I note that Agere was hyped in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. 2-10 miles seems to be the claim, while the following article from the Agere website indicates that at 7 miles across the ocean, line of sight was required, as an island shut ship to shore down.
datacomm.uconn.edu
The latest Gilder GTR report spoke of new antennas providing for Non Line Of Sight wireless, technology from Soma Networks(private- but added) designed for it, and some history concerning previous semiconductor market meltdowns and one Andy Kessler, author of this Article from Monday's Wall Street Journal.
interactive.wsj.com
If you can get it, it paints a picture of possible death to 3G providers at the hands of 802.11b(WI-FI). With these long range antennas from Agere spreading fast in certain cities around the world...WI FI can allow free internet access to anyone near a node. Power to the people? Very interesting last mile developments, IMO, at any rate.
Seems it was way back in '96 or '97 in an early GTR, where Mr. Gilder painted a picture of cheap chips enabling cheap radios, placed all over town, creating a widespread wirelessly connected world. A futurists dream. But between the latest GTR, this article from Mr. Kessler, and the expected failure of other means to deliver decent broadband anytime soon, there appears to be a possible near term leap exactly in that direction, bubbling up right under our noses. Beats me! It could be real, just could be.
Freedom Works,
Dan B |
