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Wireless Networking Hardware

Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband 108

Posted by simoniker from the lots-of-bits dept.
Atryn writes "Nextel Communications appears to be entering the world of wireless wide-area broadband technology. A new site showed up today describing their market level trial of Flash OFDM technology. Using a PCMCIA Type II modem card in your laptop or a tethered modem, you can have speeds of 1.5 Mbps (bursting to 3 Mbps) downstream and 375 Kbps (bursting to 750 Kbps) upstream as described here. They also appear to be seeking seeking trial participants, who, when selected, will get the technology free of charge! Of course, you need to be in North Carolina."
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Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband More

Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband

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  • Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:47AM (#8187731) Homepage Journal
    How often do I see the salespeople and Exec crying because they're laptops hard drive fell apart after being dropped because the careless twits were swinging their shiny new $2k+ around now that they were "freed from wires"

    Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.

    Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?

    • Re:Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikehilly ( 653401 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @07:23AM (#8188069)

      "Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?"

      Verizon currently has a similar technology that is in the testing phase in DC and San Diego. The monthly cost for it is $79.99 for unlimited bandwidth usage. I figure that Nextel will have to price it somewhat competitively. Eventually, the price will come down (hopefully) to around $50 or $60 and I might think about replacing my Road Runner with one of the High Speed Wan plans.

    • Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.

      Bellsouth has hundreds of thousands of fixed leased circuit lines out there running 9.6 kbps. These are often used in SCADA systems, etc. Each of these lines typically costs $150-$250 per month. If this can be done today at $50 /month, doesn't that alone "justify wireless' cost"? Mostly the market is simp

  • Low latency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:49AM (#8187739) Journal
    Also important is the low latency of the service. I've tried one of the high-latency ones (satellite based), and it's really not worth it - good for downloading large files, and for web-browsing, but useless for interactive use.

    No-one ever seems to mention the latency though, just the bandwidth...

    Simon

  • WiMax anyone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Prox ( 521892 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:50AM (#8187746) Homepage
    I may be off base here but I think these guys are not that bright and mabey should read /. more often. WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these celluar data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems. Blowing the $$$ on this type of system now is just a waste.

    Should we tell em or sit back and watch the flameout (packing hot dogs and marshmellows read:sell short)

    • Re:WiMax anyone (Score:2, Interesting)

      by El Torico ( 732160 )
      Do you think that the people who are in charge of rolling this out are aware of WiMax? Were they 6 months ago? This effort has probably been in the works for about 6 months (that's a SWAG based on what I can remember about the abandoned data wireless rollout at UUNet/WCOM in 2000).

      I really hope they are training the Tier 1 and 2 support staff on this before they roll it out (which is something that tends to be overlooked).

      • Re:WiMax anyone (Score:3, Informative)

        by Saiboogu ( 643207 )
        I'm in the first teier of support at Nextel -- We haven't heard a word of this until about 24 hours ago. A dedicated group was trained to support the trial, and if this rolls out full scale, that group would just be expanded (following the pattern of past trials for specialized services, and the current method of supporting data services). Nextel likes to compartmentalize everything as much as possible.

      • Re:WiMax anyone (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lord Prox ( 521892 )
        Do you think that the people who are in charge of rolling this out are aware of WiMax? Were they 6 months ago? This effort has probably been in the works for about 6 months (that's a SWAG based on what I can remember about the abandoned data wireless rollout at UUNet/WCOM in 2000).

        Well I dunno about Nextel but I have been folling it for well over a year. One would think that a big corp would look at things like this before jumping into something like this. What with the engineers and anaylists and the

      • Re:WiMax anyone (Score:2, Informative)

        by piper1124 ( 749347 )
        Well I can also tell you a little something about how a business works. You can't rollout a service that doesn't exist yet. Last time I checked (and I am in the wireless business) there is no one making WiMAX gear and I doubt carrier grade HW will even be available within the next year or more. WiMax will only catch on if a big carrier deploys it as who else will carry the cost of the rollout? Starbucks? I doubt it. Besides I also believe that it does say this is a trial not a plan to roll this out nation

      • WiMax only supports FIXED endpoints. (Score:5, Informative)

        by threeturn ( 622824 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @08:52AM (#8188502)
        WiMax isn't competing with Nextel's solution. To quote WiMax's own information page [wimaxforum.org] WiMax supports " fixed broadband wireless access systems"

        The Nextel system supports fixed and mobile users. Radio systems that support mobile users have to be designed differently from those that only support fixed users. Mobility adds radio issues such as variable fading and doppler shift as well as the need to handover between different transmitters at the edge of cells. Fixed radio systems can't to any of this.

        WiMax is competing with DSL and cable for broadband to stationary objects.

        • WiMax isn't competing with Nextel's solution. To quote WiMax's own information page WiMax supports " fixed broadband wireless access systems"

          For the moment, you maybe right. However, 802.16 has a mobile boradband working group which is developing the 802.16e - standard to support mobile broadband wireless access. After the approval of this standard by the IEEE, the Wimax will be responsible for certifying products and technologies for this mobile standard. This way, mobility will also be supported.

          You can

    • Re:WiMax anyone (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stripes ( 3681 )

      WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these cellular data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems.

      Maybe, but there are some differences. WiMax "head ends" are not intended to become cheap, so it will take them longer to get cheap then 802.11 did. 802.11 also crushed all of the other wireless stuff in the same frequency band, but some of the 900Mhz ones remain in use because 900Mhz will go through more trees and stuff then 2.4Ghz.

  • Flash memory to access new service (Score:4, Funny)

    by Booyakka Joe ( 216483 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:51AM (#8187753) Journal
    Apparently you can use a special pcmcia card Or flash memory. I wonder if my 8Mb CF will work, or if I'll have to take my 64Mb out of my camera.
    • the "FLASH" in FLASH-OFDM is not the same as the "flasl" in "flash memory." From the description on the website, it looks like you will have to get a special PCMCIA card (similar tot he card you have to get from Sprint to use Sprint PCS Vision).

  • 3G seems dead! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by yehim1 ( 462046 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:57AM (#8187777) Journal
    It seems now that if city-wide wireless broadband can be achieved, it would mean much of a doom to 3G technologies, such as UMTS and CDMA-2000.

    Sure, 3G is beginning to be implemented in some countries; Japan, HK, UK, and Australia, etc; but with these wireless broadband services becomes easily available and cheap, consumers would naturally choose the latter.

    It would mean doom to my job as well, as I am acting support to some equipment used by a 3G operator in HK; 3G is unbelievably complex and expensive to implement just for two objectives: faster packet data, and enough bandwidth for a video call (Circuit-switched data). Now, the only obstacle I see in this wireless broadband technology to totally killing 3G is circuit-switched reliability.

    3G has a much wider circuit-switched domain compared to GSM, and this is important for applications that require low latency and delay: video calls.

    In any system, latency can be reduced by introducing QoS into the system by prioritizing packets according to their prescribed quality level. Another sure way of reducing latency is to dump enough bandwidth into it.

    When bandwidth becomes widely available just like what's available in land transmissions (perhaps reach ATM-class quality and speed?), 3G technology will be down the drain.

    If current trends continue, this is happening fast!

    • With the caveat that latency reducing schemes such as massive bandwidth and cacheing have no effect on the speed of light.

      If you have to bounce of a bird you're going to have a one second delay. Whether that delay is visible to the end user or not depends largely on the end user's needs. In video conferencing and gaming the lag is always visible. In realtime gaming it's virtually fatal.

      KFG
    • 1xEV-DO, which is part of the CDMA-2000 family, has already been deployed on a large scale in Korea and Japan. If reports are to be believed, it is a smashing success. Verizon wireless is offering it in 2 cities right now in the US, and will roll it out nationally by the end of this year.

      1xEV-DO, is a mature, commercially proven technology that is supported by dozens of Vendors. Several dozen phones/PDAs etc are available [3gtoday.com] from several manufacturers.

      I have friends who are using this in San Diego. Depending
      • EV-DO has lower spectral efficiency, suffers from the near-far problem (a slow users screws everyone else up) and worse of all, has significantly higher latency. Try playing everquest on an EV-DO network.

      • Nextel definitely gets no credit for this, they are late to the party.

        "late" being "second in the US" (at least with any signifigant bandwidth), and since VZ is also still in the test phase, who knows which will get to wide scale deployment first.

        I expect this gets to be /. news because it is a free trial. Plus it looks like at least one of the end system hardware bits looks like it might work with non-Windows systems (gives you an ethernet).

  • sounds like a cool idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rock_climbing_guy ( 630276 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @06:03AM (#8187797) Journal
    I'd like to see this in action. It would be great if they could use this technology to reach customers that other broadband companies won't touch. If not, just having them for price competition should be nice. Then again, there is the portability feature.

    I wonder if they'll try to squeeze money out of us by charging us for "romaing?" Also, I'm sure that privacy advocates will be concerned about the ability of Nextel or any other provider to track their customers and that information will inevitably be shared with the FBI, et al.

    • I was hanging out with some people over xmas who were using these (or similar) cards - travelling up the California Central Valley they were able to stay connected all the way from San Diego ro SF .... untill the pcmcia card overheated .... cooled down it was ok - so bring the ice for those long road trips

      Seems the stuff they are using basicly just uses spare ATM cells in the qams that are used for broadcasting cell phone data (they work a lot like a docsis modem) except that the basic response to signal

  • Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChaosMt ( 84630 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @06:13AM (#8187834) Homepage
    I know a guy working through his MBA, sitting in class hooked up to the net wireless through through Verizon Wireless [verizonwireless.com]. He's getting a minumum of 144kbps both ways most of the time. Considering that most of the US and world is connected vi dial up, that a bit improvement. He says it works well in most areas, but it has trouble if you're moving, such as while on the train. He said he does get the burst speeds in many situations, but the average speed is quite acceptable (and he's used to a oc-3). Cingular [cingular.com] has this too, as well as, Sprint [sprintpcs.com] and At&t wireless [attwireless.com]. The nextel specs cliam to be high, as the other web sites I cites also make their claims, and they all charge premium prices for this service. Given Nextel's pricing, this will also be at a premium rate.

    I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.

    • When I was on Sprint's vision internet service hooked to my laptop, the speeds were much less than I had hoped for. Initially I could pull in around 70kbps down (and something like 20 up, nothing exciting up anyway.) Then I realized I was using a test that mainly consisted of loading images (which on sprint were put through pretty drastic compression giving artificially high scores on tests that used them.) My actual rates were closer to 30kbps, though there was a period of about a month I couldn't get abov
      • I have SprintPCS Vison service and to test it one day, I hooked up my laptop in my car, and started driving. I had a two hour drive, so before I left I turned on a ShoutCast streaming station. For the duration of the 2 hour drive in which I traversed 137miles, the radio did not skip once. This was a 128kbps stream. My buffer setting was at 64K, and I was using winamp. On the other hand, I've noticed that to have my connection retain its speedyness, I need to keep a ping window running in the background

    • Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jack Porter ( 310054 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @06:32AM (#8187897)
      I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.

      How about reading the link in the article. Flash OFDM [mobileinfo.com] is specifically designed for wireless broadband as opposed to 2.5G and 3G data solutions available from the telcos you mentioned.

      • 1xEV-DO, that Verizon has commercially available in 2 cities and plans to have available nationwide by the end of the year, is definitely not a 2-G or 2.5G technology. It is a CDMA-based technology that provides 2.4Mbps/153Kbps peak upstream and downstream, and 300-500Kbps/40-80Kbps upstream.
        Round-trip ping-times are reputed to be about 100-130 ms.

        EVDO has been rolled out massively in Korea in 2002 and Japan in 2003. It has more than 1.6million subs in Korea alone.

        Nextel is really late to the party. I
      • Magnus - Flash OFDM is significantly better than EV-DO. It has lower latency, higher spectral efficieny, and does not suffer from the near-far problem. It handles doppler effects well and as a result woeks really well in cars. Imagine having a broadband connection that you can use at home, take it with you when you are in the car, use it when you are at the airport or anywhere else for that matter.
    • I really wish they had a try-before-you-buy option. I had CDPD with a company for a year -- the service was really slow (claims of 19k max speed was not even close)... signing up to a service that you can't try out, and be stuck with a one year contract seems really dumb.
    • Verizon's EV-DO based service (currently available in DC and San Diego) suffers from what is called the near-far problem typical to CDMA networks. While the bandwidth seems adequate today, as more and more users get on the network, the overall performance will degrade rather quickly. Users further away from a base station will have to emit at a higher power level to maintain their meager connection speeds, and that will force users close to the same base station to lower their power emission, thereby loweri
  • and I will live in North Carolina until everywhere becomes a hotspot and I can live the rest of my days attached to the web.

  • Big deal (Score:4, Interesting)

    by color of static ( 16129 ) <smasters@@@ieee...org> on Thursday February 05, 2004 @06:57AM (#8187984) Homepage Journal
    That seems about the same stats as the EVDO card I've been using from verizon for months now. Basically it is a 3G CDMA-2000 add on that offers bursts to 2Mbps down. I reliably get 600Kbps down and 150 Kbps up. Then when your not in the DC or San Diego footprint you get 144 Kbps bursts up and down.

    I thought 3G was dead (who needs any of these things in a phone, really), but EVDO (EVolution Data Only) convinced me this is what it is really for. When I'm stopped in traffic I can access the net. When I'm waiting for the girls to finnish shopping, I can access the net. And on, you get the idea. Hell, I'm even doing some video conferences over this card.
    • >>who needs any of these things in a phone, really

      me, I do. 3p to send and recieve emails versus 10p for an sms. Ok I could buy txt bundles but i'm happier with email. Also I don't own - or intend to own a laptop. My phone can be my phone/pda in a small form factor.

      I upgraded my phone to a SonyEricsson z600 for 30. Ok it ain't 3g it's gprs but thats ALL i want to carry about - ok apart from maybe the bluetooth headset/mp3 player combo... It's proper Bo I tell thee.

  • Yea .. but could they make sending SMS messages simpler, first?

  • security - wormy words (Score:5, Interesting)

    by josecanuc ( 91 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @08:30AM (#8188385) Homepage Journal

    Check out their "Features" list under the Personal category at http://www.nextelbroadband.com/pu_features.html [nextelbroadband.com]

    Security:
    Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM) is as secure as DSL or Cable. In addition, it is a broadband access network based on a proprietary signal processing technology operated over licensed spectrum. Designed across multiple layers, the broadband system prevents unauthorized entities from gaining network access. Depending upon your needs, additional security layers can also be enabled through VPN clients for secure corporate access or SSL for secure Internet transactions. With Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM), you can unwire the Internet and connect to all of your favorite VPN/SSL-secured applications - with confidence.

    I find it amusing. They say that is it secure because it's proprietary technology on a licenced radio service so no one can "gain unauthorized network access". I have several radios and scanners that can certainly receive frequencies that this operates on, if not transmit as well. One does not have to "gain unauthorized network access" just to listen.

    The closing sentence basically says "enjoy our service but take your own precautions about secure access."

    I'm not saying it's insecure (what is secure, truly!?). I do take a dislike to the reassurance of security with the disclaimer that any security should be provided by yourself buried in the rhetoric.

    • Nextel is worried more about you transmitting on the licensed spectrum that they paid billions for.

      On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that cable providers issue the same sort of "yeah, it's secure but security is your problem" statements.

    • I find it amusing. They say that is it secure because it's proprietary technology on a licenced radio service so no one can "gain unauthorized network access". I have several radios and scanners that can certainly receive frequencies that this operates on, if not transmit as well. One does not have to "gain unauthorized network access" just to listen.

      You seem to have missed the section of the sentence that says "proprietary signal processing technology". The signal is compressed, scrambled, split into t

      • I didn't miss it. The point was that if the signal is out there, it can be decoded. Just about any technology on signal processing is first written about in research papers before it gets implemented commercially.

        If you're an IEEE Signal Processing Society member, check out the proceedings of the ICASSP conferences. Lots of information on OFDM transmission techniques.

        And as another poster mentioned, with projects like GNUradio around, it's a matter of writing a decoder to the raw data acquired. I am not s

  • Windows only! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mur! ( 19589 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @08:41AM (#8188446) Journal
    I'm in the trial area and started filling out the form to be a tester, until it got to the system requirements, which were basically Windows XP/2000. I think ME might have been listed. They specifically said they don't support Macintosh or other OSes at this time.

    I have to wonder if there's some Windows-only software that they're using for the connection, or if they just don't want the hassle of trying to deal with connection issues from other OSes. Does anyone have similar technology running under Linux?

    • Re:Windows only! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EricWright ( 16803 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @08:53AM (#8188507) Journal
      I, too, am in the RTP area, and saw the same thing. Luckily, we have a very heterogeneous home network... one iBook, one XP laptop and one linux server. I completed the survey, intending to use it with the XP laptop if selected. I noticed that the form factors are pcmcia, external USB and, presumably, internal (PCI?) NIC.

      Nothing from a hardware standpoint prohibits using with another system, but since mac laptops don't have pcmcia cards, and I really want to test this out away from home, the XP laptop is really the only sensible choice.

      Based on what I know about hardware rollouts, they just figure that a) most people use windows, b) they need to support users, and c) it's easiest to train techs to support one system, so they pick the most prevalent one. Now, if the full service is rolled out with lack of support for non-MS operating systems, I'd be somewhat more upset...

    • Re:Windows only! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tarwn ( 458323 )
      This requirement is probably for a piece of client software to track usage or something like that. When I first signed up with RoadRunner (I haven't checked lately so it may have changed) one of the requirements was Windows 95/98/etc/etc, they didn't offically support anything else. What I later realized was that the only reason they required windows was so they could try and force you to install their little software app that would call home on a regular basis and was a real pain in the butt to kill (you c
      • I think you're probably correct. It's been a while, but when I first signed on with Bellsouth's DSL, they had a Windows requirement. It turned out it was their PPPOE "dialer" client, which summarily clobbered Windows requiring a reinstall. Then I discovered that, by using a router/switch on the modem, I had no need for the PPPOE client anyway. <SIGH>

        Nextel may just have the Windows client for logging onto the network ready now, hence the limitation.

      • Well yes but once you hook your cable modem (or even dsl modem) to a router (which handles all the ... routing) it's just a network. However, this new technology requires a pcmcia card which is most likely proprietary... not like a regular network on cat5 cable. So someone needs to find a way of loading the drivers for said pcmcia card on a linux or mac or whatever OS.

        If they wanted to track bandwidth etc, they are better off tracking it on their side. I'm sure every time you make a request you transmit yo
    • i suspect it is that latter. i is easier to deal with the users of the most dominant (evil) os during the trial period.
    • You need some kind of hardware to access the network, and hardware needs drivers.

      • You need some kind of hardware to access the network, and hardware needs drivers.

        There seem to be three kinds of hardware they use. A PCMCIA card, which may or may not look like some other kind of card there is already a driver for (I'm guessing "not"). A USB device that again may or may not look like a card there is a driver for (and again I guess "not"). A device with an ethernet sticking out if it which from it's description you need something that uses DHCP. I'm guessing Linux, Mac OSX, FreeBSD,

    • I have to wonder if there's some Windows-only software that they're using for the connection, or if they just don't want the hassle of trying to deal with connection issues from other OSes.

      I expect there is windows only software for the USB and PCMCIA devices. I would guess that the ethernet device (the one they call a "Broadband modem") doesn't need anything to work, but probbably needs some little windows-only craplet to display the signal strength and other hardware and session stats.

    • I saw the same.

      Did you complete the form, checking "no" to the question asking whether your hardware met their requirements?

      I think it's a good idea to submit the form completed in situations like this. If they have a clue, they're using the form to judge the market for non-Windows potential users of the service. If so, the number of people who drop out at that screen MIGHT be measured, but the number of people who submit with a "no" probably is.

      With Research Triangle Park being the home of RedHat, as w

  • This could be a WiFi killer if it's cheap enough (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My company currently operates 52 wireless hotspots. Our key problem is that there are so many different networks. Imagine that the US had one or two hundred different cellular networks, and in most cases your phone couldn't operate on any network but your own, or in the case of many hotspots your "phone" will operate, but you have to sign up with the new network! Nobody is willing to make roaming agreements or any such thing at this point.

    It is a well known fear in my industry that if any of the big

    • Why don't you preemptivly solve the problem: work with all the toher access providers. Agree on a common authentification scheme so that no matter where I am my machine always works. At first I might pay large roaming costs, but once you have the identification in place you are set to make roaming cheaper. (Remember you are competing against cell providers, if you are faster and in more places you can charge a little more but not a lot. This is a buisness decision).

      But start with the wasy part: a acce

      • Why don't you preemptivly solve the problem: work with all the toher access providers. Agree on a common authentification scheme so that no matter where I am my machine always works. At first I might pay large roaming costs, but once you have the identification in place you are set to make roaming cheaper. (Remember you are competing against cell providers, if you are faster and in more places you can charge a little more but not a lot. This is a buisness decision).

        That won't help for people that spend

        • Ture, but there are places where there is no NexTel (pick your cell carrier) where someone could easially install a hotspot. Boden North Dakota still only has analog cell phone coverage. (As of 2 years ago when I last visitied some relatives there) They won't get it soon. The Ford dealer, the cafe, and the bar could each set up a hot spot though, and by tieing into this network my laptop would just work next time I'm in town.

          The town isn't, big enough to justify adding a tower nearby, until someone i

  • I would love to know the capacity on this technology. There are times that regular cell phones don't work because tower capacity is already maxed out.

    Just like any 802.11a,b,g access point has a limit to the number of clients that can reasonably be supported, their spectrum is limited as well.

    What good would it do to have broadband that you can't use all the time especially at peak times? Sounds a lot like glorified dial-up to me.

  • VZW (Score:1, Informative)

    by alecks ( 473298 )
    Verizon Wireless already offers wireless broadband. the technology is 1XEVDO (AKA "Broadband Access") and is avail. @$80/mo unlimited. They claim to be ast fast as cablemodems.... Haven't actually tried it yet.
    • Verizon Wireless already offers wireless broadband. the technology is 1XEVDO (AKA "Broadband Access") and is avail.

      They offer it in San Diago and the "metro DC area". I live about 90 minutes away from DC and I would have to drive 40 minutes to get to the closest covered area.

      A friend of mine has it. Not as fast as cablemodems I have used, but faster then ISDN. Higher latency though. Latency seemed lower then my GPRS though.

  • I do wonder if Nextel's "unlimited usage" is really intended for heavy traffic. I'd bet more that few users will get nastygrams such as those discussed previously [slashdot.org]. Between listening to internet radio, downloading files, talking on a VoIP connection, and web surfing Flash sites, some users will be able to suck down full bandwidth for most of the hours of the day.
  • Can someone tell me why you would need all this extra bandwidth on your laptop? Surfing the internet? For what? porn? reading /.? I don't think business users, the most likely market for a Nextel service, would be interested in downloading movies...or at least paying a lot of money for the ability to download movies on their laptops.
    • Can someone tell me why you would need all this extra bandwidth on your laptop?

      I'm currently using a T-Mobile Sierra Wireless solution, with which I'm lucky to get 56k down. While it works for my purposes (getting mail, updating tickets in RT, and sometimes SSHing into routers/checking my NMS) I'd really be able to use more bandwidth and better latency (for SSH especially). I find that the couple of hours I spend on the train 2 or three times a week is now actually PRODUCTIVE, as opposed to a complete
      • Hear Hear!

        I've got the T-Mobile Sierra Wireless aircard too.

        Sure its slow. But I use it a lot.

        It's like a flaky dialup----you just need to have some patience.

        I figure that by the time someone has a good, national (or even Chicagoland) wireless broadband service, my T-mobile contract will expire (I'm on a 1 year).

        And the price is unbeatable. $29.99 for unlimited on your Sierra Wireless Aircard, and $19.99 if you piggy-back it on a phone (I've got it both on my Aircard, and on my Nokia 3650, which is a b

    • Can someone tell me why you would need all this extra bandwidth on your laptop?

      Well for starters you might not want it (just) for a laptop. I'm in NexTel's cell footprint but there are no cable ISPs and no DSL here, and as far as I can tell no ISDN either. If price is similar to VZ's I would get it for my house.

      However as for laptop usage, some people travel on business and would like high speed access on the road, and they can't always get hotel rooms at places that have high speed access (and this

  • Let me know when I can have it for $29.95/mo with unlimited usage, and I'll stop yawning.
  • I put in my zip codes (yes - I live & work in Raleigh), and the form said they didn't have coverage in those areas. My guess is that they're starting off in Chapel Hill and will do North Raleigh and the downtown area sometime later.

    That's too bad -- my 3G SprintPCS phone works, but I only get 115kbps out of it, so even checking Hotmail is slow.

    Chip H.
    • What zips? I put in 27614 and 27615 and it gave me no such message.
      • I cleared my cookies and tried again with just my home zip (as opposed to my earlier attempt with both home & work locations), and it let me in. A coworker put their home zip (same as our work zip), and it let them in. So I guess I didn't pass the "we want only home users" test the first time.

        Chip H.

  • NDA for them, Full Disclosure for You (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Down to the final steps in signing up, and reading the "agreement" is interesting to say the least. Basically, as with most EULA's I've seen and heard of, they are fully in control with virtually no restraints, and there are added kickers that the user agrees to:

    Your Obligations During the Trial Period you agree to use the Service on a daily basis and provide information and feedback as requested by Nextel and its service providers assisting with the Trial. (The Information, which Nextel may collect, ac

    • What do y'all (as we say here in NC ;-) think of these terms? Unusual? Reasonable?
      I suppose it depends what you plan to do with it. Do you have anything to hide?

      The terms are completely reasonable considering this is a market-trial and they are providing devices and services to you at no charge. I wouldn't expect this to be the terms of their final EULA once commercially available.
  • I, for one, welcome our new Nextel Wireless Broadband overlords...
  • it's been half an hour and my phone hasn't rung yet and i don't have an email saying "Welcome to the secret nextel wireless society!" WHAT GIVES? I NEED THE BROADBAND!!! I MU5T HAVE IT!! ...

    Seriously, tho, this is excellent news! Nextel has often done some nifty things, and for a business-class service, it's very nice. Sure the phones aren't sexy, but that's business-class. It's not for your girlfriend and her bubble-gum crew. I drop my phone several times a day on concrete (the stupid belt holder is
  • Is Nextel using their SMR spectrum that interferes with public safety radio to run this trial?
    • Is Nextel using their SMR spectrum that interferes with public safety radio to run this trial?
      Whoa, what a loaded question. Ignoring the loaded part, no, this solution is not deployed in the 800 or 900 MHz band.

      Regarding the loaded part, visit here [consensusplan.org] for more information.
  • From the specifications:
    Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM) is as secure as DSL or Cable.
    A clever way to turn no security whatsoever into a feature.

    I shouldn't be too hard on them; they do follow that stetement by suggesting the use of SSL and VPN.

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