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Is this something that might be cured by a technical means in the future? Should we be opening up more radio spectrum for "last mile" connectivity? Maybe blim

by xrange 12y ago

Is this something that might be cured by a technical means in the future? Should we be opening up more radio spectrum for "last mile" connectivity? Maybe blimps instead of satellites? Microwave? Line-of-site laser towers? I'm reminded of an acquaintance who was busy wiring his house with cat5 cable in the late 90s, when wifi was available, but not ubiquitous. Now I can't imagine anyone but the most super-hardcore running wires inside their house for connectivity.

hawkice 12y ago
WiMax is generally promising, as is the idea that cell networks speed up way past 4G bandwidth. Lasers / line of sight is somewhat cheaper but still has a not-great marginal cost. Radio spectrum for last mile seems like an essential step in universal wide area internet (WiMax needs spectrum, and we are running out of decent frequencies for cell network internet). I am personally not sure what blimps would add, but this is ignorance, not even an attempt at saying they won't matter. That all being said: Comcast is a big pain in the butt. But I'd prefer not to worry about downloading more than 3 gigs of data a month. So if the future is in cell network internet we should all except them to be nicer if they want our money.
- xrange 12y ago
  Blimps would seem to be cheaper to deploy compared to satellites, and have much lower latency. How about drones delivering SD cards? The latency might be bad, but you might still have a pretty high data rate.
  - hawkice 12y ago
    Same problem, but worse: marginal costs would kill you with the drone delivered SD cards. Blimps... might be interesting. I feel like the blimps I've seen are so close to the ground they'd just be harder-to-maintain cell/WiMax towers.
    - xrange 12y ago
      The drone idea was just something crazy I threw out there for the heck of it, but now I'm kind of warming up to it a little more. Let's say you, the end-user, owns the drone, a one-time cost of let's make up a number of several hundred dollars. You give it instructions to download the next 10 episodes of your favorite netflix shows, etc.. It flies to your nearest library3 miles away where you've got an account, and it downloads it wirelessly while hovering overhead. It then flies back and land on your roof and acts as an access point for you. And maybe you share ownership of the drone with your neighbors. Or maybe there are 10 drones at the library waiting for commands that come over dialup to deliver your content. It flies to your place, where you download it while it hovers over your house for a few minutes, and then heads back. In that instance maybe the library owns the drones, and you just pay for a subscription? What marginal costs are you thinking would be the killer?
      - hawkice 12y ago
        3 miles of fuel for a drone is the expensive part. The latency isn't great but I suppose that's a matter of taste.

by xrange 12y ago

hawkice 12y ago

WiMax is generally promising, as is the idea that cell networks speed up way past 4G bandwidth. Lasers / line of sight is somewhat cheaper but still has a not-great marginal cost. Radio spectrum for last mile seems like an essential step in universal wide area internet (WiMax needs spectrum, and we are running out of decent frequencies for cell network internet). I am personally not sure what blimps would add, but this is ignorance, not even an attempt at saying they won't matter. That all being said: Comcast is a big pain in the butt. But I'd prefer not to worry about downloading more than 3 gigs of data a month. So if the future is in cell network internet we should all except them to be nicer if they want our money.

xrange 12y ago
Blimps would seem to be cheaper to deploy compared to satellites, and have much lower latency. How about drones delivering SD cards? The latency might be bad, but you might still have a pretty high data rate.
- hawkice 12y ago
  Same problem, but worse: marginal costs would kill you with the drone delivered SD cards. Blimps... might be interesting. I feel like the blimps I've seen are so close to the ground they'd just be harder-to-maintain cell/WiMax towers.
  - xrange 12y ago
    The drone idea was just something crazy I threw out there for the heck of it, but now I'm kind of warming up to it a little more. Let's say you, the end-user, owns the drone, a one-time cost of let's make up a number of several hundred dollars. You give it instructions to download the next 10 episodes of your favorite netflix shows, etc.. It flies to your nearest library3 miles away where you've got an account, and it downloads it wirelessly while hovering overhead. It then flies back and land on your roof and acts as an access point for you. And maybe you share ownership of the drone with your neighbors. Or maybe there are 10 drones at the library waiting for commands that come over dialup to deliver your content. It flies to your place, where you download it while it hovers over your house for a few minutes, and then heads back. In that instance maybe the library owns the drones, and you just pay for a subscription? What marginal costs are you thinking would be the killer?
    - hawkice 12y ago
      3 miles of fuel for a drone is the expensive part. The latency isn't great but I suppose that's a matter of taste.