Hmm…could we have wireless modems? I could foresee a network of cell towers just for Internet. Wouldn’t the speed of working on the Internet be increased without the need for each home to have a T1 line?
(Forgive me, I don’t know enough about telephony to understand if this is possible or not.)
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
You can in effect do that now with an adapter to plug a laptop modem into a cellular phone. The problem with broadcast type systems is bandwith. Everyone shares the same set of frequencies which are quickly filled. If you wanted the speed of a T1 line you’d only be able to get one or two callers at a time.
Padeye, another question pops to mind:
If so many cell phones can be sending and receiving from so many different users, then why would bandwidth be a problem?
a) Couldn’t each website just be a different “phone number”?
b) Why isn’t bandwidth an issue with cell phones…or at least it doesn’t seem to be!
Again, please be kind to my oversimplifiying questions… I’m no electronics wiz! 
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
These guys claim to be rolling out a wireless internet/LAN/WAN product at 128K or better in major metropolitan areas this summer.
A single wired phone line has only a fraction of the bandwidth of a T1, 1/64 as much IIRC but a telco person should correct me. Analog and digital cellular signals have even less because they only need enough for acceptable voice quality. Trying to funnel all the potential users to a web site through a voice cellular signal would be folly.
Bandwidth already is a severe problem for cellular systems. That’s why digital TV is replacing analog broadcasts in a few years. Channels 2-13, a hefty 6MHz of bandwidth each, will eventually be used for the growing demand of personal communication devices.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
There are literally TONS of companies offering wireless modems(E.G.- Ricochet), and a host of others.
Ricochet modems are relatively slow(33.6, 56K), but I inquired about a modem for my house, from a company I can’t at all remmember. They offered speeds of 56K up to T3…just like racing though “Speed costs, how fast do you wanna go?”.
As far as this goes…
A) If you are to oversimplify things, each website IS a different phone number.
www.local420.net is not Local420.net, it is actually 63.193.225.58.
So through TCP/IP and DNS, you’ve actually put a “phone number” to a website…
B)bandwidth isn’t a problem with cellphones, AFAIK, because of their distinct compression techniques(CDMA, TDMA, AMPS), and the fact that audio over a phone is teeny, tiney small.
The only time you get stuck in a bandwidth issue is when you’re using it as a data link. You’re lucky if you get 56K speeds.
Well, Japan has this company called DoCoMo, and they sell this thing called iMode, and it’s about the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s a cell phone, with a camera built in, and a tiny LCD screen that will display the picture sent from another iMode phone or an email message. When you connect to the internet with one of these phones, you only pay for the bits you send - there’s no connect time charge (you just have to have some way to keep your batteries charged). The speed right now isn’t very fast (9600 baud), but it will be 300kbps next year, and 2Mbps by 2003. 9600 baud is more than fast enough to transmit pictures and short email messages, and even though the phones are incredibly small and the character set they use is over 50 characters, and the keypad only has 12 keys for character entry, it’s possible to blast messages back and forth very quickly. Even though 9600 baud is okay for iMode camera pictures and iMode email, the reason faster speeds are necessary is obvious when you sit in a coffee shop in Japan in the morning. All the Japanese businessmen have their micro-laptops plugged into their micro-cellphones to check their email and surf the web. The really, truly, amazing thing is that the basic iMode service is only US$3.00 more than the iMode cell phone rate. It’s small, it’s cool, and it’s cheap. In the US, we don’t have anything close.
My penpal from Japan visited me recently, and she kept in touch with her friends in Osaka by email. Most of them had iMode phones, and their email address is their phone number followed by @docomo.com. It was amazing to watch the volume of emails going back and forth from California to Osaka, Japan, in almost real time, and to realize that the girls she was sending mail to were receiving their email on a 1.5" cell phone display, while wandering around the streets of Osaka.
So: Yes, cellular modems are possible. They are here today. They are way cool. They can (and, I would argue, should) be similar to a cable or DSL modem - connected all the time. Each one uses its phone number as the address. They are fast enough today, and will be really, really fast before too long.
– Mike –
Even if this is meant to be taken figuratively, it isn’t likely. You can’t expect such dramatic improvements in bandwidth because it’s limited by the available bandwidth of radio waves that can be used. There’s a limit on how much information you can cram into the air. There’s also a vast infrastructure which takes years to build. I haven’t heard of any short-term plans by NTT DoCoMo to make any bandwidth improvements.
What iMode provides is a packet based communication. Instead of dialing to an ISP and establishing a point-to-point communication line, an iMode phone just throws packets of data into the network which is shuffled to the destination. So you pay based on how many packets you sent and received. Phones with cameras are still very rare, but there are many services such as movie information, on-line banking, ticket reservations and e-mail which are provided by this service.
We have another system in Japan called PHS (“Personal Handyphone System”) which uses very low power signals. Since each cell is only a city block or two, there are fewer users in a given location, and therefore higher bandwidth is possible. It only works in cities though. 32K data service has been available for many years, and 64K is now possible in limited locations, but it is accomplished by using two 32K lines in parallel. I think it shows you how difficult it is to accomplish high bandwidth and large coverage area at the same time. Just look at Iridium - true global coverage, but at 2400 baud.
Another issue against cellular is security. There is absolutely no security with cellular. Go to a website with a password? Ooops its not encrypted nd everyone between u and the signals death has your password. With telephone lines its at least difficult to do and with fiber optic, impossible.
For an interesting alternative, try http://www.mediafusion.com They have a way to encrypt data in the magnetic field around powerlines. It should be interesting to see if it pans out.
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
Absolutely not true, all digital phones use encryption and authentification technologies.
Bandwidth for cell phones doesn’t seem to be an issue because the phone company is really playing a trick to make it work. The name ‘Cell’ phone is a tipoff to the answer. Many people in the same urban area broadcast their connection on the same frequency as many other people. This can work because your cell phone only has a very limited range (1 mile or so I think…someone correct me if they know the real answer).
As you travel from one cell to the next the computer at your cell phone company’s office shifts responsibility for you to the next antenna. As a result while there may be 20,000 people on their cell phone in a large urban area at a given moment each antenna only has to deal with maybe 100 users.
On occasion these antennas do get overloaded. If you’ve used a cell phone long enough you’ve probably gotten a service unavailable message in an area that you know usually works. Generally if you wait a few seconds and try again you can get on as other people drop off the network.
Oh, please. I get warned BY my cellular provider ( was Bell Atlantic, now is Varizon Wireless, god help us all…) that cloning is alive and well. I have a Dual Phone, it shifts in mid-vowel from an Analog to a Digital tower. Encrypted up the wazoo,so they said when I signed up. In fact, I had to have it re-programmed last year to keep up with the new encryption. Still, Oh Please. I can be cloned, you can be cloned, all god’s chillun can be cloned.
There is NO security with cellular phones. HOWEVER- you can surely send data that is SEPARATELY encrypted, over a cel line. They can clone the phone,and trap and record your “Conversation”- but to what good end? They are recording the chirpings of a modem, heavily encrypted. I’d say, they could decode that too. But…it might be a bit more secure.
Cartooniverse
My medical school is installing a wireless LAN, which I think is what you are talking about. It has the same bandwidth and transmitting capacity as a typical Tbase10 connection (actually its 11Mbps) but it is wireless. The downside…each node on campus has a range of about 300 feet and i think the nodes have to be hardwired to the university backbone.