A Wireless Decoder for Wired People
by Leslie Ellis // July 28, 2008
By now it's clear that the Next Big Thing is getting your high-speed connection wherever you are -- even if you're outdoors; even if you're in a moving vehicle; even if you're an ocean away.
The jargon of wireless technology is thick. WiFi, WiMAX. 3GPP, LTE, GSM. Keeping it all straight, while keeping everything else straight, takes concentrated effort.
For that reason, this weeks translation seeks to serve as a tip sheet for we, the "wi-curious" -- raised wired, open to alternatives.
Before we go in, remind yourself: Behind this clutter of acronyms are radios. It's all about what protocols they speak, over what stripes of spectrum, using how much power, and how honkin' a processor.
At an industrial level, wireless technologies identify like this: Who's using it, with what spectrum. Will it work overseas. How fast can it send and receive data. How soon will gear be ready, relative to competing options. How small is it.
Because it is the intended direction of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, per their deal with Clearwire and Sprint, lets start with WiMAX. As a tech spec, its name is IEEE 802.16e. For cable, it'll move across the 2.5 GHz spectrum. International adoption is not yet a strong suit, beyond Korea and Pakistan.
Speed-wise, LTE runs in the 1.5-5 Mbps range, to the handheld, and around 1 Mbps out from the handheld. Gear can be gotten, "but at a rather glacial pace," grumbled one observer.
Stripped way down, WiMAX is WiFi at vehicular speed, with quality of service (QoS) support, meaning, more possible services.
WiMAX is up against global steamroller "LTE," for "Long Term Evolution." LTE is the brainchild of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular community -- which, it bears noting, enjoys an 85% worldwide market share. In that sense, wireless broadband is to cellular what telco landlines were to cable: A sexy new cash spigot.
In the U.S., T-Mobile plans to go LTE. So does Verizon. AT&T says LTE. In Europe, pretty much everybody is LTE. The two primary groups driving it are 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project (www.3gpp.org) and GSM (Global System for Mobile, www.gsmworld.com).
Speedwise, LTE peaks at 100 Mbps toward devices sharing a 20 MHz swath of spectrum. Almost all major cellular gear manufacturers are roadmapping products for LTE.
But LTE is to its professed implementers what DOCSIS 3.0 is to cable: A hardened spec, in the hands of the vendor community, waiting to become product. Trials this year, gear next year.
What about an uber-phone, with as many radios and protocols as necessary to work everywhere? I tried this out on a wireless aficionado pal. Her response: Yeah. And the battery will last like 10 minutes.
This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News. |
