the future of wireless

Home: www.packetnexus.com

thought everyone might be interested in some food for thought [1] from
the former cto of british telecom on why broadband access is in such a
sorry state and a prediction on how we might move towards a shiny, happy
future:

"So how are we going to advance? I think we have been here before. Back
in the 1940s USA TV companies couldn't find an economic means of
providing signals to outlying communities. So people clubbed together to
build towers and antenna systems, and wired their houses to realize
Community Antenna TV. This was so successful that the expanded systems
became the Cable systems of today.

In a similar manner, youngsters now frustrated by the lack of bandwidth
are linking homes with CAT5 LAN wiring strewn across gardens. Schools
are buying 802.11 wireless-LAN cards to create their own networks at a
much lower cost than building wiring schemes. There is a message here
for the network companies, and a huge opportunity. If they don't provide
the bandwidth demanded by rapidly advancing terminal technologies,
people will just set to and provide their own. Hotels, schools, coffee
shops and places of work are starting to look like the phone boxes of
the 21st Century. People are gathering there to satisfy their craving
for wide-bandwidth, which isn't a 56Kbit/s or 2Mbit/s dribble, but
orders of magnitude more."


[1]
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200112/msg0035
5.html

- http://snowdeal.org [mutated daily]


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