Let's go back to the beginning of these projects. Data speeds were an eye popping 9.6 Kbps. The Internet wasn't a twinkle in $ill Gates eye. Mosaic, which is the basis for your web browser, was still the play toy of pizza eating grad students at U of Illinios-Urbana Supercomputing center. In just a relative short period of time the whole world went upside down. Iridium was a voice based concept. It's per minute charge was to be half of the cost of Inmarisat cost and equipment was to be portable as a mobile phone. Data was limited to what was the dream of the time. Today? Inmarisat terminals are competitive in mobility and price with an added feature of doing 64 Kbps of data. Why would you want a phone that can only do limited data and voice? Then you complicate matters with the fact that terrestrial systems did a rapid deployment on a global basis.
Irony is that the data LEO deathstar systems of Teledesic and Skybridge may fall on a similar basis, albeit they are data networks. However you have terrestrial systems that will be deployed that may render their present business models useless by the time they are deployed.
Cost? How much is that 384 Kbps going to cost? How soon will you see that in Jackson Hole? There are still plenty of communities in the US that do not have digital services via cellular or PCS. They are still bandwidth hog analog. Sprint sez for now that 14.4 is going to cost up front $9.99/per month. How much per minute? Same as a voice call? If so,are they offering a specified number of free minutes? Or are they going to charge by the download bit?
Now this issue about 3G. What's the difference between Europe and the US? Europe is allocating more spectrum, primarily, 2-15 MHz channels to accomplish 3G. The US? What is their plan? Considering the amount of money the FCC raised in auctioning the original spectrum, how are they going to accomodate license holders of 30 MHz and 10 Mhz B/W with more spectrum to handle 384 Kbps? 384 Kbps is roughly 30 voice channels at 13 Kbps. Where is the available spectrum to offer them that is adjacent the present allocation? You start talking about video on demand or even streaming and that starts to chew up bandwidth in a big hurry. So as to the cost, that a real good question and one that I've not seen answered. What will be the demands of the consumer in just another brief period of time? The questions right now are far more than the answers, if that possible to know the questions and answers when talking computing demands and needs, for they generally haven't a clue or are real general and evasive.
Lastily, your first questions, QCOM IPR is based on a channel that is 1.25 MHz Bandwidth. You can combine these channels in a system, but that seems to be an additional expense. The vaporware system of Ericson was based on a 5 MHz channel. QCOM's system has a limitation, but then so does everyone else's in relative terms.
About a year ago, I had an unexpected phone call that revolved around a project that was done with an IT department as the team lead. The phone call was from corporate legal and had a threat of breach of contract.
Briefly, it was about the fact that in less than 4 years, the system deployed was not sufficent for the needs 4 years later. I was the fall guy, or so that was the thinking. I offer up e-mails that clearly stated my view originally and subsequent, with acknowledgements and comments. My view was fiber and second choice was wideband Microwave. The IT department was narrowband micro-wave. Needless to say we went around and around and the IT department won.
After laughing at this lawyer, I offered copies of the numerous E-mails that clearly stated my views and objections. The biggest objections was non-scalability of the IT departments choice. Never heard back from them, but have heard that the original system had to be replaced with the wideband system.
If you can get the computing world to tell you what their needs in bandwidth will be 2 years from now, 5 years from now and 10 years from now, you will be doing good. Now as to their veracity of those needs, well that is probably another story. |
