Motorola Field Tests Wireless Broadband At 300Mbps

cft_128 writes "Motorola Labs just finished field testing its new ODFM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) wireless broadband technology that prove it can attain 300Mbps. This is only a test, but it is an order of magnitude faster than the fiber to the premises that Verizon is now starting to offer. They do mention that the final network would only see 20Mbps sustained and 100Mbps peak."

so what does this mean for us?

[Anonymous Coward]

when does this technology hit the streets?

"Wireless"

[Capt'n Hector]

Suddenly, the iPhone is making a whole lot of sense.

How long until WiLan sues 'em?

[mcg1969]

Can't be too long. They think they patented all OFDM technology, it would seem.

Free Software Automobile Telemetrics?

[lofi-rev]

"..traveling at typical highway speeds (in excess of 100 kilometers per hour or 62 mph)."

With a connection like that you could easily set up some pretty cool homebrew telemetric systems. Maybe have a community database of good restaurants?

"Car - please direct me to the nearest Thai restaurant favored by Slashdot readers who enjoy icefishing..."

Many things to consider...

[John Seminal]

First, I would be happy if I could get 14.4k/sec with my wireless phone, but they charge a monthly fee just to use their "special services", a data charge per kilobyte, and the normal air minutes. I would use my cell phone to check emails, and that would be about it. Maybe to read the newspaper. So for me, I don't need anything faster. But I don't want to pay three times for the same service. I can only imagine how much any faster internet service would cost. I fear the day of the $100 a month cell phone bill is near.

There is a second concern that I can think of. If a phone is able to get broadband speed and has a videocamera attached, it could cause privacy problems. Do we really want a new kind of voyer with these devices??

What else could broadband on a phone be used for?? I doubt anyone will use their cell phone as a computer. A phone is first a phone and secondly all other things. Plus, cell phones have such limited battery use times, that I doubt anyone would really use those other features for more than a very limited time.

Re:Order of Magnitude faster than Fiber?

[Cecil]

It's only an order of magnitude faster than Verizon's offering if there are less than 10 people using it. Wireless spectrum is a shared medium, FTTP is not. Yes, it all gets shared at the internet uplink anyway, but that's beside the point.

Uhh, hey man, like, use it for your HOME PC

[cbreaker]

Who said this was for phones?

Wireless broadband COULD be used for phones *I guess* but it's more likely to be used for people's home PC's or notebook PC's, at least at first.

Wireless technology has a MUCH better chance at rapid deployment in most areas because all you need to do is set up some antennas - whereas with fiber or other wired networks you have to lay down millions of meters of lines to reach everyone's home.

I believe that it's going to be the method of network access for the future. Cheap deployment, fast, and mobile.

Unless you live in NYC or some other major metropolis, don't expect very high speed internet access within the next 10 years or more if you're waiting for verizon's fiber. But if Motorola deploys it's wireless system on a wide scale, you could see it in half that time.

Better wear a foil helment.

[Anonymous Coward]

300Mbps until someone fancies a microwave burrito... that's 4 minute of downtime right there.

Multiply that by a decent sized coverage area, TV dinners, reheated coffee, yesterday's pizza and those pastry things that explode if they're in the microwave for too long, but are stone cold if they're not in long enough.... and you're looking at very little actual usable airtime.

Power consumption issues with mobiles

[berkeleyjunk]

I really don't think this can be used for mobile nodes. Power consumption issues with OFDM might relegate this technology for use only with fixed nodes. I don't think we will have a usable laptop adapter for this technology. I have experience using a 802.11a adapter on my laptop and it sucked the life out of my laptop's battery at express speed.

Goofy article

[pavera]

Yeah, Verizon is rolling out their service at 30mbps, and this can attain 300mbps in the lab... well, I've seen 1tbps in the lab over fiber... so touch that wireless! Anyway, I work at a ftth provider, we have 1gbps dedicated to every home, switched network, not shared (like wireless is).

We give up to 50mbps for internet... as our bandwidth gets cheaper, we'll be bumping that up to 100mbps, wireless can't hold anything to fiber.. besides, you can't do reliable voice over wireless (latency issues) and certainly not video which we provide as well, more than 5ms of latency and your video stream is toast...

Wireless will never be a reliable triple play provider, which is the holy grail in telecommunications right now.

fixed wireless

[sloggo]

I have used fixed wireless as my connection to the internet for over 4 years now. It is a 5mbs link connected to a mountaintop center point about 20 miles away using MMDS technology. I get peak speeds that approach what 3 T-1s would provide at a reasonable monthly fee. Downloads from capable servers provide data at rates of around half a megabyte a second. It is extremely reliable and costs about the same as a cable hookup that would provide only one tenth the speed. For those who say it is not as fast as a fiber hookup, you are correct. However no fiber hookup can compete at these prices (at least not for a while). After the central tower is built the only cost to install is the installation of a pizza box sized antenna on the roof of the home. When compared to the cost of laying fiber to reach homes this is dirt cheap. It is also very reliable - I have experienced about 5 hours of total downtime in over 4 years of use (3 or 4 incidents). I know many cable users that would be happy if they only had 5 hours of downtime in a week. Fixed wireless is a very viable high speed home connection alternative. The main problem with the technology my hookup uses is that line of sight to the central tower is required which makes it a very hard install in the flatter cities. The spread spectrum choice would eliminate that problem. (Mine is microwave based)