Review Of Verizon's New Wireless Network 202
jagger writes "The service gives you the speed of broadband, the ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular... sort of. The service is currently rolled out in Washington D.C. and San Diego, CA but offers speeds comparable to broadband. Read the full review from Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post at Yahoo News."
On a related note ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is for your New Yorkers who know what I'm talking about. (wifi service in the island of Manhattan free for all verizon dsl/dialup users)
What is to be careful of? Fake Verizon-WIFI APs. No joke. I was walking down 14th street next to Broadway, and suddenly I wanted to hop online to check what the weather would be for later that day.
I pop out my Zaurus, pop in my wifi card, and start sniffing for whatever wireless networks I can get to. I hit a Verizon-WIFI AP, which works for me being that my company is a customer of theirs. I pop in my Verizon Online password, and my password, hit enter, and I'm in.
Except for ONE problem. I typed in my username wrong! (Zaurus 5600 owners know how much of a bitch it is to type numbers with the damn Fn key.) But I still got in!!! I reconnected, typed in a bogus user/pass, and still had zero issues getting in.
At first I didn't realize what was going on (being that I was late for class, and rushing like crazy). But then it dawned on me, that this was a fake AP setup to steal real verizon user-names and passwords. Pretty slick if you ask me.
Yeah yeah, not too related to the topic at hand, but other verizon customers may want to know
Sunny Dubey
Re:Nice, but how about bluetooth? (Score:3, Informative)
The big thing about EV-DO is that it's data-only, with no voice network with it. So the assumption is you just buy an EV-DO card and use that.
The other problem is that Bluetooth is unfairly been victimized by wifi hype and, at the same time, not yet been done "right" in such a way that it becomes a must-have feature.
Re:sign me up. (Score:4, Informative)
Monet Mobile did it first (Score:5, Informative)
Thing is, this is not a new service and I'm not getting it from Verizon. I'm getting it from Monet Mobile.
...but not for long...
The service is fantastic- I can't imagine a better product. The truly sad thing is that Monet Mobile (www.monetmobile.com) is going bankrupt and shutting me down on April 1, at which point I'm going to have to pay the Verizon fees or go back to wired internet... (sigh)
Re:VOIP anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
In (I'm guessing) early 2005, Verizon, Sprint, should be rolling out a service based on 1xEV-DV. That will provide even higher data rates (in both directions), and (IIRC), voice calls will be VOIP by default!
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of unprotected default "linksys" and "netgear" wireless points in the residential areas
I actually used this... (Score:5, Informative)
Card interface? (Score:3, Informative)
With data rates as high as claimed, this one may indeed be proprietary, although it would still, I believe, be *theoretically* possible to emulate a COM port that simply provided data a lot faster than you think it should (all of these virtual COM port style devices all ignored the baud rate setting anyway).
Can anyone confirm or deny? If you're using a Windows XP box, bring up the device mangler, properties of the device, Details, and give us the "Device Instance ID". Decoding that should tell us about the attachment (PCCard or Cardbus) and if it's Cardbus, should give us PCI vendor/device ID info.
EDGE (Score:5, Informative)
So ATTWS has EDGE nation wide, and Verizons EvDO is only in a 2 markets. ATTWS already has UMTS trials in 7 major markets, at speeds faster than verizon, soon to launch commerically!
So you dont hear it much, ATTWS has the fastest nation wide network. When Cingular takes over, and the 2 merges coverage areas, expect the best nation wide coverage, and fastest speeds around.
I'm just wondering when Cingular starts expanding UMTS past the 7 markets, what will Verzion do? It cant offer what it doesnt have, or built out. Be interesting to see what Verizon does to counter the Cingular advantage.
Re:So how are they doing it? (Score:4, Informative)
They are using 1xEV-DO from their cell towers, on dedicated cellular bands.
Nextel doing the same thing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A Bit Offtopic.. But I Need Help (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I actually used this... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ka9q.net/5220.html
Re:sign me up. (Score:3, Informative)
So shall I enable EVDO on your account now?
Re:On a related note ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Poor poor Mac... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:...and the rest of the country? (Score:3, Informative)
This is just using turbo codes and CDMA modulation with the same old antennas as a cell phone.
The technology has been there for the past few years to get broadband to your parent's town, but just not any interest in productizing it. However, as the Internet becomes more ingrained in people's lives, there's no choice.
Also, terminology help:
ILEC = Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier = local phone company
CLEC = Competitive Local Exchange Carrier = competition to the local phone company
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, thanks to the free incoming calls and unlimited 2-way radio with my wife and best friend my chargeable minutes have dropped significantly. At worst, I used over 1,200 minutes. Then I added unlimited nights & weekends, and that dropped to about 500. Added free incoming calls, and that dropped to under 200! Now that my best friend has the 2-way, too, we ping each other all the time, and I'm thinking about dropping from the free incoming 400 to the free incoming 250.
It makes such a difference when you can get the point across without all the call setup hubub. Not the technical call setup stuff, the social stuff. "Hey, its me, got a minute?"
Now its, "[beep-beep] Can I reboot the server?" "[beep-beep] Sure."
Now that NASCAR's premiere racing series is Nextel Cup, you can expect a lot more subscribers to come online in the coming months and years. We are getting *bombarded* by Nextel ads these days.
Re:Nice, but how about bluetooth? (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile advertises its service as "broadband", but their salesforce tells you (even to this day) that in fact its about as fast as a 56k modem.
Unfortunately, neither claim is anywhere close to the truth:
I spent months on the phone with T-Mobile tech support, and heard again and again that the "3k per second transfer rate you're getting is part of a known issue and our engineers are working on it."
Bottom line: T-Mobile GPRS does not exist yet. You'll have max 5kbps with latency and timeout problems galore. Its busted.
By the way, they finally refunded me retroactively for the 4 months that I "had" the service. So they're liars... not thieves.
______________________________________
"I can't turn left. I'm not an ambi-turner"
I Hate Verizon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:EDGE (Score:3, Informative)
- Edge is deployed nation wide, ATTWS converted all coverage areas to EDGE last year, All coverage areas. If you include Tmobile and Cingular, the market combined is larger. Dont forget the UK which is all GSM. (You keep Korea). GSM phones will roam in the UK now, Verizon doesnt have any global roaming phones.
- 1xEV-DO is 2.4Mbps UMTS is 2Mpbs on paper, real world trials are showing 1xEV-DO pushing 650Kpbs and UMTS is pushing 2100Kpbs.
- Nokia UMTS phones look like any other phone and are not toasters. Nice FUD.
- Reading the Reports comparing all major telco's from companies like Telephia [telephia.com] who monitors all telcos, and then rates them on connect speed, download speed, call startup, etc. ATTWS and Cingular rank higher in data speeds and connect time, and lower ping.
- Comparing TDMA migration to CDMA migration, shows your lack of knowledge on the migration paths. 1xRTT isnt upgradable to 1xEV-DO, this is why Verizon only has 2 markets.
Re:Suspicious... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Suspicious... (Score:3, Informative)
I tested this ... (Score:1, Informative)
2. Security. There is *no* security. The mobiles (i.e. PCcards) don't have *any* unique identification i.e. MAC addresses etc. The system relies on authentication on an AAA server. I can think of several very easy DOS attacks, especially near a critical cell. Did I mention that a cell can handle at most around 48 active users?
3. VOIP does not and will not work. Latencies are far too high to support any kind of real time audio.
4. Unlike EDGE/GPRS/UMTS, EVDO eats spectrum. The other standards co-exist with voice. This doesn't. Expect the service to fade away once EVDV comes out.
There's a very small niche market for this service: real estate, insurance, and other mobile users. For everyone else, 802.11 will do nicely, thank you very much.
Also, there's a major difference in the deployment as done by Lucent (east coast) and Nortel (west coast) in terms of performance and cost. Of course, Verizon will charge the same amount regardless of where you are.
Re:Poor poor Mac... (Score:1, Informative)
http://xochi.com/aircard [xochi.com]
A short review of nextel wireless broadband (Score:2, Informative)
The downside is they assign you a private ip address, and route you through a NAT. So bittorrent and game serving stink.
"The speed of broadband, the ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular" is a good discription of the service, but I will be keeping my cable access untill they start handing out real ip addresses.
Re:EDGE (Score:2, Informative)
UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is the CDMA-based successor to GPRS (& EDGE). Its theoretical transfer ceiling (or the ceiling of the Qualcomm UMTS chipset) is 384 kbps down and 64 kbps up. UMTS will be replaced in a few years with HSDPA (High Speed Data Packet Access) which has 7 a Mbps ceiling (or there abouts). UMTS is primarily a European (and Asian) standard but North American GSM/GPRS providers will migrate forward to it.
UMTS is NOT faster than Verizon's EVDO service nor will it ever be. UMTS IS faster than Verizon's (and Sprint's) older CDMA 1xRTT service.
CDMA 1X (RTT) has a theoretical ceiling of 152 kbps. It and EDGE are probably quite comparable in terms of throughput. CDMA 1xEVDO is a significant step above any of these other services.
EVDO stands for EVolution Data Only. This means that you will NEVER be able to purchase an EVDO phone (unless of course it was a VOIP phone...) EVDO's big brother, EVDV will allow for both high speed Data and the traditional Voice coverage. EVDO and 1xRTT can be serviced by the same base station. Its as simple as adding a Nortel (or other) card to the base station and Voila! Verizon is providing EVDO. As it is a Data Only standard, it has been designed from the ground up to provide high speed data access and to do it well. Its built to service a large number of data customers off the same cell. Its completely different from GPRS where voice customers slow your data connection.
EVDO is in face Always On, even as your cellular phone is Always On. You don't dial in and you will probably want to disconnect if you're not actively using the connection (and want to save batteries).
You will NOT be able to flash upgrade a phone to EVDO. EVDO can provide high data rates because of its computational intensiveness. Remember Turbo Codes [slashdot.org]? They help provide such significant data rates, but demand incredible computing power. Your older phone's baseband processor, and RF Chipset, just don't cut it. Another EVDO technique is its diversity receiver (two antennas and two rake receivers) that improve the signal to noise ratio and help the modem decode weaker and more corrupt signals than any other system could allow.
And for security, this has WiFi annhilated. Do you worry about people stealing your CDMA (voice) phone's ESN, learning your Walsh Codes and calculating the time offset that your phone is using in the main (long) orthogonal code (streaming by at 1.2288 Mega chips per second) of the CDMA/GPS system in real time? Its as secure as the CDMA voice system that we all trust. Certainly higher authorities, with access to the base stations and ESN information are capable of "listening in" on your traffic, but unless you have direct access to the Base Station Controllers, there's no way for anyone to "listen in".
This is not your Mom's 900 MHz cordless phone!
Re:On a related note ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I tested this ... (Score:3, Informative)
1) your usage of the word "shared" isn't clear in its meaning, so I'll just ignore that statement.
2) Security. Each CDMA phone in the world is has a unique ESN that is hardcoded into the phone. Even if it were possible to reprogram a phone with a duplicate ESN, no two mobiles would be allowed on the network with the same ESN. Both mobiles would be denied service and your account most certainly would be flagged. The ESN is used to create a unique offset in the main long orthogonal code (41 days long) that enables your "calls" to be uniquely encrypted/encoded with your own version of this orthogonal code (in combination with Walsh Codes and Turbo Codes). Not to mention the fact that all packes are "chipped" up and reorganized and duplicated into a random order to improve error correction.
48 users was (about) the maximum number that an AMPS system could handle. The technology has significantly improved in the last 10 years. Try 100+ users per cell.
3) This statement, as a blanket statement about VOIP is FUD. But over EVDO I'd graciously admit that you're probably true. Its designed for Data, not Voice.
4) EVDO eats no more "spectrum" than 1xRTT or IS-98 or IS-95. The other standards don't "coexist" with voice, they CARRY voice. Data over the older standards (even 1xRTT) was a side benefit. EVDO can co-exist in the same sell as 1xRTT handling Voice traffic. The system designers aren't the morons you seem to be implying they are. Just think about it.
"Sorry folks, no cell phones work within this 5 mile area. Data modems only!!!"
802.11 will do nicely within your office building or at your coffee shop. It won't do as you ride in a cab from the airport to your hotel to the conference center to the local park bench (all without having to scan for a new, open, AP).
The article is not accurate (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, EV-DO does scale. There are 5 million subscribers in Korea alone, shared between SK telecom and KT freetel. The technology has also been rolled out in a big way in Japan by KDDI recently.
It is true that the current Verizon deployment uses only PCMCIA cards. But phones are on the way later this year. There are dozens of EV-DO enabled phones and handheld devices available. Check out this [3gtoday.com] page. EV-DO is data only, but nothing says that end-user devices cannot be EV-DO + 1x-RTT.
The article says that this is not "always on". That is misleading. EV-DO has the concept of "sessions" and "connections". Sessions are always on, and connections are on an as-needed basis. Connections are set-up when the user needs to send/receive data and torn down when he is done. This happens automatically, the user does not have to do anything special when he needs to do something. (For e.g., just click on a link on slashdot and a new connection is set up, data is uploaded and subsequently downloaded from the website, and the connection is torn down. All this happens automatically, the technology takes care of everything).
This is not a LAN technology. It is not a replacement for WiFi. This is a CDMA-based, cellular-WAN technology. It automatically provides all the security of a CDMA-based network. Not that this is perfect, but it is much better than WiFi in that w.r.t. security.
Hari.