Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)?

eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"

Roll your own DSL

[Foofoobar]

I. Cringely had a great article a while back about rolling your own DSL [pbs.org]. All you need is a copper pair into your domicile. Good luck getting it though

Re:Routing

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this:

manet [ietf.org]

It's the mobile ad-hoc networking IETF group doing just what you're talking about. And as everybody would probably expect, QoS is the biggest obstacle.

MANET - Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking

[echobrain]

Tried this earlier as anonymous, but it sank, so here it is with a name attached...

manet [ietf.org]

It's the mobile ad-hoc networking IETF group doing just what he's talking about. And as everybody would probably expect, QoS is the biggest obstacle.

Re:Uh...

[N0decam]

I disagree. The local phone company here is owned by the province, and they provide great service at a reasonable price. Taxes don't pay for everything, and there is now competition for long distance carriers here, but most people are sticking with the government carrier because the other services aren't any cheaper or better. DSL is available in all kinds of out of the way places too. I'll stack SaskTel up with any of your private companys any time.

Re:TANSTAAFL

[Anonymous Coward]

TANSTAAFL First showed up in "Moon is a harsh Mistress" AIR. LL did not intersect that world until after "Number of the Beast". When Heinlein began to merge all of his books/characters (and those of many other authors).

Molon Labe

Re:Uh...

[heXXXen]

weeks?!?! my friend sat on a list for 8 years to get a phone when he lived in Ukraine (while it was still part of the USSR).

Re:The goverment can pay.

[caouchouc]

Roads must be maintained. This is not free, and you continuously pay for it with your tax dollars.
It would be the same with a government-run network infrastructure.

So I'm a clueless F'in idiot, huh?

[eraserewind]

Well that puts me in my place!

I ask a simple question in the hopes of stimulating some debate. You people are so closed minded. Well, you live an learn. You won't be hearing more from me on slashdot after this post. (are those cheers I hear?!)

Thank you to everyone who answered with reasonable answers either for or against. Before I go I'll answer some of the points people raised.

Land Lines & Infrastructure

I am talking about a wireless network with no central infrastructure, no land lines, just peer devices.

The initial costs of a centralised netowrk are huge. Do you think that operators are going to continue to roll out huge networks after the fiasco that was 3G? (and regular broadband/cable TV in many areas). I think we'll wait a long time before we see those kind of investment by any central organisation again.

The total costs of a distributed network are even more huge. However the cost is spread among whoever wants to pay for their devices. See that FAX story on slashdot from a while ago for an analogy.

Free as in ... peer?

I don't want the infrastructure or services I need for free.

I am not a freeloader or pirate. I am quite willing to pay for my equipment. I just want it to be subscriptionless. The cost of the network is built into the the device and whatever it costs in electricity (at least until I fine tune the cold fusion process & matter replicator that I've been working on that is). If this means $50bn devices as someone mentioned, then so be it ;) Technology prices come down all the time though. How much is an ethernet card today compared to when it first arrived?

Let me ask a question, do you pay a subscription for a bluetooth PAN? For WiFi in your home? Why not? Are you ripping someone off by not doing so? Why not extend the metaphor to communities, or towns, or cities, or the world? I am quite aware that there are problems of scale and many others which was why I asked the question. I wanted to see what you all thought could be potential solutions. Seems you'd mostly prefer to take cheap shots or try to look cool or whatever.

I don't expect to connect to existing networks like the internet, GSM, POTS etc. for free. They are largely owned by private operators and if you want to connect to them they are going to charge you for that privelege. However if you have a no-subscription network out there then maybe web sites, and all those other services that appear on communication networks would start to appear on it, or even migrate exclusively to it.

Spectrum saturation & interference

I don't know enough about about spectrum to answer this myself, so I'll point you at this GnuRadio: MeshNetworks [comsec.com] and also this slashdot story The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference [slashdot.org] which was featured on slashdot a while ago, and ask it it just BS? They seem to me to be saying that the more nodes in a wireless network, the greater the bandwidth.

Battery life:

This is a problem that is going to take a long time to solve unless there are some major breakthroughs in battery technology. I have no suggestions.

Routing:

Difficult? For sure, but impossible?

You don't have to use IP you know. It's not the internet. I think that it is going to be possible for devices to route to others. I'm not saying it's easy but surely not impossible to at least get a "good enough" algorighm?

I recall reading somewhere about a routing algorithm that was modeled on ant's behaviour to achieve good enough shortest path finding. Is there no scope within this or other areas of research to make advances? Here's a link to one similar paper I found now just to proove I'm not hallucinating: http://www.computer.org/proceedings/icppw/1680/168 00079abs.htm . Use g