Fast Forward: Gasping for Air
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Last month, I talked about the growing need for radio-frequency (RF) spectrum to support Internet services on smartphones and other mobile computing devices. Some experts say we’ll need 700–800MHz of additional spectrum—none of which is available now.
We can’t manufacture RF spectrum. It’s a finite resource, and only some of it has the range and penetration required to blanket a region. Data compression conserves spectrum, but there’s a mathematical limit (Shannon’s law) that prevents further compression without losing data integrity. Today’s communications standards already approach the limit.
The telecommunications industry wants to grab more spectrum from TV broadcasters, who surrendered a big chunk of airspace in the recent transition from analog to digital TV. The telecoms want UHF channels 40 to 51, or even 20 to 51. Some people want to end terrestrial TV broadcasting altogether—which would still free less than half the spectrum we supposedly need.
Another solution is to use the “white space” between TV channels. White space is unused spectrum that keeps TV signals from interfering with each other. Unfortunately, recent experiments suggest it doesn’t work well in urban areas, the very places where demand for wireless Internet coverage is highest. And it won’t provide nearly enough spectrum when everyone has a smartphone.
Yet another proposal is to replace today’s powerful, regional TV broadcasting with lots of weaker signals. Their reduced range would allow different TV stations to use the same channels in the same region. But this proposal has technical problems and would free only 100–180MHz.
What’s left? Femtocells. A femtocell is a tiny cellular network, usually confined to a home or office. It’s like cellular Wi-Fi. Cellular traffic hops a short distance to the nearest femtocell router, which connects to the Internet over a landline. We can always lay more landline wire, cable, and fiber.
To make this solution universal, femtocells should allow public access, which means they must be secure. Also, millions of femtocell routers must be installed in homes and businesses, which will probably bear the cost of this infrastructure. Despite the drawbacks, femtocells seem the best way to keep us from running out of air.
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.
More like this
Keith E. Whisman
March 03, 2010 at 9:17pm
Lets just use SubSpace. Who knows maybe we are the ones that invent it anyhow. SubSpace allows Capt Kirk and Capt Picard to have instantaneous communications with Star Fleet from anywhere in the Universe and physicists have shown that Hyperspace does exist and a radio broadcast of Beethoven was sent through Hyperspace and returned as a complete broadcast. So subspace can be a reality and somehow it can be the answer because you maybe able to use hyperspace as a kind of closed tunnel from point to point like a cabled Lan. So standard radio sent through Hyperspace from the Internet provider to the hotspot or even to my router antennae.
I am a trekie and this is the only solution your going to get out of me. If it's not a star trek solution then you are wrong mister.
retinaburn
March 03, 2010 at 6:42pm
Whenever femtocells are brought up to address connectivity/bandwidth problems, I always wonder why bother with cellular connections at all. It just seems like a patchwork method of keeping telephony connections relevant in an internet world.
Wouldn't it be simpler to simply use WiFi connections to the Internet for both voice and data? Use VoIP for all voice calls. They could keep a cellular radio in phones just for those cases where you're in rural areas with no real internet presence.
The ISPs could easily widen the upload bandwidth on home and business connections to allow for the increased usage (as the upload bandwidth is predominantly software limited, no?), so that each WiFi router could be open to public use. If they used device IDs rather than IP addresses, issues with "somebody is pirating content over my open WiFi" would be less of a problem.
I'm sure I'm oversimplifying a very complex problem, but I absolutely agree with the author that carriers should focus their attention on landlines which could easily handle the data that mobile phones demand.
mysteriousgamer
March 03, 2010 at 6:21pm
When RF space runs out, it's time to get creative. We're talking lasers. The idea i'm talking about is to have a laser-based antenna on your house/apartment/office building. The laser would send a beam directly to a sattelite orbiting in space or maybe a blimp floating above your city. The sattelite/aircraft would use an optical receiver and transmitter to send/receive internet signals back down to an ISP and back to you via a second laser beam. Your laser antenna would have to have a separate receiver/modem to work correctly. Alternately, you could have the laser antenna facing a second laser-based antenna on the ground by using towers facing each other from some distance away. And, since lasers use light, it's ultra-fast--as fast as RF.
Lasers could be used harmlessly to provide internet service to millions of customers. The laser could be just outside the optical spectrum of light--therefore no one sees light beams coming from rooftops. The infrared and ultraviolet spectrums could be used as well for further bandwidth.
nekollx
March 03, 2010 at 3:11pm
heres a idea, provide a fermeto mini proadcaster to subcribers and give them some discout on service for being a "Braoad caster" you still make money off them (a bit less though) and improve celular coverage. Everyone wins
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lien_meat
March 03, 2010 at 2:07pm
wireless mesh networking? I've never used it, and I'm not positive I understand it's implementation completely, but if we are talking about citywide connectivity wouldn't wireless mesh networking solve the issue of spectrum? (well, if we go ipv6 that is...ipv4 can't handle that many addresses under one node...) Yes, private wireless networks still need spectrum space, but we are talking about telcoms...so isn't that basically what's needed? Maybe I'm confused.
QuakindudeMod
March 04, 2010 at 5:32am
Airborne lasers would be horribly ineffective for this type of communications. They would also be tremendously power hungry even at blimp altitudes, much less stationed in space.Then, since lasers are just amplified light, there would be SO many factors that would interfere with them, it's not even funny.
Terrestrial based lasers, through the use of fiber optics technology, are completely doable though.But then, we remove the "wireless" part of that equation, rendering them ineffectual for the articles intent.
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