free movie clip
articles and products
to
help you on your way to success. The Great free movie clip Resource.
Wireless Comparison: 802.xx Vs. Evdo – A Test And A Future Prediction
It's the Suits versus the Cowboys in the battle for your wireless future. The Suits are the cellular carriers; the Cowboys are entrepreneurs implementing the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' 802.xx protocols. The Suits bring zillions of dollars in wireless infrastructure, a long operating history, a huge base of captive customers, thousands of roaming agreements and vertical integration of systems, software and services. The Cowboys bring ... uh, they bring ... uh ... well, they'll improvise. My money is on the Cowboys. The battle replays minicomputers and PCs. The minicomputers were the Suits. The PCs were the Cowboys. PCs won handily. Here's the story for wireless.
My office and my house are in the middle of nowhere. I'm at the end of 1.7 miles of pavement, on a ridge that sticks out between a couple of taller ridges. There are good views from my property, but there's no clear view to geosynchronous satellites, to heavily populated areas, or to ridges with repeaters. There's no cable TV and no phone company central office within five miles. Around here, fiber is a word on cereal boxes.
This is not a good situation for a technology analyst in Silicon Valley, so I have been looking for anything that might improve things. Several years ago, I got a WebRamp box. One interface to the WebRamp is three modem connections; the other is Ethernet. I could attach one to three 56 kilobits per second (Kbps) modems to separate phone lines, plug them into the WebRamp, and share the aggregate bandwidth on my home network over Ethernet. The WebRamp managed the connection sharing to the Internet service provider.
I limped along like this for several years. WebRamp, which had been a startup, went public, was bought and disappeared. That was the end of software updates; performance degraded.
Then Verizon announced EV-DO, Qualcomm's Evolutionary Data Only system, and began turning it on in California. With EV-DO, one purchases a PC card from Verizon that provides data service over the cellular network at promised download speeds of 400 to 700 Kbps. Hey, these rates qualify as broadband in the U.S. and in third-world countries, and they are wireless and mobile. In any case, they're way better than the 26 Kbps of my analog phone line. At the beginning, the price for Verizon's "unlimited broadband access" was $90 a month, but it has since dropped to $60. The cost was high compared to the phone line, but it offered about 20 times the data rate.
When I visited a Verizon store, I had three questions:
1. Is there EV-DO coverage in my area?
2. Will the PC card and its software allow me to share the connection on my home network?
3. Does the service agreement allow me to share the connection on my home network?
________________________________________
Verizon's in-store representative had detailed maps to answer the first question. According to the company's coverage maps, there was no service in my area. But based on the one bar of power on my Verizon handset, I believed the company might well be wrong.
I tried asking my second question about six different ways, but it didn't work. I knew that by using a Windows operating system program called Internet Connection Sharing, the laptop could share its connection with the rest of my home network--that is, unless Verizon's software interfered with Windows. For each phrasing of the question I got a puzzled look and the same answer: The EV-DO card plugs into the PC card slot, so it can't be plugged into a desktop at the same time. OK, no answer to the second question either.
The answer to my third question was also not known in Verizon's outpost. I was zero for three, but desperate, so I signed the two-year contract and took the experiment home. I would have 15 days to answer the questions myself before the contract became binding.
The Experiment
I installed the Verizon software on my laptop computer and plugged in the EV-DO card. The software recognized the card, configured it, and established a connection to the cellular network flawlessly and quickly. Impressive. With a single bar of coverage, I could access the Internet through the cellular network from my home! The coverage maps were wrong; as I had suspected, the connection-mapping explorers hadn't been to my neighborhood. The answer to question one is yes, there is EV-DO coverage in my neighborhood; one down and two to go.
My home network has a server, a PC-based PBX (private business exchange), two desktops, two laptops, three wireless access points and several experimental computers attached to a common Ethernet network.
I installed the Verizon software on three laptops and tried the EV-DO card in each of them. Nothing worked. Verizon's software isolates the laptop that has the card. It's not even possible to access files stored on other computers while the Internet connection is active--the Verizon software offers only a black-and-white choice: connection to the cellular network or connection to the local network.
That's the end of the experiment. I cannot use the EV-DO card as my home network's Internet connection. Even the expensive route of using one card for each computer doesn't work, because I regularly ship files around the network. The agreement does seem to say something like one computer at a time. Why would Verizon do this?
Verizon has "broadband" coverage in my area that no one else offers. It is priced well above much faster cable services that don't care how many computers are connected to the network. Why does Verizon insist on controlling how I use the card?
________________________________________
A few years ago, it looked as if all the advantages in the competition for wireless Internet access belonged to the cellular networks. They could incrementally upgrade their networks and their services, from basic phone service to data-based services to multimedia. They had great connections to the backbone network. Their already-in-place systems could even support mobile connections. And they had the accounting systems to make billing simple for the customer.
Contrast that position with the state of Wi-Fi. Coverage was sparse and mobile connections weren't even dreamed about. Companies were searching for a business model that would make Wi-Fi services worth offering at all--forget universal coverage or mobile access.
The battle for wireless broadband access looked like a lopsided match between cellular networks, with a host of advantages, and Wi-Fi networks, still searching for a business model.
The Answer
My experiment with Verizon's EV-DO slapped me in the face with the answer to who will win: cellular or 802? Successful companies develop a culture that suits the competitive situation. For example, Intel's culture of intense focus on next-generation microprocessor design and on leading-edge semiconductor processes led it to the top of the highly competitive microprocessor market. Cellular carriers have cultures expressing three primary "genes" in the DNA of telephone companies: a build-out mentality, vertical integration and complicated pricing. The build-out mentality comes from the legacy of the government's treatment of the electromagnetic spectrum as physical property, encouraging carriers to build out networks to the extent of their spectrum ownership. Telephone companies are vertically integrated in providing the network infrastructure, the services and the customers' devices. Finally, complicated pricing helps to obscure profits in a highly regulated business that includes price controls.
But the culture that builds momentum for a growing company may paralyze it when things change. Look what happened to phone companies after deregulation. They had cultures suited to regulated-monopoly environments. Similar problems befall government-contracting companies when they move into commercial markets. The "Wild West" nature of IEEE 802 systems is changing the competitive environment for the cellular networks. As my experiment with Verizon's PC card demonstrates, companies that developed in a regulated environment will find it difficult to adapt. I concluded that the inertia of the cellular networks' culture will prevent them from exploiting their huge initial advantages; they will lose to the 802 zoo.
Verizon integrates the customer device (the network-access hardware and software), the cellular network and the service. This integration is part of its competitive problem. The market should have competing end-user device hardware and software; it should have competing cellular networks; and it should have competing
|
|
free movie clip
Resource.
free movie clip
Resource. We strive to provide only quality
articles, so if there is a specific topic related to clip
that you would like us to cover, please contact us at
any time.
And again,
thank you to those contributing daily to our free movie clip
website.
Boot Up On Your Wedding Dress, Boot Up On Your Exercises
When looking for the perfect wedding dress, you often will do so at least four to six months before the day itself including the fittings And many horrible things can happen to your body in the intervening period - things like loss of muscle tone, fat accumulation, bloated bodies, flab in abs and other body nightmares And the hustle and bustle of wedding planning, maintaining work performance, practicing being a posh wife and getting in touch with friends and family leaves little room to exer...
How to Find the Perfect Supplier of Jewellery Making Supplies Online
With the growth of the Internet, finding jewellery -making supplies has become a great deal easier, and at the same time a great deal harder. Easier because you have a huge selection of suppliers to ch. . .
Reunion Party Planner Poughkeepsie
Search services by date, price, area, and more.
Bridesmaid Dresses: Tricky Questions, Clear Answers
Among the many members of the wedding party, you will often rely on the support of the female side to handle the glitches and concerns of wedding planning Yes, you can always tap on the male sides resources but that side is often clueless on wedding niceties and subtleties So, what is a girl to do when asked these trick questions about bridesmaid dresses but look for female inspiration. . .
Event Planner Hawthorne Reunion
Search services by date, price, area, and more.
|
