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Wireless Networking Hardware

Will Cellular Swamp WiFi? 275

Posted by timothy from the different-tools-different-needs dept.
hhutkin writes "Sure, Wi-Fi is great for my home network. But what else can it do? After reading this article, I'm convinced that cellular is becoming more ubiquitous with wireless networking than wi-fi will ever be. Just look at all the devices that are coming on the market using cellular technology. I can send email and pics, browse the web, plus listen to MP3s all on one cellular device. It makes the notion of a hotspot almost meaningless." But 802.11x is high-bandwidth, and often unmetered ...
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Will Cellular Swamp WiFi? More

Will Cellular Swamp WiFi?

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  • Cellular is everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:40PM (#6295143)
    But cellular == the phone company, which usually translates into expensive metering and obnoxious, slow telco beuracracy.

    Telecoms bankrupted themselves to pay the gov't billions for the 3G spectrum, don't expect them to give it away for free or cheap.
    • Also, the killer feature that hasn't emerged is a single, high speed, world-wide data standard. The new Kyocera 7135 in yonder cradle is a sexy piece of hardware, but drops to a mere Palm Pilot in Europe.
      AFAIK, WiFi is free of any engineered incompatibilities.
      I would have accepted a higher price to get a GSM/CDMA agnostic phone, even at the expense of a bigger form factor. Telco daddys: "Can you hear me now?"
    • This is the key to the issue.

      Do you want to use the internet while driving? Not so much. Maybe only to get directions; the amount that cell phones provide on their basic (read: not very profitable) services.

      Other than that, you want to use it in places you work, your home, and places you think/eat (such as restaurants). Considering the cost, it is not unlikely for restaraunts would put in 802.11b if they thought it would earn them customers, as it well might. As far as work and home, the same is true

    • Re:Cellular is everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 73939133 ( 676561 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:27PM (#6295575)
      But cellular == the phone company, which usually translates into expensive metering and obnoxious, slow telco beuracracy.

      Have you been frozen in a block of ice for the last 30 years? There is no "the" phone company anymore. There are about half a dozen major cellular companies. That's what the people who use the same rhetoric as you ("big, bad bureaucracies") consider an efficient market and that is the pinnacle of monopoly busting in the US; it ain't gonna get any better than that, at least as long as campaign contributors and lobbyists have anything to say about it (which they do).

      In any case, what makes you think that WiFi will be any better? Unless we get ubiquitous, free WiFi access courtesy of the government, any nationwide WiFi coverage will involve lots of money, lots of billing, big companies, and hence big bureaucracies. Guess who is one of the biggest WiFi hotspot providers? T-Mobile, a big cellular carrier. And they'll happily provide you with the same customer service and billing as they do for your T-Mobile cell phone.
      • No, I've been waiting on hold with everyone else everytime a phone company screws up my bill.

        The corporate culture at the Baby Bell companies and cell phone companies is worse, if anything that AT&T was before the breakup.

        Besides the logo and billing address, there is almost no difference between telecom providers in the United States.

        WiFi runs in an unlicensed frequency band, so you do not need to be a large, multi-billion dollar company to get up and running. You are already seeing small companies

  • Wifi vs cellular (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frieked ( 187664 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:41PM (#6295153) Homepage Journal
    Sure you can download ringtones easily and quickly over current cellular protocols like it says in the article but these mp3/PDA enabled cell phones that are coming out still require some kind of dock or hard connection to xfer information to them with any kind of decent speed. This is where WiFi will definitely come in handy for its speed.

    • Re:Wifi vs cellular (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Troed ( 102527 )
      WiFi is high bandwidth because they don't have to deal with MANY users - and users who are MOVING AROUND.

      3G solves that, with acceptable bandwidth for portable devices (and 4G is planned)

      WiFi will _never_ be a threat to 3G - and people who think it is really need to learn about the technical differences.

      • Re:Wifi vs cellular (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pyite ( 140350 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:51PM (#6295262)
        WiFi will _never_ be a threat to 3G - and people who think it is really need to learn about the technical differences.

        This is true, but what is also true is that 3G (4G, etc.) will _never_ be a threat to WiFi. I can't set up a 3G hot spot wherever I want. They are two completely different technologies suited for two completely different purposes.

        • Re:Wifi vs cellular (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          True.

          WiFi is meant to cover a small area, like a house or an office, to link back to local resources. Celluar networks have nothing useful on them other than their connection back to the outside world.

          Does anybody sane have a T3 that both starts and ends in their basement? There's no point, 100BaseT wires provide faster bandwidth on a cheaper wire in small-area situations. But you can't ask 100BaseT to go accross town, and that's what the T3 is useful for.

          WiFi is for LAN use, cellular is for WAN use. Bot

      • Re:Wifi vs cellular (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
        I disagree. An inexpensive device which supported mesh networking over Wi-Fi could slaughter 3G if it became ubiquitous (hence the inexpensive part.) The problem is, is it going to get cheap, or not? If it's not cheap enough then no one will bother.

  • Cost.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AEther141 ( 585834 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:41PM (#6295156)
    It all comes down to whether you'd rather pay 50c a minute to do it *right now* or wait a while and do it back at the office, or at starbucks or wherever. Yeah, if the cell companies start offering data traffic for free, you'd be an idiot not to subscribe, but I don't see it being free or even reasonably cheap anytime soon.

    • Re:Cost.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Trinn ( 523103 )
      Sprint PCS.
      Vision network.
      3G (CDMA2000)
      $15/mo unlimited data.
      Did you want more than that?

      Be sure from now on to check up on your facts before posting that something -does not- exist.

      • Re:Cost.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Octagon Most ( 522688 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @02:11PM (#6296200)
        "$15/mo unlimited data.
        Did you want more than that?
        Be sure from now on to check up on your facts

        Actually I was just checking that particular fact ... it's "SprintPCS Vision" data that's unlimited.

        From their web site:
        "Unlimited PCS Vision Access includes:
        Unlimited Messaging, including text messages and email
        Unlimited Web access"

        So, email and proxied http traffic is not exactly the unlimited data that the Slashdot crowd is looking for.

  • Unfortunetly... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:42PM (#6295162)
    Cellular will win out, because it can be metered. Companies want to be able to charge per byte (or Kbyte). WiFi doesn't let you do that, and overall WiFi may be regulated to mostly home/SOHO use. While cellular becomes the mobile alternative!
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Unfortunetly... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:52PM (#6295270)
      Bandwith counting can be built into WiFi services in several ways... just because WiFi itself doesn't offer it doesn't mean somebody can't put something just downstream of the access point to do the counting.
    • Apart from not agreeing with you that metering is essential, it's trivial to meter WiFi anyway- you just meter it by connection time rather than per byte.

      The customers probably don't want metered anyway- they're generally more comfortable with flat pricing where they know what they are paying for- if the provider wants to traffic shape them if they start getting greedy- that's usually fine too.

  • article text (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Next Big Thing...The Cell Phone
    Forget Wi-Fi. The real wireless revolution is being driven by the cell phone -- and is already creating rich opportunities for huge players and small startups alike.
    By Rafe Needleman, Michael V. Copeland, Om Malik, July 2003 Issue

    In a home recording studio near San Francisco, Del the Funky Homosapien's chart-busting rap tune "Phoney Phranchise" comes pumping out of a silver Kyocera (KYO) 3225 cell phone lying on a cramped desk. The little device is almost hidden by the co
  • It Came From the Cellular Swamp

    Why Fie?

  • WiFi+cell (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tobes ( 302057 ) <tobypadilla@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:42PM (#6295174) Homepage
    I think phones should have wifi capabilities, not for getting on a network but for sharing network connectivity. Having a phone that used 3g to get connectivity and used 802.X to broadcast a network "cloud" around the phone would be pretty sweet.

    • Bluetooth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:03PM (#6295376)
      That's what you can do with Bluetooth today, and it doesn't drain your tiny cell phone battery in an hour like WiFi will... Stuff like what you just said is a major reason for Bluetooth to exist (and of course it has other uses).

    • Re:WiFi+cell (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cybermace5 ( 446439 )
      Maybe combine this with load-balancing. Each phone has its 150kbps cellular connection, and depending on how many phones are in the WiFi cloud, the phones can distribute collective bandwidth on an as-needed basis.

      The key to this is managing the parallel connections intelligently, to avoid the bandwidth hogs. Perhaps it could be tied to a function; if a certain number of phones are in an area, a portion of the 3G bandwith is dedicated to group sharing over WiFi. If there are too few phones, they do not shar

  • Besides, big media will hate WiFi (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    WiFi enables truly anonymous networking activity for the first time. Anonymity enables Free Speech and file sharing to an extent not yet imagined, and with little recourse for the RIAA and MPAA. They will run to the only recourse they have left: the outlawing of WiFi.
    • WiFi enables truly anonymous networking activity for the first time. Anonymity enables Free Speech and file sharing to an extent not yet imagined, and with little recourse for the RIAA and MPAA. They will run to the only recourse they have left: the outlawing of WiFi.

      Nope, they've got another recource. enforcing copyright law and doing a little simple police work.

      All the RIAA has to do is a little wardriving to find wide-open anonymous WiFi servers. Then, when they get onto one, they look through all the

  • GPRS + Bluetooth + iBook == Heaven (Score:5, Informative)

    by MKalus ( 72765 ) <mkalus AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:43PM (#6295178) Homepage
    Okay,

    maybe not quite but since last week I have GPRS on my T68i and via Bluetooth I connect it to my iBook. So guess where I was sitting on the weekend: In a park with a coffee having full access to the internet.

    Sure it was slower than my home network, but for shell, email and webbrowsing it works like a charm.

    The costs? $50 / month: UNMETERED.

    I am convinced.

  • Wi-Fi make use of "free" spectrum (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smcavoy ( 114157 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:43PM (#6295185)
    Cell phones use licensed spectrum, controlled by companies.
    So sure let's drop 802.11a/b/g in favour of the cell phone spectrum.
    Just don't complain when your paying usage fees to send a file wirelessly to your buddy sitting across the room, because you subscribe to different providers.
    • Cell phones use licensed spectrum, controlled by companies.

      Spectrum is controlled and licensed by government agencies, in the the US, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau [fcc.gov] of the FCC [fcc.gov], Canada, Industry Canada [ic.gc.ca], and the UK, the Radiocommunications Agency [radio.gov.uk] of the Department of Trade and Industry [dti.gov.uk].

      The licensing comes from a tradition of making spectrum organized to prevent interference.

      Anyone who tries to use WiFi in a densely populated area, especially over a large area (e.g. linking various sites in the

  • Security (Score:5, Interesting)

    by waldoiverson ( 608278 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:44PM (#6295194) Homepage
    I am no cellular or Wi-Fi expert, but it seems like security is something to consider when mulling over this question. My Wi-Fi network is secured by me, but the cellular network, being a public/private venture, seems to lack the ability for personal protection. Perhaps this is a good thing for my parents, as the cellular network would probably have some sort of built-in controls, but I like to control my own network. Any thoughts or secuirty tidbits that anyone can share would be appreciated.
    • Realistically handling the security for networks should NOT be handled by the end user, not even ones as technically astute as Slashdot users.
    • Sorry, maybe you should go work for the Big Cellphone Companies. Because no one is going to give you a worldwide wireless network that you can administer yourself.

  • 7.99 per MB (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AT&T charges that rate for their "MMode" cellular.

    I just canceled that. Totally useless. Plus, what the screen is an inch across? And I have to click 10 times to get to my.yahoo.com and then *try* to read it?

    I was in the Seattle airport and downloaded several albums of mp3s for a 24 hour rate of 6.95 on the wifi network they have there (which is btw cheaper than the 9.95 AT&T charges in Denver). And ssh-ed to work. And bought more tickets. All you need is a laptop.

    In terms of bang for your, wifi
  • The problem these days is that everything seems to operate around the same frequency range. My 900MHz telephone seems to pick up every little bump and click of everything in the house!
    Besides all of that though, the FCC can bite my ass. I really wish they'd give us citizens some frequencies we can actually use instead of converting us all to digital and forking them all to the highest bidder. Digital is all fine and dandy, but it just doesn't travel through the air like the good ol' EM we've all grown
    • Digital is all fine and dandy, but it just doesn't travel through the air like the good ol' EM we've all grown up with.

      I don't quite think you have the slightest idea of what physical difference there is between digital and "regular" radio. Answer: none.
  • And be prepared for a whopping 4 or even 5 digit phone bill. I know of somebody I worked with who thought it was cool to surf the web from his laptop, until he got his next cellular bill.

  • cost, cost, cost (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:47PM (#6295222)
    until the price of cellular more closely resebles the cost of Wi-Fi this kind of apples to oranges comparison is irrelevant.

    I love my cell phone, but I need more than 10MB of data for my $20.

    TW

  • dialup ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by noah_fense ( 593142 ) <noahtheman@gmail. c o m> on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:47PM (#6295228)

    Cellular access right now is like (early) dialup:

    -slow transfers
    -disconnects often
    -high latency
    -expensive

    I have a brand new phone (it says 3G and GPS on the back) but if i use any of these features i get charged up the ass!

  • Big difference... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:47PM (#6295230)
    WiFi is meant to cover a small area, like a house or an office, to link back to local resources. Celluar networks have nothing useful on them other than their connection back to the outside world.

    Does anybody sane have a T3 that both starts and ends in their basement? There's no point, 100BaseT wires provide faster bandwidth on a cheaper wire in small-area situations. But you can't ask 100BaseT to go accross town, and that's what the T3 is useful for.

    WiFi is for LAN use, cellular is for WAN use. Both have a place, and neither can fully replace the other.
    • Exactly.

      WiFi is not unmetered as the /. editor presumes either. Someone pays for the bandwidth at some point. It is just more difficult to bill to a user of a wifi hotspot, other than the model of $3/hr or whatever McDonald's [siliconvalley.com] (not a joke) wants to charge for access after the free trial is over.
    • In your example, though, the PC in your basement can use both the 100BaseT LAN, and by extension, the T3. I've recently bought the new Color Sidekick, aka Danger Hiptop, and am starting to see why that kind of diversity would be greatly desired. It'd be awesome if a device like this could get data access through an existing WiFi network when available -- coverage is often spotty, or at least markedly slower, indoors. I wouldn't even mind having it use the WiFi for a VoIP session every now and then (count

  • Heh. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Opreich ( 671414 )
    Moo. :\ I'd love to see a national Wi-Fi "pool" that users can hop into and "swim" in free of charge, with moderate bandwidth metering. Freshmeat IT workers could monitor and manage the Wi-Fi pool pro bono, as it could be something to put on their resume. A coalition of top IT professionals could oversee the "pool" as "lifeguards". Once again, this is just another thought from me. Moofully yours, Opreich.

  • It's aready been tried (Score:3, Informative)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:51PM (#6295267)
    Ricochet had a metro-area wireless solution that was very cell-like, and they failed. Someone will eventually pick up the slack, but it's not going to be quick. I wish that Ricochet were available, now that I have a laptop, for it would be perfect for me.

    • Ricochet (Score:2, Informative)

      by tachyonflow ( 539926 )
      Actually, Ricochet is back from the dead, and providing service in Denver and San Diego. They are taking a much more conservative (post-dot-com) business approach this time. I had the service when I was in Denver, and it worked out pretty well. It's ~$30/month ($45/month if you want a mailbox, ha ha.)

  • The differences are what keep them good (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:53PM (#6295274) Journal
    Ok...how many people actually DO have the 400-in-1 cell phones that include the garage door opener, TV remote, phone, PDA, camera, MP3 player, GPS, 802.11g router, video game system? Yeah these are cool, but I'm not going to go running with my cell phone so I can use the MP3 player. I'm not going to base my entire network in my house on my phone. I (and a multitude of others) want a device for each purpose. My network will have my WiFi router. My phone will place calls. I'm not going to be screwed when one thing breaks, or when Verizon goes down, or when Verizon decides to jack up the prices, or when...
    • I don't think a mobile phone will ever handle household bandwidth needs. Other than that my Kyocera 7135 Smartphone is my MP3 Player, PDA, Phone, notepad, datebook, plays games, has 911 GPS, no 802.11 yet but I could add one with a SDIO expansion card....etc

      It works fine. Very reliable. How often do you expect networks to go down and with number portability how is Verizon (or any carrier) going to be able to raise rates?

  • Actually, it's going the other way (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Argyle ( 25623 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:53PM (#6295278) Homepage Journal
    The major US cell phone companies are actually looking at WiFi as a way to increase their service.

    They are looking at techniques to 'hand off' a cell phone call from the 2.5G or 3G networks to WiFi networks to maximize call volume.

    Imagine that you are walking down the street, chatting on your cell phone and enter a Starbucks. The phone could switch to use the tmobile WiFi instead of using the broader cell phone network.

    I saw a presentation by the cafe.com guys where they think the WiFi hotspot companies like them and boingo will get bought up by the Telcos to get access to WiFi for expanded phone service.
    • T-Mobile already has the "mini-tower" equipment to set up within any bulding that needs a signal or bandwith boost, and the fact that it's GSM-based rather than WiFi-based means that equipment works with their standard phones, which is better than a new WiFi solution which would require new tech inside the handsets.

      If T-Mobile wanted to create a "coffee minutes" rate class for cheaper calls made within or arround a StarBucks where they have special equipment that gets the call onto landlines there instead

  • Well... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MrZeebo ( 331403 )
    I can send email and pics, browse the web, plus listen to MP3s all on one cellular device.

    The question is, would you want to? While cell phones are the most convenient way to send a picture taken with the phone, it would still require some sort of docking station is order to send pics from my digital camera. And viewing pics and movies just isn't fun on a small screen.

    Additionally, the "experience" of browsing the web is quite different on a cell phone than it is on laptop or desktop -- I've tried. P

  • Geography (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AEther141 ( 585834 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:53PM (#6295282)
    You have to remember the geograpy of much of the world. In the US, WiFi will never take off outside of cities because of the incredible expense of giving total coverage. Here in the UK, or over in japan however, our population is close to ten times denser, making WiFi a much more attractive prospect. Japanese cell networks have far more transmitters than US networks because of the density of cellular activity, with transmitters often less than 100ft apart, so it's no great leap of the imagination to see those transmitters being supplimented or even replaced by WiFi.

    • Re:Geography (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phrawzty ( 94423 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:02PM (#6295371) Journal
      This is a really good point. Here in Canada, it's even more relavent. :) I live in a city of about 700k people, which happens to be the only major city in my province. The next closest major city is about 7 hours away.. and at around 350k people, it's not really "major". Now that i think about it, the closest big city is about 9 hours away, and it's not a Canadian city at all (Minneapolis).

      That said, we've sure got a lot of fibre here. Our government has been pursuing an expansive and expensive project to network the entire country. I don't think WiFi will ever be part of the big picture here, largely due to the massive amounts of basically uninhabited country between our cities.

  • Kind Request (Score:4, Informative)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:56PM (#6295309) Homepage
    Could we please stop to compare Bluetooth with WiFi with cell phones?

    Those are three very distinct technologies with very different uses. I recap and then we all shuddup, ok?

    Bluetooth: Designed for tiny personal networks, i.e. connect your cell phone with the earphones and your pda without cables.

    WiFi: Wireless lan since it's a wireless lan you can't really roam around outside of area, which is pretty restricted, nuff said!

    Cell phones: Well, cell phones, you get the picturu

    I thank you

  • Thats what i think will happen....things like the Handspring Treo that have wirless capabilities.
    So its sort of using the best tool for the job.


    Want to download stuff to/from the network: use the wifi link
    want to do less intensive stuff: use the cellular link.

  • Opposite day.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @12:59PM (#6295341)
    This article reminds me of opposite day. Except for the last sentence.

    You see; telecos (in Europe at least) are very, very nervous about 802.11. They paid, literally, billions of dollars for UMTS licenses. Some other poster mentioned a $50/month unlimited plan on GPRS, well, GPRS is really, really slow. UMTS is supposed to be 2 megabit/second, albeit shared with all users in a cell. UMTS cells will however be smaller than conventional GSM cells.

    GPRS can be rolled out pretty much instantly using the existing GSM infrastructure. UMTS will need entirely new basestations to put into place. Why build a network with near-100% coverage, if handsets will drop to GSM if necessary? Well, the VERY expensive UMTS licenses require it.

    Then comes along wifi.. Speeds of 3 or 10 Mbps. Today. No big network. Free spectrum. Yes, only at hot spots, but where else do you use your laptop? In the mall? In your car? Hardly bloody likely. Hotels, airports, maybe Starbucks. And they ALL have hot spots already! Using the net on a little phone or pda/subnotebook gizmo? You don't need megabits of speed, existing data or GPRS (2.5G) will do.

    So 3G is a really big liability. The license is use it or lose it; don't build a network (again, imagine a billion crisp green bills vanishing in thin air) and your other invested billions will never yield any return on investment (a write-off).

    mmO2 already took a write-off selling the Dutch O2 branded operator (which will now rebrand to it's *old* pre-O2 brand, telfort). The company was bought for 75 million Euros, and mmO2 wrote off the rest of the company's worth (the billions it put into the UMTS license, which never materialized any revenue so far). The new Telfort says it won't do anything with UMTS.

    Show me a device that ordinary people will buy that accesses a service that ordinary people want to use that uses megabit per second speeds AND that can be used anywhere (so, pocketsized, not a big ass laptop). Show me that, and I might be able to get you a very nice consulting gig. There is no killer-app for 3G.

    Go wi-fi!

    (Though always remember, wi-fi is a commodity, you won't make insane profits (maybe none) and competitors or kiddies can simply jam your signal by using a big ass microwave or other disruptive ISM equipment in the same band..)
    • Then comes along wifi.. Speeds of 3 or 10 Mbps. Today. No big network. Free spectrum. Yes, only at hot spots, but where else do you use your laptop? In the mall? In your car? Hardly bloody likely. Hotels, airports, maybe Starbucks. And they ALL have hot spots already! Using the net on a little phone or pda/subnotebook gizmo? You don't need megabits of speed, existing data or GPRS (2.5G) will do.

      Not needing a connection in the car? I just love having to carry a phonebook and maps when I go travelling! Th

  • Success factors (see message end) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chelidon ( 175081 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:02PM (#6295374)
    Yes, WiFi is much faster, than real-world speed of either GPRS or 1xRTT. You're lucky to get 22.8/33.6kbps modem speeds on GPRS. But GPRS brings the service to me, and with Wi-Fi, I have to go to where the service is. We're really comparing wireless LAN (wi-fi) to wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g) technology.

    As wireless WAN technology becomes better, it will inevitably win out, so long as the provider has decent coverage, a reasonable pricing plan *and* a strong revenue model. My blissful few years with a Ricochet modem made that clear (R.I.P. Metricom)-- the price was right, but coverage was too limited to attract a mass audience, and the buildout costs were too high for Metricom to turn a profit before running out of cash. But the cellular providers have a big advantage over Metricom, since they can subsidize the buildout of data services on top of their existing voice customers, and they already have the tower permits which they'll need to deploy 2.5G/3G data-- Metricom had to build a data network essentally from scratch, and the process of obtaining the local permits (different in each locality) was a killer right there.

    And the big news, T-Mobile has just started an unlimited data GPRS plan, at $20/mo for voice customers with at least a $30/mo voice plan, and $30/mo as a stand-alone offering-- no service commitment, no contract. Schweet...that's the kind of pricing that will attract more users, and AT&T Wireless, Verizon, etc, are going to have to match that or lose huge numbers of data customers.

    So now my Sony-Ericsson T68i is a full-time Bluetooth-enabled wireless hub for my Palm Tungsten T, my G4 Powerbook, and the phone-based data services. No, it's not fast, but it's better than doing data via regular cell dialup, and it's available all the time, anywhere, and for $20/month with all-you-can-eat service, it's the thing for me. When I'm at a hotspot, I'll use Wi-Fi, but for the rest of the time, GPRS does the job.

  • You Do *NOT* Want Cellular to Win (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:03PM (#6295377) Homepage Journal

    Cellular networks are run by companies that most emphatically do not have your best interests at heart. These are the same companies that, to pick the most contemporaneous example, spent millions of your talk-time dollars fighting number portability.

    But getting soaked on per-byte and per-minute rates isn't the real issue. The bigger issue is that the cellular networks are end-to-end controlled by the telcos. No service flows over their waves or wires without their approval. Nothing happens on "your" handset that they didn't explicitly pre-authorize -- the exact opposite of the Internet.

    If you want to experiment with a new idea in networking, and you're on the Internet, just park a machine on the net with an open port, and try it out. You don't have to get anyone's permission.

    On the other hand, if you want to try something out on the cellular network, you first have to get "permission" to write software to run on your own damn phone, then you have to get the Service Provider du Jour to agree to send you the bits you're interested in (for a nominal fee, of course, assuming they know what the hell you're talking about at all). For an example of this idiocy, check out the API for BREW (Basic Runtime Environment for Wireless). It's the only API I've ever seen that expressly has a political layer in its networking stack.

    802.11b, OTOH, is just Ethernet-like frames over the air (typically used to carry Internet protocol, but can be used for any other Ethernet-y thing). No permission, no politics, no fellating the local telco to give you "permission" to experiment. Just squirt packets out the interface and see what happens. Yeah, it carries data, but where is it written it can't carry voice as well?

    Cell phones are darned useful, but believe me, you do not want the cell phone providers to become the dominant force in wireless data transport. They will screw you.

    Schwab

  • To me, this is like asking if minivans will destroy the market for sports cars.

    Yes, they technically do the same thing, but the are not interchangable. Maybe you'll flip-flop over which one to buy, but at the end of the day, the market for both is there.

  • Metering (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yet another coward ( 510 ) <yacoward@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:05PM (#6295393)
    The sharp price curve on cell data holds me back. AFAIK, there are two unlimited cell data services for less than $50/month.

    One is Sprint. Although Sprint usually looks the other way, their user policy prohibits use with computers and PDAs. Phone connectivity to computers and PDAs is terrible with Sprint anyway. Everything requires a special expensive cable. Their phones tend to be primitive compared to GSM. Bluetooth is supposed to appear from Sony-Ericsson, but it has not yet. Sony-Ericsson announced their abandonment of North American CDMA development yesterday.

    T-Mobile is the other. Their new unlimited plan is appealing. With a Nokia 3650, the customer has a powerful device in itself and the potential to connect more through Bluetooth. AFAIK, the do not prohibit using their phones as gateways for PDAs and computers. The downside is T-Mobile coverage. IMO, they have always been a small-time, sorry coverage cell provider offering big deals in attempt to compensate. If you live and travel solely in their coverage areas, it could be a great deal. I don't.

    Data plans with AT&T, Cingular and Verizon are expensive for significant monthly usage. I have had my fingers crossed for a year or two that one of them would crack. I think my fingers are stuck now.

  • Cellular vs. 802.11 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:05PM (#6295394) Journal
    But 802.11x is high-bandwidth, and often unmetered ...

    Yeah, but it's also a pain in the 4$$.

    Currently, I have a cheapo Verizon cellular phone that with the over-priced mobile office kit, gives me 19200 max Kbps service - and for my needs, it's actually enough.

    The cell companies are just now beginning to experiment with umlimited plans, they'll be common in a few years, as will the 2.5G/3G networks that make high speed Internet possible.

    Combine the two trends, and in a few years you'll get 128 Kbps or better speeds on a cell phone with unlimited minutes for probably $50-$75/month.

    One of the wonderful things about cellular technology is that there is still actual competition which drives innovation and tends to push costs down. Compare to land-line telephone companies, or Microsoft

    Nice to have competition, eh?

    802.11 can and will continue in places where the consistency of the user experience can be assured. This means in company buildings, warehouses, people's homes, and the like.

    Just to indicate how *bad* 802.11 is, I tried to connect a neighbor into my home network with 802.11, and to go (I kid you not!) 75 Ft through the wood construction house in the middle, we had to get special directional antennas.

    My cellular phone, however, gets reasonable service just about anywhere, even standing in the middle of our metal-and-plaster construction local hospital, and the nearest cell tower is over a mile away. (I know where it is)
  • Compare the relative age of consumer cellular service against the relative age of consumer Wifi. Heck, Danny Glover was using a cell phone in Lethal Weapon; yeah, it was all cutting-edge and stuff (it was a brick, and they had to pull over on top of bridges to get reception,) but it was there. That was way back in 1987--about 16 years ago. What's more, there were already over a million cell phone users in 1987.

    Where was WiFi in 1987? Heck, the World Wide Web didn't even exist back then, and true consum

  • The revolution will not be corporatized (Score:4, Insightful)

    by poptones ( 653660 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:06PM (#6295407) Journal
    Ubiquity != cheap and affordable. Nor does it even mean ubiquity in this sense. If you live in the city you can use a mobile just about anywhere - but if you live in the city you may also be able to find a "hotspot" of wifi. You may also be able to easily roll your own, at least enough to be able to roam the neighborhood at will. And when enough people have rolled their own roaming networks, then wifi is also "ubiquitous."

    Anyone can put up their own wifi hub, but only verizon and its ilk can erect their own phone hub. Sure, I'd sooner pay $50 a month for a flat rate phone that I can carry with me than paying $30 a month for one I can't, but that's about as much a converged product as my POTS line with this old 56K modem. In fact, I'd sign up today... but guess what? I can't do that, either. Because I live in the country, and despite the fact there's a cell tower just a mile from here, you can't get flat rate cellular service with reasonably fast data transfer. POTS + dialup account = $50; And cellular can do 64kbps, which is far better than anyone around here can do on POTS. You'd think the cell companies would be lining up to exploit this as a means of financing the building out their infrastructure. You'd think that... but you'd be wrong.

    Cellular is just wireless POTS. And it seems no matter where the technology COULD go, all the industry cares to think is on those terms. Sure they offer widgets and toys that will work on a tiny screen, and they offer (slow) internet access if you happen to live in a well built out service area where they can't sell enough minutes to utilize all the equipment they already have in place. But if you live outside one of these saturated "hubs" it's the same old story.

  • 802.11 based wireless is DEAD! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:08PM (#6295430) Journal
    I founded two of the three wireless providers operating in the metro Omaha area (#53 in terms of market size) and I can assure you that cellular is going to stomp balls on unlicensed wireless services.

    What we've seen in the last six weeks in the ISM band here in Omaha is an indication of the future of the whole industry.

    Someone, somewhere, which we can't locate, has put up something in the ISM band we can't identify which produces an observed signal strength at a range of ten plus miles that is equal to the signal strength observed *six feet* from a multipoint sector antenna amped to the legal maximum. This has been the final blow for service coming from the second highest location in the city. Crowding and poor practice on the highest point make it equally precarious. Unless you *own* the rights to the ISM band on the structure you're using as a central site, you *will* get screwed ... its not an *if*, its a 'how soon'.

    The situation in the UNI-I band isn't that grim ... yet ... but I am aware of several additional point to multipoint installs in that band that are going to compete with the service I built last year. The UNI-I band noise floor is going to reach the same ridiculous levels we see in ISM - it is just a matter of time.

    You have to understand the economics of the thing to know why it isn't going to work - even if you don't have technical problems like we're seeing here the only place ISM band wireless is going to succeed is in rural areas.

    Customers view wireless as a competitor to DSL and cable and that is a loser's game - if you aren't selling some additional service on your circuit you're pissing away money at the $40/mo mark. The money spot is above a T1 and below a DS3 ... and with the instability of ISM obviously going to happen in UNI-I no one with the money to drive that sort of activitry is going to be silly enough to get involved.

    All that needs to happen for G3 to succeed is for them to provide ISDN like speed to fixed installs ... which they can already do for the tougher mobile market and they can not bury themselves in stupid anti-customer policies like the cable modem industry. People are going to pay for a network attachmen they can *use*, not a service for downloading Hello, Kitty skins for their cell phones.

    • Someone, somewhere, which we can't locate, has put up something in the ISM band we can't identify which produces an observed signal strength at a range of ten plus miles that is equal to the signal strength observed *six feet* from a multipoint sector antenna amped to the legal maximum.

      It seems like that sort of situation is what the FCC is for. If someone is illegally saturating public airwaves, they are supposed to put a stop to it. If you spin it as a form of terrorism, you might get a quicker response

      • The "ISM" in "ISM band" stands for Industrial, Scientific and Medical. All other uses are in effect flying standby and can get bumped at any time.

        If you complain to the FCC they'll remind you that Part 15 devices are required to accept any interference from the primary occupants of the band. If a diathermy machine puts you off the air, that's the chance you took.

        Paradoxically, that's the reason we have WiFi in the first place. The spectrum wasn't protected, so nobody commercial was willing to use it for b
    • People are going to pay for a network attachmen(t) they can *use*, not a service for downloading Hello, Kitty skins for their cell phones.

      But what I can USE *IS* a service for downloading Hello, Kitty skins for my cell phone! That would be so rockin' awesuuuume!

    • If you can't locate it how do you know you're 10 miles away?

  • I live in an area where DSL nor cable modems are available. Our telephone lines do not support any protocol higher than V.34, and I have use the Verizon Express Network and so far it's going great. For $80/month I get unlimited bandwidth and usage and I get pretty decent speeds (nothing major, 125k or so. But it works for me).

    WiFi, unless it spreads everywhere really quick will be isolated to the big cities and forgotten by the rest of the country. Cellular is the way to go because of the availibility. Sur

  • Wifi is only fast... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:11PM (#6295455) Homepage Journal
    until you connect to my WAP. Then you get to realize the horrors that is a shared 56k modem connection.

  • Scope of operation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:12PM (#6295461) Homepage
    What the article and poster are both missing is that cellular phones and WiFi networks have entirely different scopes of operation.

    WiFi is intended for short-range use and provides large amounts of bandwidth (54Mbps) completely unmetered.

    Cellular is intended for long-range use and provides small amounts of bandwidth which are typically (although not always) metered by the phone company.

    It's the old adage: bandwidth, distance, cost. Pick any two.

    Furthermore, while I don't see cellular overlapping in scope with WiFi, I see WiFi overlapping cellular in many areas. WiFi *can* be made long range with the proper equipment, and can replace some of the functionality of cellular.

  • Clay Shirky shows you why you are *so* wrong (Score:3, Informative)

    by shaneb11716 ( 451351 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:15PM (#6295491)
    Read on and be educated:

    http://shirky.com/writings/permanet.html
    http:/ /shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html

    -Shane

  • Cost of Cellular??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pagercam2 ( 533686 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:17PM (#6295504)
    We've all seen the marketing about how wired we'll be in the future, downloading video to watch our favorite TV show at the beach etc... . But I've never seen any predictions how much this is going cost the end user. The cell carriers are fighting for market share and not making too much now, deploying 3G is going to cost a LOT of money (huge piles). I think that they expect the usage will go up, but I'm paying something like $40 for 600 minutes (weekdays, free nights and weekends yada yada yada). Seems to me that if rates stay the same and my usage goes up by a factor of 2x or 3x then the bill is going to go up 2x, 3x or worse. Thats 600 minutes = 10hrs month, a phone call from a good friend can easily take an hour, so 10hrs/month can get used up pretty fast. Surfing the WWW can waste hours and hours (didn't get to bed till 3:20am because I had an idea that I wanted to research and lost track of time, following all the links on Google looking for the right info).

    I have a suspision that 3G is going to be more than 2/2.5G cellular and its only really usefull if its always avialable so I would want to use a lot more minutes but I'm not that interested in signing up for a plan thats >$40, maybe a little more but I'd need a lot more than 600 minutes. I see 3G getting quite a few "early adopters" then quickly declining as people economize.

  • How can you compare them? (Score:4, Informative)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:17PM (#6295505)
    Wi-Fi is for $1000 PCs, cellular is for $100 phones.
    Wi-Fi is for broadband data, cellular is for voice and, at best, low bandwidth video on tiny screens.
    Wi-Fi has a short radius and an IP address, cellular towers are ubiquitous and compatible with several voice networks.

    How can these be said to compete? Sure, you can do a lot of PC-ish things on your dinky cell phone, but you can't do half the things a PC on Wi-Fi can over a cellular connection. The cost-per-megabyte is only half the issue. It'll be a long time before mobile phone networks can approach the bandwidth of wireless networking, and by the time they do Wi-Fi will have leapfrogged to a whole 'nother level.

    There's a lot of growth in the buck-a-minute world of cell phone downloads and uploads. People are getting innovative, too -- I've seen blogs composed mostly of photos with some short text uploaded from people's phones, and my wife uses hers as an organizer, storing names, phone numbers, addresses and alarms. As more and more phones are sync-able with people's PCs, they'll become more popular as MP3 players as well as download tools.

    So this is cool, although we all know there's a plateau out there somewhere and several phone companies will crash hard when they run off the edge of it. But so what? Wi-Fi won't lose marketshare to phone makers because it can do so much more (bandwidth, public hotspots) and so much less (limited radius, hub tied to a physical landline). There's overlap, but it's less than the article implies. Until cellular phones can do everything a laptop PC can do -- and with those tiny screens and thumb-only keyboards, that's not too likely -- there's plenty of room for both.

  • They will compliment each other (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slappy_guru ( 230776 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:18PM (#6295512)
    I believe you will see devices that do both. WiFi's advantage is bandwidth. 3g cellular's advantage is coverage. The casual travler can get away with WiFi in Hotels, airports etc. Serious road warriors will need both. So there you have it, Hi Bandwidth / Poor coverage vs Low Bandwidth / Good Coverage. On cost, WiFi wins hands down on cost, but cost is relative to business need.

  • Wifi on a cellular scale. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rage Maxis ( 24353 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:18PM (#6295516) Homepage
    The one thing you are missing here is relative scales. Cellular products working on 900mhz or whatever are just the same sorts of antennas that WISPs use. I worked on the deployment of a NAN in downtown Toronto and the technology of WiFi is equally viable as throwing cellular antennas up on towers. There are a couple of actual issues here.

    1) Tower space is very expensive. The room for antennas is quite limited for new WiFi installation (on the same scale) as 9xxmhz or other cell equipment generally occupies the ideal antenna locations. Additionally the LOS requirements of 2.4+ghz WiFi make this a little bit less ideal than does lower frequency (thus better penetrating) technologies.

    The lack of open source or even inexpensive management and network operations software / hardware make it less feasible (at the moment) than cellular. Just the general lack of cheap units with dual radios makes long range roaming fairly impossible. This will change in the short term, provided that WiFi doesn't go the route of cellular and become a per-minute per-packet large-corp-only business.

    The real advantages of WiFi come with its robustness as well as its bandwidth potential. Once you start using Technologies Everyone SHOULD use But Don't(tm) like ipsec you start to have somewhat higher bandwidth needs. Because larger bandwidth with present technology =! higher costs (in fact SHOULd equal lower costs if it wasn't for strong telco resistance) little things like crypto and routing overhead should not make a difference. Nor should p2p traffic, streaming, etc.

    The BIG advantage of using WiFi or mixed WiFi / hardline service with good QoS and intelligent ToS / cost-based routing / p2p filtering (i.e. slow down foreign packets / encouraging mature protocols (i.e. torrent, edonkey) is that the major costs of P2P become much much easier to swallow. Hint: multicasting p2p over WiFi is *really* efficient. = )

    For those out there who have $100K/year jobs -- a economically unsustainable and generally damaging concept in and of itself -- go ahead and blow your packet charges on cellular. Enjoy 19.2k connections.

    For those who still have a glimmer of the spirit of WiFi, the spirit of a free internet and people who enjoy being able to downloads hundreds of gigs a month of whatever they please -- WiFi has much, much MUCH more potential.

    Gregory
  • At least in its current incarnation, cellular technology is great for phones, but while looking up movie times on the Web using a cellphone is all well and good, WiFi lets me do a lot more. WiFi lets me leverage the full power of my computer, which is still a far better tool for using the Internet than a cell phone.

    The cell phone is an adaptation of a device that was originally intended for voice communication, and no matter what Nokia, Sony/Ericcson, et. al. do, it's still a fish riding a bicycle. Or, to

  • I've been using for 4 months a Sprint Vision card in my laptop. I also have 802.11 at home and 100baseT at the office. Each of these services has their place.

    I will not use an 802.11 hot spot in an airport, for example, because Vision is good enough (10k BYTES/second -- think 2 B-channel ISDN) but I certainly switch to 802.11b when I'm at home. I think the random hot spot business is a dead end especially when the fee is $10/day or worse and the security sucks. Vision costs $80/mo unlimited. That's 8

  • Telco's move for network control.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr_Marvin_Monroe ( 550052 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:38PM (#6295688)
    Plain and simple. If you are a "subscriber" to the telco's cell plan, you are governed by their rules of service and you become one of the herded consumers.

    I view this move as a means of wresting control for content distribution and access out of the hands of individuals (access point owners) and into the hands of the mega-telcos. This move also makes it easier for General Ashcroft and the 245th lawyer brigade to monitor traffic and intercept whatever they want. It makes it easier for the phone providers to track your usage, thereby creating yet another product for them to sell to marketers. It delivers to them, the means to target advertising to your mobile device. In short, it puts the consumer back into the "cattle shute" of the big ISP's, where everything becomes an adult playpen, sanitized and appropriatly marketed.

    Wi-Fi now, is by definition, run by the person who sets up the access point. This person controls whether it is open or encrypted. This person controls who may access it. This person is responsible for what content may or maynot be distributed through their access point. Having this power in the hands of the individual allows for cool things like "wireless communities" and free hotspots. Whatever the individual chooses. If you don't like it, you can set up your own for less than $150.

    On the other hand, if the Cell providers can convince enough people to move to their networks, they can become the standard and can dictate terms of "acceptable use" which, without an viable alternative, become a means of "toll booth" and "restriction."

    Ask yourself whether the telcos would allow you to set up a wireless server using their network. This can be done now with an access point and some simple gear...I've seen the handheld wireless webserver here on Slashdot before! Do you think the telco's would allow you to set one up for others to access with their phones?....Think again, we've also seen this week how MS and the phone providers are attempting to create new standards for data transmission between wireless devices...why would that be, when MP3's seem to work fine?...It's the same old practice of creating something propriatary to wrest control out of the hands of the consumer, and put it back into it's rightfull hands...the mega-corps.

    It's not that I don't like alternatives, I like them a lot, we just need to keep technology open for people to use in any way they deem appropriate. Wi-FI has grown precisely because it put all the power in the hands of the user. We've seen some pretty weird stuff coming out of many of the users too, stuff that the manufacturers never dreamed of. Don't let the Telco's put that back in the bottle.

  • But the cost, and... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mwillems ( 266506 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @01:46PM (#6295817) Homepage
    There are two simple points here, it seems to me...

    1. Price

    Sending a byte anywhere across my cable modem costs $0.000000019. Sending one across my GPRS cellphone here in Canada costs me 0.00025 per byte, which makes cellular technology 13,421 times more expensive! Yes, thirteen thousand TIMES more expensive. And 3G is not showing signs of being cheaper. The cell companies have billions in licenses to recover. The 13,421 times difference (that is an 1.3 million percent margin) seems like highway robbery to me.

    2. "Getting it". The cell companies have shown no sign of getting anything. They appear to think we are still in the circuit switching age, And have you check cell gprs/wap "content"? One line new headliners updated about once every 48 hours, and cost $0.25 to read? Ther should realise they are thyere to connect us to whatever we want to connec to, not to interpret/provide.

    No doubt this will all be solved in the end and we will all have long range wireless, but not until the old telecoms guys are all long retired.

    Mike (an ex telecom guy myself, ask me about papertape for loading phone switches years after PCs were introduced!)

  • run your own web or mailserver through cellular toys? How about join/play a net game like RTCW, Team Fortress, etc?


    There's a bit more to networking than what can be done with even the fanci-schmanciest cellular toybob. Since there won't be any DSL or cable coming in my lifetime into my area, Wifi is about the only other possibility. Cellular network access it WAY pricey even it it would work. No thanks. Cellular may have a place, but that place isn't as a replacement.

  • Short Answer : It Already Has (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Goody ( 23843 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @02:08PM (#6296166) Journal
    Cellular has such a massive coverage area and number of towers. Anyone who thinks WiFi is going to surpass Cellular doesn't have clue as to the infrastructure needed to support a mobile network. Sure, cellular companies are like slow moving telcos. You can't push oodles of bandwidth yet, but the sites and network infrastructure are there. 802.11 is no match for the billions of dollars invested in the 90s on cellular and the standards that have been developed.

    The hype factor with WiFi is so much higher than cellular and people with Pringles cans get excited and think 802.11 is the answer to everything from national networks to world starvation. 802.11 was an indoor LAN protocol that got stretched beyond what it was intended to do. Sure, 802.16 addresses some of this, but still the frequency allocations and necessary regulatory protection to create a national mobile network with unlicensed technology just isn't there.

    802.11 is better suited for hotspots, but remember when Cellular was only for use in vehicles ? Now people use it in place of their home landline phones. Hotspots are merely fads, cellular will stomp on 802.11 hotspots, just watch.

    Cellular is a tortoise and WiFi is the hare in the mobile data race. Slow and steady wins this race...

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