Submitted by acohill on Fri, 08/06/2010 - 15:43
WiMax, which was going to solve everyone's broadband problems three years ago, may already be dead, without ever really being deployed in any meaningful way. This short article suggests that Clearwire is thinking seriously about switching from WiMax to LTE for its primary wireless deployment technology.
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is, depending a couple of different variants, a 3G or 4G cellular wireless technology that has much higher bandwidth than current 3G cellular wireless systems. As is usual, the makers of LTE equipment are touting very high (read: exaggerated) upload and download speeds that are always predicated with the handy phrase "up to..." But like all wireless technologies, you have to share that bandwidth with everyone else using the same tower/access point, so your mileage will vary greatly. A convenient rule of thumb for evaluating actual wireless bandwidth is to take the maximum "up to" number and divide by ten. The result is more likely what most users will see in practice.
Will LTE be an improvement? Very likely. But it means replacing your current wireless device with a new one, among other problems. Mobile phone manufacturers like these changes in technology, as it forces millions of people to buy new phones. But companies like AT&T are not even done building out adequate 3G networks using the "old" 3G technologies. The transition will be slow. And we will still all want fiber. Nobody is going to be delivering HD movies on demand over an LTE wireless network, no matter what the vendors claim the "up to" bandwidth is.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 08:35
AT&T has announced changes to its U.S. data plans for iPhones and iPads. Most current iPhone users pay $30/month for an unlimited data plan. A bit pricey, but you know what you are paying every month, and you don't have to worry about surprise charges on your next month's bill (I've had an iPhone for two years).
Under the two new plans, there is no unlimited option for the iPhone. Instead, there are two plans that provide 200 Meg ($15/month) and 2 Gig ($25/month) of data. Overage charges are actually fairly priced, in my opinion, rather than some of the punitive charges we have seen from some cellular providers in the past.
iPad users have a choice of two similar plans, one that provides 250 Meg ($15/month) and an unlimited plan ($30/month). The big news is that AT&T will finally allow tethering, meaning you can use your iPhone as a cellular modem for your laptop while traveling. AT&T is going to charge an additional $20/month for this service. iPhone users have been waiting a long time for this, and I think the additional charge is fair. Tethering your laptop is going to use a lot more bandwidth than equivalent Web browsing and data on an iPhone. And the $20/month charge competes very favorably with the cost of buying a dedicated cellular modem service (these plans tend to run about $30/month).
I am ready to sign up for the tethering plan. Free WiFi services while traveling are often hard to find and if you do find one, performance is typically abysmal--slow when working, and often not working, especially in airports, where I most often want to try to get some work done.
AT&T is also promising easy to use tools to keep track of how much data you have used over the course of a month so that you can avoid overage charges. This is essential to keep from annoying customers. Mobile data access is increasing rapidly as more people have smartphones and pad computers, and the cellular providers have to do something to manage bandwidth. The big weakness of wireless broadband is that there is only so much spectrum to go around, and when demand uses up the bandwidth available from an access point, the wireless provider has only one option--a costly upgrade to the access point and/or adding more access points and more backhaul--all expensive.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 14:40
The City of Portland, Oregon's municipal WiFi experiment is coming to an end. It was a public/private partnership between the City and a firm called MetroFi, which reportedly spent between $2 million and $3 million to build the network. But it never worked well, and residents reported it did not work well indoors. MetroFi went into bankruptcy in 2008, and the hundreds of antennas that were mounted on City property are now being removed.
It is yet another reminder that fiber always beats wireless. Wireless is expensive and has limited capacity, and in as Philadelphia found out in a similar project a few years back, wireless vendors always oversell the technical capacity of their products. In cities with lots of tall buildings filled with steel reinforcing bars, wireless signals don't travel very far.
Wireless has a role to play for mobile access and in rural areas where it will take a while to get fiber to every premise, but eventually, we will all have a fiber connection. As Portland has found out, wireless has a hard time competing with a wired connection.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 11:33
Steven Levy has a Wired article that illustrates some of the problems that Google, and by extension, all cellphone users face. The new Google Nexus One can be purchased unlocked and without a cellular contract. You can then (in theory) go to any provider and get a service contract. Except, as Levy points out, even if you paid $500 for your dandy new Nexus One phone, you are not likely to a) find a provider willing to sell you service, and b), if you do find a provider (T-Mobile is the only one so far), you won't get a discount on the service contract.
The only glimmer of hope is that with all the new iPhone imitations coming to market, the increased competition for smartphone customers, who tend to spend more because they buy both voice and data service, has lowered prices a bit. But the lower prices is so far limited to the unlimited contracts, which were already very expensive. The cost of these contracts is coming down by $20 to $30, but are probably still very profitable. When there is real competition, prices can and often do come down. But the cellular business looks a lot like a cartel, with cartel-like pricing.
This is an illustration of why open access networks, with community ownership, are so important. Only by making investments in owning some of the infrastructure do users (local governments, schools, businesses, residents) get some control over the market space. When telecom infrastructure is owned entirely by one company (e.g. phone/DSL, cable TV/cable Internet), the company that owns the infrastructure gets to set the pricing--and rightly so. I don't subscribe to the notion that incumbents are bad. They are making intelligent pricing decisions based on their asset and business models. Communities that want better and more affordable telecom services have to introduce different asset ownership models and different business models. It's not hard or complicated, and many communities are already doing this with excellent results. Call Design Nine (540-951-4400) if you want more information on how to get started.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 01/06/2010 - 09:02
New rumors about the Apple iTablet (or iSlate, or iSomething) suggest that it may come with 3G wireless network access built in. Big deal, since all smartphones already have this, right? No, the rumormongers are suggesting that iTablet owners will be able to pick and choose from several different cellular providers--but only for data, not voice.
It is likely that current cellular roaming agreements that make it possible to use your cellphone on any network would be modified to allow data roaming independent of voice contracts.
If this happens, it will be good news/bad news for the cellular industry. Good news in the sense that it will bring an entirely new stream of revenue to them--every iTablet owner who already has a cellphone contract will likely purchase a second contract for data roaming, and the cost will probably run $40 to $50 per month. The bad news is that the tablet will put even more pressure on cellular networks, as high bandwidth uses like watching TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, and video chat will explode. Want to bet that the iSlate will have Apple's iSight video webcam built in, just the way current Apple laptops have the tiny camera built in? Bet on it, and expect an explosion in video-enabled Skype use among iTablet owners.
There is potentially good news for rural communities suffering from lack of broadband and poor or nonexistent cellphone service. The new revenue streams that are likely to emerge may help improve the business case to expand wireless voice and data services into rural areas previously difficult to justify from a revenue perspective. But community broadband networks, powered by fiber, will still be needed to support commerce, jobs, and economic development.
Here's the funny thing about the iTablet--Apple had has this vision for at least 22 years--it has just taken this long for the technolgy to catch up with the Knowledge Navigator.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 08:21
The BBC has an article asking what happened to public WiFi. The big WiFi projects that attracted so much attention in the U.S. five and six years ago (e.g. Philadelphia, San Francisco) failed miserably and were shut down or dramatically restructured. Some smaller municipal WiFi projects, like the one in St. Cloud, Florida, had some early rough spots but are still active. But local governments, by and large, found that free WiFi was expensive to support and often very lightly used.
The BBC wonders if the new smartphones (e.g. the iPhone, Google's Android) will create a new surge of communitywide wireless demand. The answer is, "Probably." But looking five to seven years down the road, wireless Internet access will probably have shifted by then to WiMax or the recently opened 700 Mhz spectrum. And if I had to bet, the 700 Mhz could be the winner because it has sufficient bandwidth, the signal travels farther (fewer access points and less cost), and it penetrates trees and buildings better. WiMax, for all the hype, still has many of the shortcomings of WiFi because it operates in the same general frequency ranges.
While rural areas will rely heavily on wireless for primary Internet access until fiber reaches most rural homes, fiber will replace wireless over the long term for fixed point access. But we all want mobile access, and so wireless services are here to stay. But it is an expensive technology, and communities would be served best by investing in open access basic wireless infrastructure (tower sites, towers, rooftop access on public buildings and water towers) and simply leasing out that basic infrastructure to private sector wireless firms. On the fiber sides, communities should build open access fiber networks and lease out the capacity to the private sector--for both wireless and fiber, these are public/private partnership solutions that keep government out of the business of selling telecom services but ensure that communities have some control over their economic future.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 09:02
AT&T has been having problems with its cellular data networks--both EDGE and 3G. I noticed that things were not working at all on the data side (phone calls were fine) on Monday and Tuesday, but since the release of the new iPhone last month, I've had chronic problems with pokey data access. Every time Apple releases a new iPhone, another million or two new users get dumped onto AT&T's network, and all these new users are busy playing with their phones, downloading apps, surfing the Web, and using more wireless bandwidth than usual.
AT&T just has not been able to keep up, and it's not a problem unique to AT&T--it's a wireless issue that will never go away. As more people use wireless, you have to constantly add capacity. As you add capacity and the network gets faster, it encourages people to use more bandwidth...so you have to add more capacity...and so it goes.
It is very expensive to add capacity on wireless networks. Fiber, by comparison, in today's designs, starts out with enough capacity to do virtually anything you would want to do in a household or small business, so you don't get onto the wireless treadmill of constant upgrades and expenditures just to keep up.
Video is voracious, and we now have have wireless devices like the iPhone that have the horsepower to play high quality video. But the wireless networks don't have the capacity to support that in any meaningful way. And if you built a wireless network capable of supporting lots of video, you'd spend more than you would on running open access fiber to every home and business.
Wireless is here to stay for mobility access, but it's not THE broadband solution...it's part of the solution, but only part of the solution. Open access fiber is now essential public infrastructure if communities want to attract new businesses and keep the ones they already have; integrated fiber and wireless networks like The Wired Road, nDanville, Utopia, and the Eastern Shore Broadband Authority are the future of economic growth in the U.S.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 13:06
Using EVDO cellular data technology, you will be able to buy a Chrysler with built-in Internet access. The pricey feature includes everything you need to plug in a laptop and surf the 'net while traveling down the highway. You will have to have a cell tower within range, but the Chrysler option and what is likely to be many more competing systems, including after market add-ons, is likely to be popular with anyone who drives a lot. This approach is already used heavily by police and sheriff's departments so that patrol cars can have some Internet access over wide areas.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 15:19
AT&T, perhaps partly by accident, has probably created success story that is likely to become a business textbook case study classic. Its partnership with Apple has succeeded beyond the company's wildest dreams. Once a kind of also-ran in the cellular industry, customers are switching in droves to AT&T just to get an iPhone. And AT&T has wisely beefed up its network and is making massive investments to ensure its customers have a good signal in more places.
The iPhone is creating a majro change in the portable device and cellphone business, and I think the day of the cellphone is over, meaning that within five years, very few people will have a portable device that is primarily a phone. Going forward, every portable device will have to have a substantial feature set that provides many of the same functions and features of the iPhone.
Apple is probably not greatly worried, as the iPhone's potential is just now barely beginning to be tapped. The iPhone runs a version of the company's flagship OS X operating system, meaning iPhones are full-fledged computers, not just phones with a few extra features like an address book wedged in.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/25/2008 - 12:31
We already have too many people driving around with cellphones glued to their ears, not paying attention (clue: driving seven miles under the speed limit, wandering back and forth across the lane). Now Chrysler has announced they are building in support for WiFi in some of their automobiles. Great....now we'll have people driving while talking AND watching YouTube at the same time.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 06/13/2008 - 13:16
Sprint's new WiMax initiative with partner Clearwire is stalling because the high capacity wireless access points don't work very well when backhaul (the connection from the wireless radios/antennas is over old-fashioned copper phone lines.
Do the math....
If Sprint/Clearwire is promising 3-6 megabits per user over a wireless connection and the copper phone line feeding it is a T1 line (1.5 megabits), customers are going to be very disappointed. Clearwire may become a valuable customer of communities that are building out fiber networks.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 06/13/2008 - 09:06
Clearwire has announced plans to operate its proposed national WiMax network as an open access system, and major players like Sprint, Comcast, and Time Warner have apparently already agreed to become resellers on the network. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, as an enormous investment will be required to build the national infrastructure required to meet the promised goals. One of the backers of Clearwire is Sprint, which is losing cellular marketshare rapidly, and may regard Clearwire as its last chance to keep from being broken up and sold.
A national wireless network makes sense only if the operator truly operates it as open. The dangerous part of the proposal is that Clearwire can make any rules it wants, and can change them anytime it likes. If most of the U.S. ends up relying on a single network owner for mobile access, is that a good thing? Again, it *could* work, if competitive service providers truly get treated equally.
Note also that the article talks about very realistic bandwidth projections of 6 megabits down and 3 megabits up for the WiMax system--excellent for mobile access but that kind of bandwidth won't support much video or other high bandwidth, multimedia services, like movie downloads, live HD events, and videoconferencing. We'll still want and need fiber to the premise (FTTP).
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 08:35
Every year about this time, I write about wireless. I'm at the beach, and have to use the local wireless service. It works great at 6 AM, when no one else is up, but once all the other people in the neighborhood start logging on, the service gets slower and slower. Wireless is a shared medium, like cable modem service. A wireless access node with, for example, 20 megabits of bandwidth, shares that bandwidth among all users. So if you have 20 users on at the same time, each one effectively gets only about 1 megabit--or less, if one of those users is trying to download video or music.
Wireless and cable modem work moderately well today because fortunately, not everyone connected to a cable node or wireless access point is doing something at the same time. You are not using any bandwidth while you are reading a Web page or your email. The fly in the ointment is our ever increasing demand for video and multimedia, which use hundreds of times the bandwidth of email and Web pages. Trying to download a Netflix two hour movie over your cable modem or wireless connection may grab most of the available bandwidth, making everyone else's access, for a few minutes or even an hour, very, very slow.
All network architectures, even the "Internet," rely on sharing to some extent. But at the local level--neighborhoods and communities--shared bandwidth can be a challenge. As more of get connected, we will do more locally, and that means better networks, designed to minimize the effects of shared bandwidth. As always, we end up needing fiber as part of the solution.
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 13:32
Tempe, Arizona's foray into community and municipal wireless has not worked out as expected. Like many other communities that have tried the same thing and have also failed, Tempe tried to avoid spending any money. They simply granted an untested wireless firm access to city lightpoles and structures for wireless equipment. The private firm had to bear the entire cost of build out. The wireless system was also not seen as reliable as a wired system, and the wireless firm has not been able to attract many subscribers.
The lesson learned is that there is no free lunch for community broadband. Communities that spend very little are getting very little in return, and if all of the risk is left in the private sector, the private sector won't come or won't stay long. Another lesson is that building out without a solid business plan to attract customers is also a non-starter. The right approach is to target underserved areas and/or to be able to offer innovative services that are not already available from other providers.
Submitted by acohill on Wed, 04/16/2008 - 08:10
"Free wireless" is beginning to look a lot like "free lunch" -- it may not be possible. The City of Hartford, Connecticut embarked two years ago on an ambitious plan to provide free wireless service to large portions of the city. After two years and $800,000, there is little to show.
The Hartford project appears to be having difficulties similar to other early community wireless efforts: unjustified optimism about the ability of wireless signals to penetrate apartment and office buildings filled with steel reinforcement, and the lack of a business plan that provides for long term sustainability of the system.
In some quarters, there have been pronouncements that private sector wireless is not working (i.e. public/private partnerships), and that the only way to go is an all muni free or very low fee system. But it is not the nature of the partnership that is the core issue--it is the nature of the business model, which can be public, private, or a public/private partnership. Any of those can work and work well with the right business model.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Community broadband and community wireless projects are going to be very important to the economic future of many U.S. towns and cities, but it is not who owns it that determines success, it is whether or not the owners have a sustainable business plan.
Submitted by acohill on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 10:28
This article provides another example of the "no free lunch" principle as it applies to community wireless. Sprint is having trouble rolling out its WiMax service offering because of backhaul costs (you need fiber to the towers to provide adequate bandwidth) and subscribers are getting about 4 megabits of bandwidth--exactly what I was hearing years ago from knowledgeable wireless experts.
WiMax is an excellent set of technologies that will eventually replace most WiFi, but wireless is only a partial solution for community broadband.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 08:52
This New York Times article makes it clear that there is no free lunch for municipal wireless. There are still a lot of communities pursuing initiatives that cling to the idea that they can get a wireless provider to come in a build an extensive wireless network for free. These kinds of efforts have been and continue to fail, due to cost overruns, poor performance, and the lack of business-class services. Wireless is necessary as a mobile access technology, but it is not sufficient. Communities contemplating broadband investments should start with a careful planning effort that identifies the business and financial model early, before spending money on equipment.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 08:47
An Australian wireless ISP who has operated a WiMax network for more than a year unleashed a blistering attack on the protocol, calling it a "disaster" and that it "failed miserably." Unfortunately, the article provides little detail on exactly what frequencies were used (WiMax is a catch all term for the protocol, which can use several different chunks of frequency spectrum). The interesting thing about the comments is that the firm is planning to deploy more traditional WiFi as part of their wireless network. This article illustrates that wireless systems are not a panacea, and that they have to designed and engineered carefully to get good performance.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 03/17/2008 - 08:27
Christopher Mitchel of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has written an article in the current issue of Broadband Properties. It is an excellent analysis of municipal and community broadband that presents a compelling argument that only integrated wireless andfiber community/municipal networks are going to be able to support the kinds of applications and services needed, especially services needed to support businesses and economic development.
Here is a key quote:
Those who expect a future without wires are sadly mistaken. Existing wireless networks are perfectly adequate for voice, email, or Internet surfing, but their limitations preclude high quality videophone applications and other bandwidth-intensive applications."
Mitchell argues, as I and others have, that wireless is a necessary component of any community or municipal broadband effort, but that wireless will evolve (as it already is doing) into primarily a conduit for mobile access to services. Fiber will be required in virtually all residences and businesses because video in all its forms will need the very high capacity that fiber offers.
Read the whole thing; it is well worth printing out and distributing to others who are interested in community broadband.
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 02/18/2008 - 08:50
This moderately technical article (PDF file) has an extensive discussion of the vulnerabilities of wireless systems, including WiFi, Bluetooth, and WiMax. Communities interested in investing primarily in wireless broadband should read this article first, as the data presented illustrates why most businesses do not regard wireless as a business class service.
Here is a short summary of the issues from the article:
Wireless networks have three additional aspects that make the security of wireless
networks even more challenging than the security of fixed networks:
Wireless networks are always open – Physical media does not protect them. Any device
that implements the same radio interface can access a wireless network. One common
assumption is that wireless technologies are secure when authentication and encryption
are properly deployed. Looking closely at the operation of related protocols, there are
many message sequences that take place before the authentication. These message
sequences can always be attacked regardless of the deployed security measures.
Attacks are not limited by location or distance.
Attacks are not limited by location or distance. The distance from where the attacker can
reach the wireless network is only limited by the power of the transmitter. For example,
Bluetooth attack tools are known to have several-mile radiuses, although valid usage
scenarios would never attempt such range of coverage for Bluetooth.
Attackers are always anonymous. Although a valid user can be pinpointed with good
accuracy, an attacker can use directed antennas that will only target a selected victim. It is impossible to guarantee detection of malicious users in wireless networks. As stated
above, an attacker can also always attack the message sequences that happen before the
authentication of the device and thus avoid identification.
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