Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi • Hacker News Board

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#21

Post by Aloha » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #8

dangerpowpow wrote: post #2

why is spectrum so expensive? only Goliath size corps can afford it.

Most of the usable spectrum is being wasted on stupid junk like navigation, military and police who are using ancient, inefficient technologies. The bandwidth-specific value we're getting from the ISM bands dwarf nearly all other uses. There would suddenly appear to be huge amounts of available spectrum if the authorities would just yank bands from the most useless legacy allocations and auction them off.

While some of the spectrum held by the military would be useful, most of it wouldn't be, same goes for whats currently used for police too. The issue with lower frequency spectrum (say, sub 550 mhz) is it starts to interact with the atmosphere and can result in some off propagation patterns (like tropospheric ducting).

I also suspect that the users of that spectrum (save for the military which has a huge amount of lightly used spectrum) might disagree with you as to how useless their technology is, I mean would you take the spectrum currently held for ham radio operators and sell it off?

Navigation (GPS) is pretty spectrum efficient, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at there.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#22

Post by nerevarthelame » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #5

Sitting at about 0 worries. The second Verizon (or any other company's) new wireless tech started to mess with WiFi in practice (as in, at the consumer level), and was clearly attributable, they would instantly be hit with a giant tidal wave of bad PR. Wifi works. People will not be very happy if you single-handedly break all their wifi-enabled things.

And what if it's not really clearly attributable? Imagine if there are only problems in areas with particularly high densities of LTE-U users. And even then, the problems could be sporadic, resulting in occasional wifi disconnects, or generally slower speeds. Wifi service wouldn't be "single-handedly broken," but service quality would definitely be degraded. And consumers won't be able to explain or prove why it's happening, so they aren't likely to get out their torches and pitchforks.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#23

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:29 PM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #5

Sitting at about 0 worries. The second Verizon (or any other company's) new wireless tech started to mess with WiFi in practice (as in, at the consumer level), and was clearly attributable, they would instantly be hit with a giant tidal wave of bad PR. Wifi works. People will not be very happy if you single-handedly break all their wifi-enabled things.

> Wifi works. People will not be very happy if you single-handedly break all their wifi-enabled things.

If you gradually deploy your non-solution while upselling them the cool new product, they won't even notice until it's too late.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#24

Post by spydum » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:29 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #18

rupellohn wrote: post #6

Here is the actual study - it is an interesting read: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001078145 In a nutshell; the LTE transmission cycles on and off on a regular cadence without sensing if the channel is clear. This tramples over the 802.11 frames and results in higher utilization of the medium than that which is claimed by Qualcomm

Your link doesn't work by the way.

works fine here?

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#25

Post by sitharus » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

dangerpowpow wrote: post #2

why is spectrum so expensive? only Goliath size corps can afford it.

Because physics doesn't like startups I guess... Or to phase that another way: There is a lot of spectrum. But very little spectrum that is suitable for mobile phone usage. When a resource is finite and valuable, it gets expensive. If you want a "real" solution that would allow startups to play in the ballpit? Pass new national laws which split the cellular companies into two organisations, one that offers consumer s…

One infrastructure company wouldn't work so well. You'd need at least two, preferably 3, with the ability for the resellers to quickly and easily switch.

Here in New Zealand we have three providers, but we have national number portability. This means I can switch networks with no fees (unless I have a contract with a termination clause) and no number downtime. It helps competition a lot.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#26

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #16

hardwaresofton wrote: post #5

Sitting at about 0 worries. The second Verizon (or any other company's) new wireless tech started to mess with WiFi in practice (as in, at the consumer level), and was clearly attributable, they would instantly be hit with a giant tidal wave of bad PR. Wifi works. People will not be very happy if you single-handedly break all their wifi-enabled things.

You're assuming people understand there's a limited amount of bandwidth available in a given amount of wireless spectrum.

[deleted]

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#27

Post by sithadmin » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

gst wrote: post #20

mikecb wrote: post #13

That comcast is part of this coalition is hilarious. My apartment building is flooded by xfinitywifi beacons, in addition to each subscribers private SSIDs. Why they insist on turning on this functionality even in urban environments boggles the mind.

I would assume that the bandwidth used by those beacons is pretty small and negligible when compared to the total available bandwidth.

It just adds to the 2.4gHz channel congestion hell. Pretty much everywhere I've lived in the past 3 years, 2.4gHz has been nearly unusable.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#28

Post by thrownaway2424 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #21

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the usable spectrum is being wasted on stupid junk like navigation, military and police who are using ancient, inefficient technologies. The bandwidth-specific value we're getting from the ISM bands dwarf nearly all other uses. There would suddenly appear to be huge amounts of available spectrum if the authorities would just yank bands from the most useless legacy allocations and auction them off.

While some of the spectrum held by the military would be useful, most of it wouldn't be, same goes for whats currently used for police too. The issue with lower frequency spectrum (say, sub 550 mhz) is it starts to interact with the atmosphere and can result in some off propagation patterns (like tropospheric ducting). I also suspect that the users of that spectrum (save for the military which has a huge amount of li…

I wasn't referring to GPS, but to things like 4.3GHz +/- 100MHz for radio altimetry.

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#29

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

dangerpowpow wrote: post #2

why is spectrum so expensive? only Goliath size corps can afford it.

Because physics doesn't like startups I guess... Or to phase that another way: There is a lot of spectrum. But very little spectrum that is suitable for mobile phone usage. When a resource is finite and valuable, it gets expensive. If you want a "real" solution that would allow startups to play in the ballpit? Pass new national laws which split the cellular companies into two organisations, one that offers consumer s…

[deleted]

Re: Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

#30

Post by gst » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #14

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because physics doesn't like startups I guess... Or to phase that another way: There is a lot of spectrum. But very little spectrum that is suitable for mobile phone usage. When a resource is finite and valuable, it gets expensive. If you want a "real" solution that would allow startups to play in the ballpit? Pass new national laws which split the cellular companies into two organisations, one that offers consumer s…

So there is a lot of theoretical economic work on how to allocate limited rival resources like spectrum (and water). The consensus is that the efficient way to do it is auctions. I have quibbles with certain assumptions in that research,[1] but for stuff like cellular spectrum (where the owner can achieve extremely high utilization), auctioning to private companies is probably quite close to efficient. It would be mo…

An alternative would be to split wireless companies into 1) infrastructure companies and 2) companies that sell actual products to end users. The infrastructure companies would be allowed to bid on limited shared resources (= the spectrum), but a requirement for this would be that they would need to provide fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to the resources to other companies.

This is similar to the approach that some countries used when privatizing railroad companies: Instead of creating a new private company that's effectively a monopoly, they created one company that provides the infrastructure and another company that runs the trains. This allowed new private companies to enter the market, as they were allowed to use the resources under the same conditions as the former monopoly.