"A Most Disruptive Technology"

[muzikool]

Some cool things are going on in the city of Richardson, a suburb of Dallas where my main business office is located. I've linked to an article below that I think some of you will enjoy reading. It's about Wireless Mesh Technology, which could quite possibly have a major impact on communications in the future. The article is quite long, so ADD sufferers beware!

A couple of tidbits as the technology relates to Richardson itself:

Within 10 months, Richardson will have the most advanced wireless broadband system in the world, what we think of as a third generation mesh system. Over this time, the company will be installing approximately 700 basketball-sized access points (APs) throughout the city on light poles, buildings and other infrastructure. This will lay a very dense high speed wireless broadband blanket over the entire city. Each access point has six radios in it. For the technically minded, this is a single silicon tunable chip, radio mesh network digitally interfacing with every network layer and able to automatically adjust in real time.

This is the first of its kind in the world. I smile when I think that one of our major competitors produced a white paper about a year ago detailing why such a multi-radio system could not work, even as we deployed our initial three radio system, which has been successfully working (through Texas summers, winters and tornadoes) for over a year. We will look at more about the technology of the system in a minute but let's look at what it can do.

First and foremost, it delivers bandwidth on the public wi-fi spectrum to the end user, the so-called last mile, at a speed unrivalled by its wire bound brethren. And at the end of the day, that is what consumers really want: high speed bandwidth. They really are agnostic as to how they get it. Just serve it up, as fast as you can and easy to use. Oh, and can you please make it cheap?

Every citizen in the City of Richardson will be able to access 756 Kbps of internet connectivity for free, from anywhere in the city. They will be able to access the internet from their homes, schools, restaurants and parks using standard wi-fi connections which are now installed on almost every notebook computer. That is almost as fast as many so-called high speed broadband connections that one pays dearly for today, and several times faster than the various hotspots at your local coffee shops. And I should note that the tax-payers of the City of Richardson are not paying one penny for this, and in fact are going to see additional revenues as a benefit.

Article: A Most Disruptive Technology

 

[Grandmaster]

Sweet dude, enjoy it!

Although I'm moving to San Jose, so I guess I have the Google wifi to look forward to

 

[Petros]

Wireless is the way to go. Better coverage, don't have to lay down and maintain lines, lower maintenance costs. Here comes the future...

And you're lucky to be on the forefront!

 

[X-Istence]

Uhm, okay, let me get this straight, the first of its kind? So what about the wireless that has blanketed Tempe, Arizona for the last few years?

It is a standard box which contains several wireless G radio's that broadcast WAZTempe, Kitenet, and WAZAsu. Where WAZTempe is available to the public, Kitenet is used by the authorities (Fire, police, and medical) and WAZAsu is for ASU students.

This technology is exactly like they describe. It is a mesh network that communicates between the different boxes at high speed to cover the entire town, and it is affixed to light poles. It costs $14.95 a month to get access to it, and it benefits the city of Tempe. So that is the only major difference, it is not free, unless you are an ASU student.

I see nothing groundbreaking about this technology. Other than less cost to consumers. Thing is that like WAZTempe, it does not reach far indoors, something that has slowed down it's adoption as the major communication method here in Tempe. To reach throug concrete buildings and whatnot the signal strength would have to be upped tremendously, but not only on Tempe's wireless access points, but also on the wireless cards that users use.

First of it's kind, people need to do more research outside of their damn perfect bubble in which everything they do is a first.

 

[muzikool]

Uhm, okay, let me get this straight, the first of its kind? So what about the wireless that has blanketed Tempe, Arizona for the last few years?

It is a standard box which contains several wireless G radio's that broadcast WAZTempe, Kitenet, and WAZAsu. Where WAZTempe is available to the public, Kitenet is used by the authorities (Fire, police, and medical) and WAZAsu is for ASU students.

This technology is exactly like they describe. It is a mesh network that communicates between the different boxes at high speed to cover the entire town, and it is affixed to light poles. It costs $14.95 a month to get access to it, and it benefits the city of Tempe. So that is the only major difference, it is not free, unless you are an ASU student.

I see nothing groundbreaking about this technology. Other than less cost to consumers. Thing is that like WAZTempe, it does not reach far indoors, something that has slowed down it's adoption as the major communication method here in Tempe. To reach throug concrete buildings and whatnot the signal strength would have to be upped tremendously, but not only on Tempe's wireless access points, but also on the wireless cards that users use.

First of it's kind, people need to do more research outside of their damn perfect bubble in which everything they do is a first.

I don't know if it's apples to apples or not because I don't know anything about what Tempe is doing. Did you read the article?

 

[ming]

I think they're playing catch up with London. We've just started a massive WiFi spot somewhere in the centre of London.

 

[X-Istence]

I don't know if it's apples to apples or not because I don't know anything about what Tempe is doing. Did you read the article?

No, I did not. I don't intend to read such a long and rather boring article. Instead I read the excerpt you posted, which is exactly what Tempe has.