Distributed Wi-Fi
Let's be honest, one of the coolest functions of the soon to be released iPhone is the use of a fully functional web browser to surf a fully functional internet. Steve Jobs even showed off one of our favorite time wasters, NYTimes.com. But of course there is the flip side of all this: mobile data charges.
Mobile data services are still quite expensive, even when customers buy an all you can eat plan for their laptops. Mobile internet is still a tool for the rich and powerful. Wi-Fi hotspots of course are the poor man's version, but these are almost exclusively tethered to a particular location, like a coffee shop offering the service to customers. Or even worse, the Wi-Fi which costs next to nothing to provide, carries high access charges, like t-Mobile hotspots at Starbucks.
Some cities have begun installing free or cheap wi-fi networks to provide coverage within the boundaries of their city. In part this is to bring high speed internet to the poor, or to encourage small businesses to set up shop in town. A consequence of this has been drawing the ire of telecommunications companies who have launched lobbying campaigns to stop cheap or free municipal wireless.
Concurrent with the rise of wi-fi and broadband internet has been the voice over internet telephones. Voice over internet phone lines have been heavily pushed by cable companies eager to steal even more business away from long distance carriers. But the trend by many people to convert to a mobile lifestyle has rendered the need for land based phone lines-- whether carried over copper wires or over the internet-- obsolete. VoIP can't compete with mobile phones--
Phone companies older high speed internet solution, DSL, has lost ground to the faster, more reliable cable services. In response, Verizon began rolling out fiber optic service, providing even faster data connections and television services. Fiber optics will offer real competition to cable companies who have over the last few years enjoyed tremendous monopolies on high speed internet and television service. Since verizon also provides land based telephone services and mobile phone services, it will be in the position to compete in all of the cable companies' markets and also provide better phone service options. There is one area though, that cable companies can beat fiber optic empowered phone companies: mobile data charges.
Verizon was recently called out on having quoted users the cheap rate of .02 cents a kilobyte for data usage, when in fact they meant .02 dollars (or, 2 cents) per kilobyte. When you've figured out that $.02 per kb is rather expensive to surf the regular old internet (sending word document attachments, at 5kb to 10kb would cost 20 cents each), you might see why there is a great vulnerability to mobile phone companies offering mobile data plans.
If you said that Cable companies don't transmit wireless signals, and don't have the capabilities to compete with wireless companies, you'd only be partly right. While cable companies don't broadcast signals from cellular towers, they do use wireless technology. Or rather, their customers do. Many people run their internet signal into a wireles router, creating a small area network for their home. Wi-Fi signals are fairly short ranged, and signals degrade when they hit things like walls. Most home users are lucky to get 1,000 feet without needing to boost their signal. But this weakness is also the strength of the network.
Wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T rely on their extensive network of cellular towers to maintain a wireless monopoly. In essence, cellular towers are controlled by three companies that in a flagrant flaunting of anti-trust laws, have struck deals with each other to create essentially one national network without roaming fees for customers. Cellular phones work by literally creating a network of cells. At the center of each cell is a tower that broadcasts and receives signals from phones in that cell. As a user moves from cell to cell, new towers take control of the signal, but all this happens seamlessly without the user knowing they have switched cells. Since the big three companies control the vast majority of the cellular network as well as the radio spectrum used for the service, they pretty much can keep competitors out of the market.
And then there are wi-fi networks. Wi-fi networks use an area of dedicated radio spectrum. As a result, wi-fi networks have a limited range, but are versatile in who can use them-- no license required. Home wi-fi networks are also rarely used to capacity. Many networks sit idle all day long while their owners are at work. Even when users are at home, its very hard to use the network to full capacity. Even high volume users are rarely straining their connection to the internet, though broadband providers usually cap the monthly usage despite claiming unlimited access. Heavy users are kicked off the network despite companies' advertising unlimited access. (the claim there is a difference between access and use, but if you think about how the internet works, there isn't). This is of course one reason why users limit their home networks. Strictly speaking, too many users sharing a wi-fi connection will use up the allotted bandwidth the internet service provider allows-- though rarely will this correlate with the physical capacity of the network. Thus instead of living in a wi-fi utopia, we live in a society of "locked" wi-fi neighbors. Take a drive through any gentrified urban neighborhood, and you'll probably come across dozens or even hundreds of "closed" wi-fi networks. You can't get access to these networks, but they are all there, not being used to capacity.
A few years back, a researcher over at the SETI project came up with a brilliant way to analyze the billions of bits of data the project had collected: let amateurs do the work. Or rather, let their idle computers do the work. Volunteers would download software onto their computers that would take small bits of the SETI project, analyze it, and then get more data when they were finished. The idea was simple: harness the power of home computers sitting idle while their owners were at work or when they were at home, use their computers at the office. This is distributed computing.
Peer to Peer software -- Napster, Kazaa, BearShare-- works in a similar way. Users have files stored on their computers. You want those files, but instead of burdening one user's computer with the full file download, you retrieve small bits of data from 10 or 20 or 100 users. In this way, no one person has the burden of serving up the whole file.
Cable companies have hundreds of thousands of users plugged into their broadband computer networks. All of these users have a company provided cable modem to interpret the data signal that comes over the cable network. Cable companies could swap out standard cable modems for wi-fi enabled versions that automatically create a local Wi-fi cell. Because in most places, cable companies enjoy local and regional monopolies on cable service, the customers' local home network would immediately become an entire neighborhood or city by sharing hundreds or thousands of other users' cable wi-fi networks that are otherwise not being used to capacity.
Since the cable company would be sponsoring the wi-fi networks, individual customers would not have to worry about using "too much" of their unlimited access. In essence, instead of the customer leaving open their door and hoping their neighbors are kind patrons and don't use too much bandwidth, the cable company is inviting all of their customers to use the subscription they otherwise would be using at home.
Further, since cable companies rarely compete with each other in the same neighborhood, cable companies would probably be able to strike deals with "competitors" to allow for a single seamless cable network. Perhaps Comcast provides service in one municipality and Cablevision in another, but customers of each cable service would enjoy interoperability between networks, creating one super network.
These wi-fi networks would not probably require FCC licensing since signals used by wi-fi networks are already allocated for such use. Because its simply an adoption of existing, non-regulated technology, there would be no need for new government interference.
The key component of all this is Voice over Internet telephony. The cable companies make a lot of money stealing customers from traditional land line phone subscribers. After all, the networks and capacity are in place for VOIP phone service. The cable company is basically getting free money every time someone signs up for the phone service, which is in part why combination phone, television, and internet packages are so cheap. The added benefit is the cable companies steal customers away from telecom rivals. But who really needs a land line anyway? In age of wireless, cellphone only households are quickly replacing traditional land lines. With a wi-fi network in place however, cable companies could get into the mobile phone market.
Obviously a mobile wi-fi phone is not the same thing as a wireless cellular phone. The limitations are much greater. Wi-fi signals use battery power faster, for one thing, and even in the most densely populated urban networks, the wi-fi network will never be as complete as a cellular network-- to say nothing of rural and even suburban areas. But by offering a land line that connects to a customer's neighborhood network, not just the wall jack in their house, a mobile wi-fi phone could further encourage customers to sign up for the phone package along with television and internet services. In addition, the cable company could make a nice profit selling handsets.
Yet there are of course a few normative concerns that are raised by such a system. First would be privacy. One of the main reasons most home users don't leave their existing networks open to any passers-by is that a few bad seeds have ruined it for everyone. Its a safe practice to lock strangers out of your wi-fi network not just to prevent your unlimited access account from hitting the monthly bandwidth limit, but also to prevent strangers from hacking into your computer for nefarious purposes.
This solution is somewhat easy to come by. The cable company could simply create two networks-- one connection for the home user, and then another separate public network that requires a subscriber password to login. In essence, the cable company provided wi-fi network would be a separate interface from the home user's network, only sharing the physical connection to the outside cable line.
Secondly, it requires vast customer adoption at the same it requires the customer to provide a service-- their electricity-- to run the modem and wi-fi network. The key to a successful distributed wi-fi network then would be to trade the customers' electricity for access to the network. In essence, customers agree to provide electricity for their local wi-fi network in exchange for free access to the other networks provided by their neighbors. Since the network would only be open to subscribers, the cable company is collecting fees from the users anyway. The key to success is for cable companies to not get greedy and attempt to extort more money from customers for this service; as soon as they do, some customers will opt out, and then there will be holes in the network coverage, making the service less valuable. Instead, distributed wi-fi would be a benefit of being a full cable subscriber, which would entice users to stay with their cable company rather than switch to satellite or fiber optic service. But that would also not close the door to cable companies charging a subscription fee for users who are not also home network subscribers. Essentially, by providing a node on the wi-fi network, users get the service free, but non-subscribers could pay for an access fee.
Third, the system would need to give priority to the subscriber's home network. That is, when the customer who is providing a particular wi-fi cell happens to be at home using their network, their data receives priority over other users using the network. This could easily by achieved through software and should not present a problem.
Urban areas would clearly be the biggest beneficiaries. Anyone living in a city has probably taken notice to the fact there there are a half dozen or so other wi-fi signals in close proximity to their own. But with the exception of rural areas or very large parks, the wi-fi signals would probably be strong enough even in many suburban neighborhoods to provide extensive coverage. While such a network would never be as good as a true cellular network, a wi-fi network would probably be "good enough" for most users.
Its possible of course for a non-cable company to provide software that would do roughly the same thing. But because adoption would not be as wide spread, and because cable companies still impose limits on their advertised unlimited access networks, its unlikely that it would be particularly successful. Furthermore, cable companies probably lack the foresight to implement a system like this, and even if they did, they would ruin it through greed.
Even though its doubtful cable companies will ever follow through on such a plan, it probably doesn't matter in the long term. Ultimately of course, the cost of providing cellular services continues to drop, including data services, and especially as more people adopt its use. Meanwhile, more and more municipalities and government agencies are building free or low cost wi-fi access. In all likelihood, sometime in the next decade or two, some form of ultra mobile internet will become like water-- cheap and readily available in the civilized world.
Mobile data services are still quite expensive, even when customers buy an all you can eat plan for their laptops. Mobile internet is still a tool for the rich and powerful. Wi-Fi hotspots of course are the poor man's version, but these are almost exclusively tethered to a particular location, like a coffee shop offering the service to customers. Or even worse, the Wi-Fi which costs next to nothing to provide, carries high access charges, like t-Mobile hotspots at Starbucks.
Some cities have begun installing free or cheap wi-fi networks to provide coverage within the boundaries of their city. In part this is to bring high speed internet to the poor, or to encourage small businesses to set up shop in town. A consequence of this has been drawing the ire of telecommunications companies who have launched lobbying campaigns to stop cheap or free municipal wireless.
Concurrent with the rise of wi-fi and broadband internet has been the voice over internet telephones. Voice over internet phone lines have been heavily pushed by cable companies eager to steal even more business away from long distance carriers. But the trend by many people to convert to a mobile lifestyle has rendered the need for land based phone lines-- whether carried over copper wires or over the internet-- obsolete. VoIP can't compete with mobile phones--
Phone companies older high speed internet solution, DSL, has lost ground to the faster, more reliable cable services. In response, Verizon began rolling out fiber optic service, providing even faster data connections and television services. Fiber optics will offer real competition to cable companies who have over the last few years enjoyed tremendous monopolies on high speed internet and television service. Since verizon also provides land based telephone services and mobile phone services, it will be in the position to compete in all of the cable companies' markets and also provide better phone service options. There is one area though, that cable companies can beat fiber optic empowered phone companies: mobile data charges.
Verizon was recently called out on having quoted users the cheap rate of .02 cents a kilobyte for data usage, when in fact they meant .02 dollars (or, 2 cents) per kilobyte. When you've figured out that $.02 per kb is rather expensive to surf the regular old internet (sending word document attachments, at 5kb to 10kb would cost 20 cents each), you might see why there is a great vulnerability to mobile phone companies offering mobile data plans.
If you said that Cable companies don't transmit wireless signals, and don't have the capabilities to compete with wireless companies, you'd only be partly right. While cable companies don't broadcast signals from cellular towers, they do use wireless technology. Or rather, their customers do. Many people run their internet signal into a wireles router, creating a small area network for their home. Wi-Fi signals are fairly short ranged, and signals degrade when they hit things like walls. Most home users are lucky to get 1,000 feet without needing to boost their signal. But this weakness is also the strength of the network.
Wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T rely on their extensive network of cellular towers to maintain a wireless monopoly. In essence, cellular towers are controlled by three companies that in a flagrant flaunting of anti-trust laws, have struck deals with each other to create essentially one national network without roaming fees for customers. Cellular phones work by literally creating a network of cells. At the center of each cell is a tower that broadcasts and receives signals from phones in that cell. As a user moves from cell to cell, new towers take control of the signal, but all this happens seamlessly without the user knowing they have switched cells. Since the big three companies control the vast majority of the cellular network as well as the radio spectrum used for the service, they pretty much can keep competitors out of the market.
And then there are wi-fi networks. Wi-fi networks use an area of dedicated radio spectrum. As a result, wi-fi networks have a limited range, but are versatile in who can use them-- no license required. Home wi-fi networks are also rarely used to capacity. Many networks sit idle all day long while their owners are at work. Even when users are at home, its very hard to use the network to full capacity. Even high volume users are rarely straining their connection to the internet, though broadband providers usually cap the monthly usage despite claiming unlimited access. Heavy users are kicked off the network despite companies' advertising unlimited access. (the claim there is a difference between access and use, but if you think about how the internet works, there isn't). This is of course one reason why users limit their home networks. Strictly speaking, too many users sharing a wi-fi connection will use up the allotted bandwidth the internet service provider allows-- though rarely will this correlate with the physical capacity of the network. Thus instead of living in a wi-fi utopia, we live in a society of "locked" wi-fi neighbors. Take a drive through any gentrified urban neighborhood, and you'll probably come across dozens or even hundreds of "closed" wi-fi networks. You can't get access to these networks, but they are all there, not being used to capacity.
A few years back, a researcher over at the SETI project came up with a brilliant way to analyze the billions of bits of data the project had collected: let amateurs do the work. Or rather, let their idle computers do the work. Volunteers would download software onto their computers that would take small bits of the SETI project, analyze it, and then get more data when they were finished. The idea was simple: harness the power of home computers sitting idle while their owners were at work or when they were at home, use their computers at the office. This is distributed computing.
Peer to Peer software -- Napster, Kazaa, BearShare-- works in a similar way. Users have files stored on their computers. You want those files, but instead of burdening one user's computer with the full file download, you retrieve small bits of data from 10 or 20 or 100 users. In this way, no one person has the burden of serving up the whole file.
Cable companies have hundreds of thousands of users plugged into their broadband computer networks. All of these users have a company provided cable modem to interpret the data signal that comes over the cable network. Cable companies could swap out standard cable modems for wi-fi enabled versions that automatically create a local Wi-fi cell. Because in most places, cable companies enjoy local and regional monopolies on cable service, the customers' local home network would immediately become an entire neighborhood or city by sharing hundreds or thousands of other users' cable wi-fi networks that are otherwise not being used to capacity.
Since the cable company would be sponsoring the wi-fi networks, individual customers would not have to worry about using "too much" of their unlimited access. In essence, instead of the customer leaving open their door and hoping their neighbors are kind patrons and don't use too much bandwidth, the cable company is inviting all of their customers to use the subscription they otherwise would be using at home.
Further, since cable companies rarely compete with each other in the same neighborhood, cable companies would probably be able to strike deals with "competitors" to allow for a single seamless cable network. Perhaps Comcast provides service in one municipality and Cablevision in another, but customers of each cable service would enjoy interoperability between networks, creating one super network.
These wi-fi networks would not probably require FCC licensing since signals used by wi-fi networks are already allocated for such use. Because its simply an adoption of existing, non-regulated technology, there would be no need for new government interference.
The key component of all this is Voice over Internet telephony. The cable companies make a lot of money stealing customers from traditional land line phone subscribers. After all, the networks and capacity are in place for VOIP phone service. The cable company is basically getting free money every time someone signs up for the phone service, which is in part why combination phone, television, and internet packages are so cheap. The added benefit is the cable companies steal customers away from telecom rivals. But who really needs a land line anyway? In age of wireless, cellphone only households are quickly replacing traditional land lines. With a wi-fi network in place however, cable companies could get into the mobile phone market.
Obviously a mobile wi-fi phone is not the same thing as a wireless cellular phone. The limitations are much greater. Wi-fi signals use battery power faster, for one thing, and even in the most densely populated urban networks, the wi-fi network will never be as complete as a cellular network-- to say nothing of rural and even suburban areas. But by offering a land line that connects to a customer's neighborhood network, not just the wall jack in their house, a mobile wi-fi phone could further encourage customers to sign up for the phone package along with television and internet services. In addition, the cable company could make a nice profit selling handsets.
Yet there are of course a few normative concerns that are raised by such a system. First would be privacy. One of the main reasons most home users don't leave their existing networks open to any passers-by is that a few bad seeds have ruined it for everyone. Its a safe practice to lock strangers out of your wi-fi network not just to prevent your unlimited access account from hitting the monthly bandwidth limit, but also to prevent strangers from hacking into your computer for nefarious purposes.
This solution is somewhat easy to come by. The cable company could simply create two networks-- one connection for the home user, and then another separate public network that requires a subscriber password to login. In essence, the cable company provided wi-fi network would be a separate interface from the home user's network, only sharing the physical connection to the outside cable line.
Secondly, it requires vast customer adoption at the same it requires the customer to provide a service-- their electricity-- to run the modem and wi-fi network. The key to a successful distributed wi-fi network then would be to trade the customers' electricity for access to the network. In essence, customers agree to provide electricity for their local wi-fi network in exchange for free access to the other networks provided by their neighbors. Since the network would only be open to subscribers, the cable company is collecting fees from the users anyway. The key to success is for cable companies to not get greedy and attempt to extort more money from customers for this service; as soon as they do, some customers will opt out, and then there will be holes in the network coverage, making the service less valuable. Instead, distributed wi-fi would be a benefit of being a full cable subscriber, which would entice users to stay with their cable company rather than switch to satellite or fiber optic service. But that would also not close the door to cable companies charging a subscription fee for users who are not also home network subscribers. Essentially, by providing a node on the wi-fi network, users get the service free, but non-subscribers could pay for an access fee.
Third, the system would need to give priority to the subscriber's home network. That is, when the customer who is providing a particular wi-fi cell happens to be at home using their network, their data receives priority over other users using the network. This could easily by achieved through software and should not present a problem.
Urban areas would clearly be the biggest beneficiaries. Anyone living in a city has probably taken notice to the fact there there are a half dozen or so other wi-fi signals in close proximity to their own. But with the exception of rural areas or very large parks, the wi-fi signals would probably be strong enough even in many suburban neighborhoods to provide extensive coverage. While such a network would never be as good as a true cellular network, a wi-fi network would probably be "good enough" for most users.
Its possible of course for a non-cable company to provide software that would do roughly the same thing. But because adoption would not be as wide spread, and because cable companies still impose limits on their advertised unlimited access networks, its unlikely that it would be particularly successful. Furthermore, cable companies probably lack the foresight to implement a system like this, and even if they did, they would ruin it through greed.
Even though its doubtful cable companies will ever follow through on such a plan, it probably doesn't matter in the long term. Ultimately of course, the cost of providing cellular services continues to drop, including data services, and especially as more people adopt its use. Meanwhile, more and more municipalities and government agencies are building free or low cost wi-fi access. In all likelihood, sometime in the next decade or two, some form of ultra mobile internet will become like water-- cheap and readily available in the civilized world.
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