Mr. Gilder, Sorry to paraphrase your articles and to cut excerpts out,but what do you feel about Cellular Vision and New Media's broadcasting at 54 mbps?
I think we should all take a look at Cellular Vision for a
minute. They may have the ultimate answer for the last mile,especially
in situations where wide bandwidth is not available over fiber. Lockheed
Martin is using microcell technology for cellular over HFC. Lets take it
one step further and use LDMS and microcell technology for both data and
voice over the last 3 miles. CVUS just recieved more bandwidth and area
around New York without having to go to the December Auctions and
through the year 2006. Why not have microcells 3 miles apart,with small
antennas broadcasting wide weak signals at 28 GHZ?
From George Gilder Forbes ASAP.
This rule turns the conventional wisdom of microwaves upside down. For
example, it is true that microwaves don't travel far in the atmosphere.
You don't want to use them to transmit 50,000 watts of Rush Limbaugh
over 10 midwestern states, but to accommodate 200 million two-way
communicators will require small cells; you don't want the waves to
travel far. It is true that microwaves will not penetrate most buildings
and other obstacles, but with lots of small cells, you don't want the
waves to penetrate walls to adjacent offices.
Microwaves require high-power systems to transmit, but only if you want
to send them long distances. Wattage at the receiver drops off in
proportion to the fourth power of the distance from the transmitter.
Reducing cell sizes as you move up the spectrum lowers power needs far
more than higher frequencies increase them. Just as important, mobile
systems must be small and light. The higher the frequency, the smaller
the antenna and the lighter the system can be.
All this high-frequency gear once was prohibitively expensive. Any
functions over two gigahertz require gallium arsenide chips, which are
complex and costly. Yet the cost of gallium arsenide devices is dropping
every day as their market expands. Meanwhile, laboratory teams are now
tweaking microwaves out of silicon. In the world of electronics - where
prices drop by a third with every doubling of accumulated sales - any
ubiquitous product will soon be cheap.
The law of the telecosm dictates that the higher the frequency, the
shorter the wavelength, the wider the bandwidth, the smaller the
antenna, the slimmer the cell and ultimately, the cheaper and better the
communication. The working of this law will render obsolete the entire
idea of scarce spectrum and launch an era of advances in
telecommunications comparable to the recent gains in computing.
Transforming the computer and phone industries, the converging spirits
of Maxwell, Shannon and Shockley even pose a serious challenge to the
current revolutionaries in cellular telephony.
The New PC Revolution: PCN
Many observers herald the huge coming impact of wireless on the computer
industry, and they are right. But this impact will be dwarfed by the
impact of computers on wireless. In personal communications networks
(PCN), the cellular industry today is about to experience its own
personal computer revolution. Just as the personal computer led to
systems thousands of times more efficient in MIPS per dollar than the
mainframes and minicomputers that preceded it, PCNs will bring an
exponential plunge of costs. These networks will be based on microcells
often measured in hundreds of meters rather than in tens of miles and
will interlink smart digital appliances, draining power in milliwatts
rather than dumb phones using watts. When the convulsion ends later this
decade, this new digital cellular phone will stand as the world's most
pervasive PC. As mobile as a watch and as personal as a wallet, these
PICOs will recognize speech, navigate st reets, take notes, keep
schedules, collect mail, manage money, open the door and start the car,
among other computer functions we cannot imagine today.
I believe we will see long distance over fiber with DWDM expanding the
bandwidth,and Sonet rings with optical cross connects for redundancy. As
far as the last mile,why not use microcell technology in either the
Sander's(Lockheed) PCS over HFC,or the CVUS,LMDS carrying voice and
data?
siliconinvestor.com
Hiram |
