Posted on 09/21/2016 7:28:39 PM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
AT&T Reveals Secret Plan For Wi-Fi Even Faster Than Google Fiber
http://www.forbes.com/sites/shelbycarpenter/2016/09/20/att-secret-plan-wifi-fast-google-fiber/#376df98e643b
Tech #AllThingsMobile Sep 20, 2016 @ 08:03 PM
AT&T Reveals Secret Plan For Wi-Fi Even Faster Than Google Fiber
Shelby Carpenter
Think Google Fiber is the hottest thing in Internet connectivity?
Well, there’s a new kid on the block in the unlikely form of wireless stalwart AT&T.
The new plan, called Project AirGig, was announced in a press release on Tuesday and AT&T says it comes as the result of over 10 years of research and 100 patent applications for new technologies.
AirGig is still highly experimental, but would eventually bring customers wireless Internet speeds greater than 1 gigabit per second.
For perspective, Google Fiber, the fastest commercially available Wi-Fi, provides speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second and is only offered in select urban areas.
Most Americans still have Wi-Fi speeds in the tens of megabits, mere fractions of Google Fiber or AirGig.
The good thing about the system is that it would piggy-back off of existing infrastructure.
Using a network of low-cost, patent-pending antennas and devices, AirGig would transmit a millimeter wave signal along (but not directly through) power lines.
You would then get multi-gigabit Wi-Fi in your home without having a cord running to anything.
Apart from allowing for super-fast home Wi-Fi, AirGig would also represent the beginnings a 5G cellular data network.
The bad news: AT&T said that AirGig won’t even begin limited field trials until next year, which means widespread availability of the service could be years away.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
millimeter wave signal along (but not directly through) power lines = 1000 bits/sec.
wireless will NEVER have the aggregate bandwidth as optical fiber. There’s only so much electromagnetic spectrum in the usable range for data transmission, whereas optical fiber bandwidth is essentially unlimited given that one can install as many fibers as desired.
I wouln’t Pi$$ on AT&T if they were on fire. Along with Wells Fargo, they are about the most disreputable company on the face of the earth! Maybe Obama can go there and be CEO. He’d fit right in!
We need high power laser comm Everywhere criss-crossing the Whole sky!
http://www.aoptix.com/products/high-capacity-wireless-transport/intellimax-mb-2000/
(Major stock holder, please buy ;n)
I remember having to do updates on Cisco routers in the very early 1990s. Cisco would ship me ROM chips to install in our routers, a chore to shut them down, open the boxes and swap the chips. I was happy when they went to software downloads for system updates. Until I had to sit around a long time waiting on the data over our shared T-1 lines (1.544mbps, 24 times faster than standard 64kbps lines), shared with hundreds of users. It took forever... Things improved quickly over the next few years as we added bandwidth. Funny how we thought 1.544mbps was fast back then.
I imagine they will be able to use rooftops, and install towers. Much like they do today for cellular signal delivery, many of which are camoflaged to look like trees.
Yeah, my first thought here was “Nice toys...why, oh why did it have to be AT&T???”
REALLY?
Just so happens my ATT Service is not functioning today.
I can text but it searches for about 15-30 minutes to connect.
I also receive Voice Mails but I can’t call out or receive calls reliably (10-15 tries and eventually I can a ring on the other end)
AT&T chose a poor day
... They had the same idea but had too may obstacles in their way. They had to get permission from all the major power companies and phone companies to use their poles ...
Not sure why this would be a big problem. In areas where cable is not underground it all runs along power and phone poles.
In fact, many times a power pole has all three on it, power, phone, and cable.
As we said, Below Power, Above Phone.
ATT is full of sh*t. They innovated nothing.
Their campaign here is to make them seem as this grand Menlo Park of fast data when in fact they are taking Microwave Internet that is already in operation in many regions and cities (for example, http://www.lv.net) blasting data out at greater than fiber speeds.
Microwave Internet is also reaching islands and rural areas that have long been fed up with the legacy Bell BSers, Comcast and the rest of the dinosaurs.
Yet ATT blows their horn about patents and decades of research. Like I expressed similarly above “Horsesh*t!”.
ATT has corporate privilege to expand Microwave Data to make a greater presence.
Now just figure out how they got the money to do all this. From legacy banking relations that small operators cannot access.
All ATT has done is watch how the small entrepreneurs have fared in the Microwave space, then they had their meetings, and they decided they should make a plan to run with it but on someone else’s dime. So all of their “decades long research” is in mapping out what areas they will install, how much it will cost to mail bomb advertising into every home for months on months, TV Ads up the wazoo and marketing reps into every town and city council to buy the necessary approvals to erect barriers to entry for the little guys who have made the whole tech a success.
And patents? I repeat “Horsesh*t!”. We can bet their patents are meaningless with zero utility other than marketing that the old Ma Bell dinosaurs have somehow become tech wunderkinds.
Light suffers from scattering by fog particles. Bandwidth drops to zero in fog. You need hybrid RF/Laser systems for high availability - mm RF attenuated by rain drops and laser attenuated in fog. It isn’t very often you have both simultaneously. Light also suffers from being line-of-sight point-to-point. I worked for a free space optics company ten years ago and we were transmitting 40 Gbps over laser beams up to 15 miles.
Sounds like there is a whole lot of FUD baked in.
No degradation because of “Advanced Wavelength Diversity” — in other words, combining mm wavelength RF (attenuated by rain) and terahertz optical (attenuated by fog).
At last! Big Brother is here!
Because ‘the people’ demanded it... like they always do.
Another round of utility trucks on the streets like in the late 80’s and early 90’s when cable was upgraded/expanded?
If I remember correctly aren’t millimeter waves also used similar to radar through walls and sound analysis off window vibrations? I’m not trying to get tinfoil hat, but I could easily see the ability to use this to spy on people by hackers as well as myriad law enforcement.
Yep...here’s a summary though they don’t mention the sound analysis: http://ethw.org/Millimeter_Waves
It is used by TSA in place of X-ray to scan through clothes
I was thinking the same thing.
This technology may have purposes far beyond simply providing WiFi Internet service.
Brave new world com’in..
MIT researchers used Wi-Fi to recognize people through walls - The ...
www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625636/rf-capture-mit-wi... Proxy
Oct 28, 2015 ... Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have developed software that uses variations in Wi-Fi signals to recognize ... and a person walks in a neighboring room on the other side of the wall.
RE: “If I remember correctly aren’t millimeter waves also used similar to radar through walls and sound analysis off window vibrations? I’m not trying to get tinfoil hat, but I could easily see the ability to use this to spy on people by hackers as well as myriad law enforcement.
Yep...here’s a summary though they don’t mention the sound analysis: http://ethw.org/Millimeter_Waves
It is used by TSA in place of X-ray to scan through clothes”
That is where their “Gigapower” project comes in... they are starting in areas where they have what’s called “fiddle fiber” which is a hybrid fiber/copper and is being done first because most of the infrastructure (equipment) is already in place to run fiber. Once those overbuilds are done, they’ll start on replacing the copper in the older neighborhoods.
I had a wireless modem from that company. The mesh network radios were hung off street lights in my area. The service quality was much better than dialup modem service. It was wonderful for about 5 weeks. They went bankrupt. An attempt to resuscitate the company was attempted in the Denver, CO area, but the San Diego service never returned.
Much of my career in networking was launched by TCP/IP and packet radio work that I did in 1985 with Phil Karn (KA9Q). The mobile TCP/IP that you enjoy on your cellphone owes much to Phil's work at Bellcore and Qualcomm. It's time to get back into those activities with current generation ham gear for me. The new generation of radios offer a wide variety of digital modes. I have a sense that the emergency services networking and communications capability is going to be very popular in the near future.
Somewhere in the basement there is a box with my original TAPR TNC (Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio) Terminal Node Controller with the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) protocol to host AX.25, NETROM and TCP/IP over AX.25 at the 1200 bps rate using 170 Hz shift AFSK over 2m FM radio. Oddly, that is still the preferred protocol for commercial off the shelf hardware. Digital signal processing techniques have allowed cheap PC sound cards to be recruited for packet services with software doing all the heavy lifting.
Well, I was saying that compared to the AT&T plans, the MetriCom experience was slow, expensive, and like attaching a softball to your laptop.
To put it another way, if you are willing to say that the Pilgrims' trip on the Mayflower was just the same as a Carnival cruise in the Caribbean, then you were correct. If you think that the Carnival cruise is significantly nicer, then you were not correct.
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