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."
Nice, but how about bluetooth? (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest blocking factor for me on Verizon is the lack of bluetooth phones. My t610 joined with my Powerbook is a shear joy (except for the speed). Bluetooth is great. Verizon sucks for not having any handsets that use it (or pressuring manufactures to make a decent CDMA phone with bluetooth).
Good stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
We are starting to deploy the cards on sales laptops. While most of our sales guys are out of the highest speed markets noted in the article, the card and software have worked very well and both are an absolute cinch to install and use.
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Suspicious... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait till it gets popular, then it'll start slowing down.
Personal outlook (Score:4, Interesting)
VOIP anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
But it does sustain rates around 500 kbps or over...
Voice over IP, anyone? It seems like they're practically begging that application- why carry and pay for a cell phone too, especially if you can get this service on a PDA some day?
Latency? (Score:1, Interesting)
Michael
A Bit Offtopic.. But I Need Help (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nice, but how about bluetooth? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, T-Mobile's service is pretty fast. If you're getting consistant speeds of 5-10 kilobytes per second, you're doing well. Really, it's the latency that worries me. I always get 800 to 1000ms in that department. That's fine for some things, but it seems to make intolerant programs time out, and multiplayer gaming is out of the question.
P.S. Look into T-Mobile's Unlimited Internet VPN service. It's no more expensive than the normal unlimited, but you have to actually ask for it. You get a public IP, although incoming connections are blocked.
Re:Suspicious... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that there is another reason for that.
Imagine if people were using that 2-way walkie talkie function for "regular" as in non business related ways.
Picture an executive in a high level meeting. He's laying down the law to mid level execs and as he's deriding them for their lack of vision and focus...BEEP BEEP "Henry! I told you to pick up diapers and tampons on your way home last night. Maybe I should just have the pool boy do it, he takes care of the rest of my needs anyway!"
Or imagine you're at a bank going over the terms of the mortgage for your first home. Suddenly your Stiffler-Esque buddy from college chimes in BEEP BEEP "Yo fuckstick! I've been calling your apartment all day, I know you're not at work, I tried there too. You're not fucking my mom again are you?"
I suspect that only businesses have signed on to this because they still have the ability to fire people for misuse.
LK
did you RTFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, this article was written by a reporter who probably either didn't know very much about the technology or was addressing it as being nice and easy to use, even for lusers (the "difficult to get working in a PC" comment). He claims it works wonderfully without any problem, he hasn't been payed to say it, and didn't say very much of anything on the negative side about it. This technolgy is not new (look at japan) I suggest you save your tinfoil for annother day's hat.
...and the rest of the country? (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds to me like Verizon has something with much better range going here, but I guess Pegoraro didn't think to ask.
One of the reasons I'm interested is that my parents live in one of those oft-forgotten places in the US where high speed internet is a far-away dream. The town (population 500) is about an hour's drive over a terrible mountain road from civilization, so the local CLEC never bothered to run phone lines in: they just set up this crappy microwave link on top of a mountain.
No cable, no wired phone lines: needless to say, broadband is impossible (satellite being the unacceptable semi-exception). Which makes going back to hang out at the ranch pretty annoying.
The point (I'm getting there!) is that if these guys have figured out a way to get high speed internet to travel a good long distance, this could help solve the access problem for rural america.
Of course, I've seen so many supposed solutions [wired.com] come and fade away, that I sort of doubt it.
I doubt this will scale well (Score:2, Interesting)
Not enough value vs. competition (Score:1, Interesting)
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thewired.blogs.com/teotwawki
the techno-mediated cultural conspiracy
Re:Nice, but how about bluetooth? (Score:3, Interesting)
The odd thing is that the idea of a wireless bluetooth headset is very long in the
And, really, a tiny Bluetooth earbud that you pull out like your stylus (shades of star trek, really) is what would make a Treo form-factor phone more marketable.
The other problem, I think, is that nobody's spent the time to really think of some whack applications other than that to sell it. The Bluetooth GPS paired with the digital camera that notes the current location, time, etc. The digital camera that queries all of the people in the area's PDAs for their business card so that you know who's in the picture. Off-the-wall stuff like that which nobody's given much thought to writing universal interfaces and support for.
Re:EDGE (Score:3, Interesting)
- ATTWS/Cingular/T-Mobile all have roaming agreements. Their coverage areas are already "merged". And Verizon's coverage is still *way* better. Try going up into Wyoming with your ATT GSM phone. Then try doing it with a Verizon phone. With Verizon, I had CDMA2000 + 1xRTT in Yellowstone National Park. With ATT, I had nothing. And it's not just Wyoming. I often have trouble in major metro areas with ATT.
- ATT's EDGE is nowhere near "nationwide". It's being rolled out in New York, San Diego, and some areas in Florida. Moreover, EDGE is little faster than Verizon's 1xRTT service which has been deployed accross their entire network for years. EDGE suffers from the same problems as GPRS - notably that data rate drops as you move away from the transmitter and that relatively little bandwith is shared by everyone in the cell.
- UMTS is slower than CDMA2000 1xEV-DO. 1xEV-DO is gaining support in Japan and Korea for this very reason - UMTS is slower, requires more radio spectrum, and UMTS phones heat up like toasters.
- ATT hasn't even launched its service commercially. They have been conducting "trials" of UMTS for over 2 years. When they start selling it and I can test it out, I'll believe ATT's claims. Verizon's service works. I've used it myself.
Verizon has to do *nothing* to counter the Cingular "advantage". They have better coverage, their 3G service is faster, and they don't have craploads of IS-136 users to migrate.
Re:Good stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
My job requires that I do all the development on linux and OSX. Windows isn't permitted except as a leaf node (for UI testing), due to the extreme security problems. So I could easily get a business deduction for it, but not if I have to use MS software in the gateway/firewall.
I've been waiting for this... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Suspicious... (Score:2, Interesting)
their 1x is fast and easy (Score:2, Interesting)