Do you know that these cells work nicely when overlapping? Some cells don't play nice when doing this, especilly when sending out two distinctly different signals.

        Then you have the latency issues.
    • Will it go through walls?

      No. It will penetrate a sheet of paper but probably be stopped by something such as your hand. I would be impressed if this setup will go 15 miles through a thunderstorm.

      Will it be fixed-point (ie. you must be aimed directly at the antenna, making use of this with laptops/pdas/phones impossible.)

      Not necessarily however the line-of-sight requirements would make roaming with omnidirectional antennas very disappointing.

      75-90GHz means wavelengths between 4mm and 3.33mm. A quarter-wave antenna would be only 1mm long. You'd probably manufacture antennas for this by using phased dipole arrays on a printed circuit board [caltech.edu] [Warning: powerpoint link] (probably the same circuit board as the transceiver) aimed at a parabolic dish reflector.

    • Think about it, there are about 20,000 people living 15 miles from my home. The article says it's 1,000 T1 lines. that's 1/20 of a T1 for home users. FYI, that's slower then 56k.

      I'm pretty sure that they would use more than 1 server on that kind of areas. Besides, how many of those 20,000 would use internet? Atleast not at full rate all the time.

      It's true that if you host a site and people with such bandwindth come and start to download a big file from your site it'll slow down your network pretty dramatically, but I guess you limit clients bandwindth from the server.

    • Of course bandwidth isn't the point. When dealing with wireless systems, it's latency. Our air frame gives us in the realm of 60-80ms, just slightly less than your average 56kbit modem, but far worse than your 1-2ms T1/DSL latency. When someone comes up with an implementation of this with some numbers, call me.

  • technobable? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Personally I thought the most worrying part about
    the article was the penultimate paragraph

    "Slaughter said the trials proved an important point: that the waves will stay densely packed and not spread out that much as they travel through the air."

    which has to be one of the worst descriptions of diffraction that I have read in a long time. What I guess this means is that either (a) they used focussing elements or (b) millimetre waves don't diffract.

    Neil
  • I'm under the impression that there's a connection between frequency and directionality, and of course penetration. So what is the 70-95 GHz spectrum like? How well can it reach through clounds and dust? Is it directional, or is everybody sharing? Thanks for any info.
    • At frequencies as high as this, the only obstacles that would really stop signals would be mountains. (Or of course, high energy EMPs, such as those from a power station, high tension lines, solar flare, or a nuclear blast, although short of a nuclear blast or solar flare, I doubt you would experience too much interference from other sources).
    • Required antenna size for a given gain is inversely proportional to the frequency used.

      Also, as the frequency goes higher, it becomes much harder to generate power. At 70-95 GHz, you're talking single-digit milliwatts in most cases.

      For example: I can build a 100-watt amplifier for the HF frequencies (1.8-30 MHz, approximately - I think in terms of the ham bands) for $100 or less. It might be 200-300 watts at that price range. (500W+ if I'm willing to accept nonlinear operation, i.e. I'm running Morse. Of course, at that point, I'm spending serious $$$ in the power supply too)

      A 1-watt 2.4 GHz amplifier runs around $400 commerically. I've seen supposed designs for running 1W at $100, but most modern 802.11 cards are too integrated to allow access to the T/R switching line, which makes the cheap amp designs useless.

      So to get effective range, you ABSOLUTELY need a high-gain antenna. At 70-95 GHz, even a 1-foot dish is high-gain though. The beamwidth will likely be less than a degree.
  • It is not 'Yet Another' last mile option until the ISPs/Phone Companies are out there battling each other to snap up every last customer living out in the rural areas.

    This title bothers me because I still only have 28.8 as my only reasonable option. (I am considering leasing a T1 and reselling it to the neighbours, but that's different.)

  • "And we could see products based on this during my grandchildrens lifetimes. "

    You had better get started making kids, don't you think?

  • Shrinking choices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by r_j_prahad ( 309298 ) <r_j_prahad AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @11:16AM (#3722099)
    Where I live, Qwest is my phone company, and Adelphia provides the cable TV. Service is worse than horrible from both companies, they both act like they're going to go titsup first thing tomorrow morning. Extended phone and cable outages are the norm, mainly because they don't have enough techs after the last round of layoffs. The only adequately staffed department in either company is the collections division.

    It's beginning to look more and more like my last mile is going to be wire-free... maybe satellite, maybe some chunk of the earthbound radio spectrum, but it probably won't be coming from the traditional infrastructure.
  • 12.5 gigabyte access for everyone within 12 miles of the antenna.

    So it's like cablemodem, only with a worse bandwidth/user ratio?

  • We have (partially) solved the last mile problem using DSL and Cable. We all thought the "last mile" was going to be the golden egg, but it has caused a host of other problems (witness broadband companies going belly-up due to high bandwidth demands of P2P software..)

    We need to figure out a way to drastically improve the infrastructure of the backbones and "next-to-last" miles.
  • Like PacBell/SBC would even consider offering this, like anyone is any competition for them, like my current ISP, XO, just notified me via email last night that, they too, are filing for Chapter 11 while reorganizing and probably don't plan anything really cool to attact new customers like blowing what little cash they have left to upgrade their equipment.

    As wonderful as it all sounds, it's kinda like reading in 1960 about how cars by 2000 will be rocket powered (a la Batmobile), we'll be cancer free, and everyone will have a house like FLW's Falling Water. Some day...

  • Maybe not as far off as you think. Velocium is currently advertising a 93 - 95 GHz LNA and power amp MMIC set. The technology exists now. The only problem is the power amp MMIC sells for like $1500 each, so the price is still way beyond what would be acceptable for commercial/home usage. The company I work for makes products up to 80 GHz, so going to 90 is not that much of a stretch. The problem would be to get that total 70-95 bandwidth in one unit.

  • A serious post... (Score:3, Informative)

    by TweeKinDaBahx ( 583007 ) <tweek AT nmt DOT edu> on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @11:28AM (#3722200) Homepage Journal
    For once, an issue on /. that's actually worth talking about...

    Ok, so the FCC is looking into this technology. They have been for a while now, but it's starting to look like they may allow civilian research on it (finally). It's not like this stuff is brand-spanking-new to science or anything...

    Broadbands "last mile" solutions have, until recently, be very pricey, unreliable, and sometimes non-existant. (Sounds like an oxymoron because in many cases, 'rural broadband' is an oxymoron).

    So, great! We now have a new promising technology which could bring 'rural' areas massive bandwidth (I mean 12.5 GIGABYTE!), but what can be defined as 'rural'? 12 miles isn't very far from any 'non-rural' area, and in some places (such as New Mexico) 12 miles can mean 6000 ft elevation changes, solid granite mountains, and generally prohibitive terrain. It seems like this technology might have more potential for bringing cheap, easy-to-use broadband to metropolitain areas and their suburbs. (Much as cable, DSL, and microwave wireless currently does). However, in a large metropolitain area, one has to aknowledge the amount of traffic flying around (but that's way off-topic).

    12 miles will not change how broadband effects rural areas. Once there is a 100 mile solution, THEN we will have bridged the "last mile" gap. (Lasers anyone?)

    I'm all for technologies like this, and contrary to some people's beliefs (*COUGH* CmdrTaco*COUGH*) we might actually see technologies like this take off en masse in the next 10 years.

    The way I look at it is 10 years ago I never would have dreamed of having a satellite TV downstream hookedd up to a DVR that automatically removes ads from TV, the can send these recordings around the world via the internet. Hell, 10 years ago no one really realized how the internet would reshape society (and if you think it hasn't, you're an idiot).

    The scientists will keep researching. The possiblities are endless and nothing is "impossible".

    One day I might even have broadband at home, 15 miles from town, up in the mountains ;).
  • So how secure are these wireless nets to sniffing? Does the FBI even need a warrant for wireless?
  • On Friday, March 1st, 2002, two Californian Amateur Radio Operators communicated over 175.3 Km (almost 110 miles!) using home build 75 GHz equipment. You can find an article here. [free-online.co.uk] The fact that the military is not interested in this band might not be the difficulty of building the equipment, but the in the difficulty of operation and / or the reliability of the connection. Just my $0.02

  • A better option (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nsayer ( 86181 ) <`moc.ufk' `ta' `reyasn'> on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @11:32AM (#3722221) Homepage
    One of the things we have to look forward to once broadcast television has gone fully digital is the give-back of the VHF TV spectrum. IMHO, VHF TV was one of the biggest wastes of spectrum ever conceived. The 12 channels of TV take up more than a quarter of the VHF bandwidth. By contrast, the 56 channels of UHF take up about 12.5% of UHF.

    So what?

    In general, lower frequencies tend to suffer a bit less from multipath distortion, suffer less from feedline losses, are easier to engineer, and more efficient to generate.

    Channels 2-6 are very low in frequency indeed. They start at 54 MHz (TV channels are 6 MHz wide), but there is a 4 MHz gap between 4 and 5 for various low power services (mostly RC cars and planes), with channel 6 abutting the bottom of the FM radio channels (88 MHz). Now, I think channels 5 and 6 should be dedicated to an amateur broadcasting service [kfu.com], and the rest perhaps to land-mobile activities, but channels 7-13 are the perfect place for low power data services.

    Of course, it's going to be years before the VHF TV transmitters are finally turned off, but I do believe it will happen eventually, and if we don't plan well in advance, there will be a smoke-filled-room give-away of this prime spectrum to someone with a lot of money, which isn't necessarily in the best interests of everyone.

    • One of the things we have to look forward to once broadcast television has gone fully digital is the give-back of the VHF TV spectrum.

      I think you have it backwards - TV stations are leaving the upper UHF (channels 52-69) for the "Core TV Channels" 2-51.

      New DTV allocations are being made in the "Core Channels", and then at the great analog turn-off in 2007, channels 52-69 will be cleared and returned to the FCC.

      The lower 700 MHz Auction [fcc.gov] begins tommorow!. This is for UHF channels 52-59.
  • I wonder if this would be solid enough for a commercial connection. By commercial, I mean a replacement for a T1/T3.

    It seems every time we order a new line, the phone company has to bring another line 1/2 mile down our road, which takes months.

    We don't have line of site to anyplace useful, which makes things even worse. We are at the mercy of the phone company everytime we need more bandwidth.

    -Pete
  • Combine this with this [slashdot.org] and we have the perfect solution.

    Both will be feasable around the same time.

  • Line of sight (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2002 @12:21PM (#3722599) Homepage
    Up at 75GHz, line of sight means line of sight, as in antennas pointed right at each other. Look at this 75GHz rig. [thersgb.net] See those sighting telescopes attached to the microwave dishes? Read about the unsuccessful trials when they couldn't get the dishes aligned quite right. And note the comment: "The low relative humidity (around 42%) and fine weather obviously helped a lot!" This stuff does not go through rain, fog, or clouds.

    Fixed point-to-point links over shorter ranges should work fine, but you can do that now.

  • June 18, 2002 - Washington DC,

    Today the FCC has begun the process of licensing the 600-700 THz spectrum, also known as the mid-nanometer band. Radio waves of this type are infinitesimally small, on the order of several hundred nanometers (one billionth of a meter).

    Creating radio signals in this band is not terribly difficult. Says an FCC representative "Boy scouts have been using this unlicensed spectrum for communication purposes for decades with no problems - I still have my old signal flashlight".

    The communication protocols used in this band will have to be updated, as the current system, know as "Morse Code", lacks the error correction and flow control algorithms neccessary for robust communications.

    One problem will be the interference caused by the wealth of prexisting unlicensed radiators in this spectrum. Says the FCC representative "Yeah, it's a really noisy spectrum, we admit, and there is really not much that can be done about the sun, but we'll work with existing users of this unlicensed spectrum to do whatever we can to eliminate the potential for interference with licensed devices."

    The vast bandwidth potential of this spectrum makes it a likely candidate for a 'last mile' broadband solution. This spectrum is estimate by scientist to be able to carry the equivalent data capacity of approximately a bajillion T1 lines, meaning a user could download the entire contents of the Library of Congress in approximately 2 femtoseconds.

    -josh

    • When I read this post, I got this image of the FCC trying to blot out the sun! "Those damn freebanders...don't they realize they need our permission to use the spectrum!" I wonder how long it'll be until a government agency actually tries that... ;-)

  • A week ago EarthLink released another form of "wireless internet access [boingo.com]" thru a partnership with "Boingo". It's 802.11b.

    Their coverage is pretty good in my area too. cool.

  • 1,000 T1s == 1.5Gb ~= OC30
    12.5 GB == 100Gb ~= OC650

    a very minor disparity, don't you think? Why can't press releases say 'VERY FAST!' instead of quoting fake numbers?
    • Why can't press releases say 'VERY FAST!' instead of quoting fake numbers?

      You really can't take x GHz and convert it into x Gbps, because you are missing the modulation mechanism, that is, how many bits per Hertz.

      And you don't know the modulation mechanism until you know the signal to noise ratio, which will depend on your signal strength (which depends on the gain of your antenna) and the noise (which depends on your antenna type, receiver type, etc.) The modulation type will be the fastest you can do given your signal to noise ratio.

      For example, DVB satellite systems with 1m receive dishes use QPSK (four bits per symbol), whereas I am playing with 6m receive dishes that can do 8PSK (8 bits per symbol) at the same bit error rate because of enhanced signal gain.
  • speaking of "last mile", is anyone familliar with New Visual (OTC:NVEI)?

    They claim to be developing a last mile solution that uses regular copper wire that's already installed.

    I have a fair amount of their stock, which seems pretty undervalued if anything they're saying is halfway true.

    http://www.newvisual.com

    Any thoughts?

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