Will wireless internet surpass DSL/Cable?

[steelodon]

I'm posting this because I feel that some cities are progressing more than others. Where I live Centurylink is taking their time upgrading the bandwidth for DSL in our area. They even have a TV service similar to AT&T U-Verse that has not been deployed yet. Currently, for the price COX would be a better choice as high-speed internet goes. However, I feel that COX is also being lazy because Centurylink is not giving them a run for their money. Now comes the question for 4G internet. T-Mobile is promising 42Mbps be year's end/ AT&T and Verizon are updating their networks as well. Any comments?

 

[airdata]

I'm a bit skeptical about wireless as a primary internet connection. I had a company offering great pricing for Wimax but we were on the outside of their range and it was for my office, so it just wasn't worth the risk.

When data is flying through the air, I just think there's alot more room for error and dropped packets.

More places are rolling out fiber though, which is great.

 

[Stan]

Nope. Wireless will always have less capacity [in relation to cabled/fiber connections] and suffer from interference. Cable/dsl/fiber are much simpler technologies, and much cheaper to maintain.

 

[Murloc]

fiber is developing, if it's not because of monopolies in your zone, it's a political problem.
But if the market is free, cable connections will have more capacity and always be more stable.
Even if you have 42mbps with your cellphone when you enter a frigging building it won't be working anymore, or there will be some zones with bad signal.

 

[Lemon law]

Wireless can be very fast and error free, the problem is its usually capped at 5-10 GB a month, so what good is the speed if you can use a month quota of data in a day.

 

[Modelworks]

Not likely. In highly populated areas it would require an access point every 50ft for the same kind of speed you get from wired.

 

[wirednuts]

the security needed on wireless is what kills it as an optimal connection. when its hardwired, you can usually assume that the computer you are talking to is the one you are supposed to be, and you dont have to verify that every moment of the connection.

 

[PsiStar]

Ethernet cables do radiate. Wrapping another cable around or just laying a cable next to an Ethernet cable can pick up enough energy to know what is going on. Obviously anything that the "spooks" deal with is much better shielded than what the pedestrian uses ... but isolation is never "0".

Encryption techniques as 10^27 Bose-Chauduri codes are very secure and have been in use for RF for decades. These codes give no indication of being close to decryption even if on the adjacent code. These are used to not just encrypt, but to flatten the RF spectrum transmitted and provide error correction.

2.5 GHz used to be "microwave". As in point to point links between microwave towers for repeating a few hundred communications channels at a time. These were reallocated ... 30-ish years ago? The point of this is that as higher frequencies become more available for pedestrian uses, greater bandwidth per channel can be used. Yes, there are all kinds of propagation issues such as thru walls or even thru fog. But like cell phone towers, it is all about precisely controlling the RF energy.

Therefore, I say that with necessity being the mother of invention, it is only a question of the necessity to have an RF system that could easily out surpass any copper ... or (the wild guess) ... fiber optics.

 

[Nir0]

It really depends on where you live, what's available, and what you want to do. For home service? My area has channel bonding on Docsis downstream (upstream coming soon)....top tier is available at 100Mbps with 200Mbps build out this year. This is all cable system ofcourse but we also get wifi for free (3.3Mbps down) which is deployed throughout the Cable system area. Good enough for me.....

 

[ShawnD1]

Eventually wireless will be the standard. Even right now, wireless speeds far exceed what we can buy from our ISPs. Wireless N is about 100mbit/s, but my internet connection is only something like 6mbit/s. If my internet connection suddenly changed from DSL to wireless N, I wouldn't be even be able to tell the difference.

The advantage is that wireless would potentially be a lot cheaper to upgrade in terms of standards or added nodes. When you get a new wireless laptop, you turn the thing on and the signal is up right away. With a wired connection, you need to start running cables and put a splitter here then put install a conduit in this wall, then make sure the cable is the right length, and it's a huge pain in the ass. Once a wireless network already exists, you can add as many clients as you want and there's no installation cost.


Local area networks will probably never switch over to wireless. When you're talking about a 30 foot cable run increasing the network's speed by a factor of 10, it would be silly not to use a wired connection as the main type of connection.

edit
I never said wireless will be faster. I just said it's more practical.

 

[lord_emperor]

I don't know about DSL but cable networks are very expensive and labour intensive to deploy and maintain.

if wireless could ever be brought up to the same level of reliability I think it will easily supply and cable and DSL.

 

[Railgun]

2.5 GHz used to be "microwave". As in point to point links between microwave towers for repeating a few hundred communications channels at a time. These were reallocated ... 30-ish years ago? The point of this is that as higher frequencies become more available for pedestrian uses, greater bandwidth per channel can be used. Yes, there are all kinds of propagation issues such as thru walls or even thru fog. But like cell phone towers, it is all about precisely controlling the RF energy.

Therefore, I say that with necessity being the mother of invention, it is only a question of the necessity to have an RF system that could easily out surpass any copper ... or (the wild guess) ... fiber optics.

Though I don't know the exact tech, but Sprint had a similar system about 10 years ago in Chicago and other areas. The biggest issue other than what you mentioned in regards to environmental issues was over subscription.

I think this will be the limitation for future wireless tech unless you build your nodes to nearly oversaturate your coverage area. Of course, the same can be said for wired services now, but that's the nature of the beast.

Now, as mentioned, we're starting 100Mb services now both wired and potentially with 4G (of which the spec can supposedly hit 1Gb/s).

But I have to question all of it. If we know that wired providers technically can't handle a lot of the traffic (hence why many may not get advertised speeds all the time during "peak periods" and why upload BW still sucks) I can't see how wireless providers will not run into the same issue. As we all know, cell service today is spotty in many areas (in particular, larger cities).

This is all in relation to consumer services, not professional.

I think they will equal each other over time, but it's going to take time to get there as it's going to cost these companies a ton to get their networks up to snuff.

 

[eUK-host]

Well, a fact that we all are aware of that, a DSL type internet connection usually transmits data using an existing phone line cables, whereas, wireless Internet connection transmits data using the radio frequencies. Though the wireless internet connection speed is more than dsl, however it depends on the distance of the source from where the data is send and received. As said by "Airdata", When data fly, there are possibilities of more errors and dropped packets. So, for me DSL internet connection will be at the first place.

 

[mammador]

The US really needs a wireless solution, across the board. I hear (I'm not American) that there are people in remote places like the Plains and Utah for instance still using dial-up! In this era, nobody really should be using dial-up, for one you wouldn't get a full Web experience with over 56K.

Maybe if a company where clever enough to market it, 4G smartphones/tablets could sweep up those without a wired internet connection.

 

[Arsynic]

Although 4G has improved latency over 3G, wireless in general is too volatile and will always be behind wired in speed and reliability. However, with 4th and 5th generation cellular, we will see broader adoption of alternative broadband choices and thus the price of wired connections will drop.

 

[wuliheron]

I'm posting this because I feel that some cities are progressing more than others. Where I live Centurylink is taking their time upgrading the bandwidth for DSL in our area. They even have a TV service similar to AT&T U-Verse that has not been deployed yet. Currently, for the price COX would be a better choice as high-speed internet goes. However, I feel that COX is also being lazy because Centurylink is not giving them a run for their money. Now comes the question for 4G internet. T-Mobile is promising 42Mbps be year's end/ AT&T and Verizon are updating their networks as well. Any comments?

We're still in the very beginning of the digital telecommunications revolution and you can expect it to remain an inconsistent mess for quite a bit longer until the technology matures. You might say we're all using messengers, pneumatic tubes, and telegraphs while waiting for the telephone and serious multiplexing to be invented.

When congress first sold the new digital TV bandwidth there was a bid on the table for creating a free broadband internet service that would pay for itself with advertising. Of course, that never made it off the drawing board. It may take another technological revolution like the invention of the telephone to force serious reform in the industry and, then, we might be stuck with another Ma Bell for a while as we completely rebuild the infrastructure.

 

[Ninjahedge]

There is one big thing to take into consideration.

Air can only transfer so much information. There are only so many frequencies that will offer the bandwidth needed to transfer the information. Air is not perfect. Different conditions could shift the signal a bit causing interference with other signals if they are placed too close together (frequency wise).

Light, OTOH, has a much higher range of frequencies and can therefore transfer much more information.

The final thing to remember is simple. You run out of bandwidth, you can always install another trunk line (fiber or copper). You can't install more Air.

 

[repoman0]

There is one big thing to take into consideration.

Air can only transfer so much information. There are only so many frequencies that will offer the bandwidth needed to transfer the information. Air is not perfect. Different conditions could shift the signal a bit causing interference with other signals if they are placed too close together (frequency wise).

Light, OTOH, has a much higher range of frequencies and can therefore transfer much more information.

The final thing to remember is simple. You run out of bandwidth, you can always install another trunk line (fiber or copper). You can't install more Air.

This is a good point. I went to try to prove you wrong - saying the bandwidth of what is considered radio waves is close to 300GHz, with the useful range for longer distance propagation being a smaller range in between. but doing the calculation, the bandwidth for visible light is about 320THz larger by more than a factor of 1000. Even if optical fiber doesn't utilize that now, there's always the potential that it could.

Ever been in a very crowded place and try to get on a cell phone network, where you'd otherwise have a very good signal?

 

[wirednuts]

lightwaves and radiowaves are the same thing i know i know, im just bein a douche

 

[ViRGE]

There is one big thing to take into consideration.

Air can only transfer so much information. There are only so many frequencies that will offer the bandwidth needed to transfer the information. Air is not perfect. Different conditions could shift the signal a bit causing interference with other signals if they are placed too close together (frequency wise).

Light, OTOH, has a much higher range of frequencies and can therefore transfer much more information.

The final thing to remember is simple. You run out of bandwidth, you can always install another trunk line (fiber or copper). You can't install more Air.

Ultimately it's a matter of channel capacity. The amount of information a channel can carry is a product of the width of a channel and the amount of noise along that channel. Compared to copper networks, wireless networks will always have more noise; MIMO improves the situation some, but shielding will always win out. As for channel width, there is a (practically) finite range of frequencies that can be used. Interestingly wireless does better here - 700MHz to 2.5GHz is currently practical here, versus ~0 to 1GHz on a good cable plant - but as someone already noted you can run copper cables in parallel. For this reason copper should always offer more available bandwidth than wireless, so long as each eventually approaches their channel capacity at a similar rate.

This of course doesn't take in to account fiber optics. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the channel capacity of fiber.

Now the one wildcard is whether there's such thing as "enough" bandwidth. For the last 50 years this hasn't been the case. If there is a bandwidth value that would be enough for the vast majority of things people want to do, and if wireless can reliably deliver that kind of bandwidth, then there would be little practical reason to maintain a copper/fiber network. This is the only case where wireless internet would surpass cable for the general population.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Example of increase in BW capabilities:

DVD vs Blu-Ray.

Although not a perfect comparison, Blu does use a shorter wavelength, allowing smaller data nodes on the recording media and thus increasing the data density.

Something similar for transmission signals, but moe along how many times you can (I think) blip it on and off in a second? Or does digital work more on changing the wavelength slightly but using a digital transmission language.... ?

Think of this though, we are only talking visible light here. With improvements in fiber optics, higher frequency light can be used (UV? Gamma rays?). Also, there is no, shoot, I just had the term, lag time? In the response (magnetic lag? Ah, Impedence!) with fiber opticsthat I know about, so it has that advantage over electricity as well.

The only advantage that wireless has, aside from mobility, is the lack of need of solid infrastructure. In places like cities it should be theoretically possible to service enough people with wireless within one transmission circle to make it cost less than wiring up those same people.

The same goes for cell phones.

It just gets impractical when your range is 50 miles for a tower and you only have 100 people living in that radius (Nevada?) OR you are SO concentrated you get crossover/echos/reflections (NYC, Midtown).

A better question for this would not be wireless replacing wired, but internet replacing phone and television.......

 

[RdBiker]

It would seem that fibre is more potent than any wireless technology (at the moment) but you never know what breakthroughs are made in technology. But in the short-term I would bet my money on fibre.

I don't know when (and if) we'll reach a point where a certain transfer speed is enough for everyone but I think we're at a point where already some people don't need more than what they get right now (2-5MB/s wireless for paying the bills, etc.). However I "never say never" (somebody need more than 640K of memory?) so perhaps in twenty years we need more bandwidth than that to pay online for that new 3D-printer we just ordered...

 

[Ninjahedge]

Not to pay online, but to use it.

What haooens when virtual reality becomes a more complete sensory input? What happens when more data than 2D sight and sound are being transmitted?

Go completely sci-fi. What happens in the era of Lawnmower Man Vs Tron in the land of the Matrix?

I think that we will find ways to fill the bandwidth no matter what. Think about it, why compress a signal when you have plenty of BW to be able to transmit w/o the additional computational/compression lag or loss?

M$ is also a good example in the realm of HD space and memory. When you are not worried about fitting everything into that first 640K, you tend to get a little sloppy in your electronic housekeeping. The same will (and is) happening with internet service/infrastructure....

 

[mammador]

I think in theory it could work, that is having wireless over wired connections. If ISPs had neighbourhood access points, which people could log on to once subscribing, I don't see how this is not feasible. The trick would be to make wireless more stable, at least stable enough for wireless to be more than just a WLAN (maybe WWAN?) basis.

 

[curlysir]

The US really needs a wireless solution, across the board. I hear (I'm not American) that there are people in remote places like the Plains and Utah for instance still using dial-up! In this era, nobody really should be using dial-up, for one you wouldn't get a full Web experience with over 56K.

Maybe if a company where clever enough to market it, 4G smartphones/tablets could sweep up those without a wired internet connection.

Not just the Plains or Utah. I live 75 miles from Dallas Texas and dial-up and satellite or my only options. I would love to have a good wireless solution. Cell phone coverage is marginal right now and not good enough for internet service.