Air cards and wimax, these are not the final solution

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:08:20 +0000

Nowadays technical terms such as air cards, broadband, wimax, 4G and mobile wireless aircard are very cool but I’d like to be reminded that a wireless technology is only an optimization of radio resources. This should be clear to all, from ordinary citizens to politicians that “push” a technology rather than another.
The famous “Wi-fi” that we all have in our houses, is a fairly “smart” way to use a slice of the space frequencies that the international union for telecommunications (ITU) has set aside for industrial purposes, scientific and medical (ISM band).
It’s neither good nor bad, but only a “reasonable” (according to the engineers of the IEEE) way to use the available frequencies.
The same thing goes for other technologies like the WiMax, ADSL, the UTMS, 3G, Evdo, 4G air cards broadband. These are all technologies that do not solve the connectivity problem of Internet users, but offer a possible solution. For those who do not know, the electromagnetic spectrum is a resource that any nation manages and is divided into slices called “bands”, appropriately allocated for specific purposes. The optical band, which travels THROUGH(?) light bulbs in our home, the band allowed for radio stations, that one for Wi-Fi, WiMax, cellular, cordless, radar, walkie talkies, TV , etc..
All these devices use smartly that part of their responsibility of the electromagnetic spectrum, giving maximum performance in terms of light emitted (when we talk of light bulbs), or transmitted bits per second(digital transmission), for the frequency band in which they have to work.
Not too many people know that,in a certain frequency band, there is a physical limit to the speed of transmission. We will never able to reach speeds of Gigabit / second with the current access point Wi-Fi because of PHYSICS problems. Even ADSL has got the same problems. It doesn’t exist, in many cases, the famous 20, 40, 100 Mb / s because the noise present on our home line phone does not allow – for the Shannon theorem – to arrive at certain speeds. Those who say the contrary is, at best, ignorant.
A single lane road cannot support the traffic of a metropolis at the peak time as well as a wireless technology, although good, has to faced such traffic with the band that has at its disposal.There are no “miraculous” solutions to praise or solutions to pursue. Every technology must not only be seen as such, but declined in the context in which you want to apply. As is clear to us that the optical fiber is not the appropriate technology to connect an aircraft or a boat to the Internet (we should link them to the ground with a cable!), so there should be clear that in many scenarios the WiMax, The air cards Wi-fi, or the HyperLan UMTS, or Evdo may be inappropriate. “Inappropriate” means that ONCE SOMEONE HAS JUDGED requirements of people to connect, speed transmission required, the morphology of the area, availability of existing infrastructure, costs of equipment and possibly licensing, THEN you choose the best solution among the existing ones and later you have to judge if the income (typically given by users subscriptions) outweigh the costs.

Provide connectivity to a country with 10 persons, digging for meters and meters below the ground to get a fiber, it’s not convenient. Probably if exists a place with 10 people, using the optical fiber is not the right technology and we might consider other solutions. It could also happen that none of these solutions is convenient because these 10 people are “few and pay little”. In this case, giving connectivity to these people it’s no longer a duty of an ISP (Internet Service Provider), which is a company that does not do charity but business, but to someone else. Maybe it can be a duty of the country(GOVERN?) giving access to Internet because Internet means democracy. Choosing the wrong solution is tantamount to throwing out taxpayers money and you can explain it only by the ineptitude or corruption of leaders. Otherwise people can reach an agreement among themselves and realize their own infrastructure. This is what happens in certain Community Wireless Network: FreiFunk in Berlin, Guifi in Catalonia, Diirwb in Denmark, Portugal Unimos, Ninux in Rome. People climb on roofs and start to connect their buildings with air cards, antennas, router that cost less than 100 dollars (and sometimes also less then 50!). Anyway, we need competent persons, familiar with the technologies, knowing how to use them. That is why it is wrong to refer to WiMax as the final solution to all problems of “digital divide”. Say that with three antennas we cover the entire Philadelphia is not only misrepresent a technology but it’s also a technical inaccuracy. Not all know, for example, that the Wimax band is shared. Say that with an “antenna” we will cover 1 / 3 of Philadelphia, it means that the capacity of a Wimax station (70 Mbps) should be divided for about 900,000 people (if they are connected at the same time with their air cards). The result of this absurdity? 77 bits/sec per person! It is good neither to send SMS!
In addition, speed on wireless devices, are worse than that one declared. How many of us go about 54Mbps on WiFi networks? Finally, we must consider that the bands in which WiMax operates are subject to licensing costs. And the devices have their own cost.
And nobody knows if wimax actually will cover the gaps left by Wi-Fi or UMTS / HSDPA / 3G and later technologies.
“It depends on…”. And not just by technology but by the investments, by economic crisis and by technology scenario.
It’s hard to predict the future of these things! It is wrong to think that WiMax and air cards will solve all the problems of citizens presenting them as the FINAL solution to the digital divide.

So what should do a state, a municipality?
1)first of all, do not disturb. One of the first things that a legislator should consider is “do not blocking connectivity”, for one reason or another. I am referring to the recent proposal of “Internet safety act” introduced in Usa by Senator John Cornyn and representative Lamar Smith.

2)Investing in coverage of disadvantaged areas, because the state is NOT a company and should NOT do business only.

3)Encourage cooperation and the free spread of news and information. Covering a small town with wireless technology is not difficult and as we said is often just a matter of money. In this case, the technology “off the shelf” (available on the shelf “) such as Wi-fi is a valid weapon, given the low cost of devices and their wide dissemination. But are we sure that only a little village is the problem? How many people in a big town can not afford the Internet connection? It must become an essential public service such as TV or radio.
Through cooperation within blocks, zones or districts, we are able to spread Internet access and lower the cost of connectivity. Simply passing a cable between neighbors, or connecting each other with access points. Often this is what some already do, but it is illegal. Move towards legalization the re-distribution of Internet access can only be a good thing for a civilized society.

4) Knowing the technologies, trying to avoid to give lapidary opinions. The same WiMax could solve some problems even if not used for distribution to individual users, but to create wireless backbones. For example, some mountain areas could be served with a “point to point” WiMax, while the distribution to individual users could be made with the Wi-Fi, because nowadays everyone has a laptop with air cards. Once you know the different technologies you can not only choose the most “right”, but combine them together for the benefit of all.

Japan has already 4G air cards, the U.S. still not.

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:49:40 +0000

By 2012 Japan will cut the second-generation phones, the equivalent of the European GSM: NTT DoCoMo, first 3G provider in the country, has also said that in the next three years will move its recent clients from the old standard to the more modern WDCMA, protocol that uses the services of the third generation.

NTT in Japan has 54 million subscribers (51 percent of the market), 88 percent of these are already owner of the third generation mobiles or third generation air cards needfully for connecting their laptop to internet.

The latest cellular 2G, made of a particular technology called PDC (Personal Digital Cellular) developed specifically for the local market, was released in 2004 and already two years later, in 2006, the number of 3G users had surpassed those of the old technology.

The infrastructure of NTT WDCMA, moreover, was the first to become operational in 2001 and now, with the 4G licenses that the ministry of telecommunications in Japan already has in the tray, ready to be filled, Ntt are deciding to look forward and free up valuable bandwidth with which to improve the service offered by 3G. The nearly 7 million 2G customers will be led to new phones and new services in time to close all the old deals and old tariff profiles within three years from today.

The choice of NTT, however, seems not to have much to do with economic issues: the results presented in relation to the first nine months of its current fiscal year are more than solid (about 5 billion dollars). The choice of abandoning the 2G will undoubtedly have logistical implications that will save some maintenance, but above all it can continue to innovate in an area where for years, Japan is the leader in the development of air cards, mobile 3g and 4g communication.

On the contrary, it seems that the situation in the U.S. 3G has not yet reached an optimum level of efficiency, at least not in the opinion of users. A recent study by Gartner has revealed some dissatisfaction of consumers respect to benefits offered by their mobile connections, even about some promises in terms of speed: the company of the market analysis has therefore invited the ISPs to improve the performance of own devices, and users to revise downward their expectations.

Will be for this reason that the explosion made by record mobile broadband subscriptions in the first months of 2008 in the U.S. has stopped at the begin of this year. This does not seem to have stopped the plans of some providers (AT & T and Verizon for example) and hardware manufacturers. They want to focus their attention to the world of Netbook and air cards 3G connections. Others, like Motorola, will focus instead directly on LTE, a kind of intermediate step between 3G and 4G.

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Air cards and wimax, these are not the final solution

Japan has already 4G air cards, the U.S. still not.