11–20 of 124 posts
How can internet connectivity be free? Doesn’t someone need to pay for a connection?
To answer my own question, as per the FAQ: Volk Fi counts data usage and bytes shared via WiFi. Every user gets the amount they share, unlimited. If a Volk user consumes more data than they share in a month, there is a 5GB data cap. After that, the user can pay the super cheap price of $1/GB for additional data.
>Volk One devices can connect to each other, from several miles away. Assuming that a voice call requires 8kbit/s of bandwidth, and assuming that you have about a watt of power, how feasible is it to connect through a phone that is a mile away? Serious question - I don't know how to do the math here.
(In general, radio engineering is taught at college-level and requires some basic math/physica if you are going with “rules of thumb” and fairly advanced math if you want to understand/derive exact equations).
I would bet almost any amount of money this isn’t going to work. In any mesh network, the overhead of coordinating nodes dominates network traffic. This is before you even begin to think about the terms of service violations for all of these WiFi access points.
And assuming this could magically work, do you need to build an entire new phone? Or can it just be a software problem? That way you could defer to cellular network in cases where this would inevitably fail.
>Volk One devices can connect to each other, from several miles away. Assuming that a voice call requires 8kbit/s of bandwidth, and assuming that you have about a watt of power, how feasible is it to connect through a phone that is a mile away? Serious question - I don't know how to do the math here.
Generally speaking, line-of-sight is almost always what limits point-to-point comm range for handhelds, rather than raw power. On higher frequencies, even vegetation can be a big deal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To answer my own question, as per the FAQ: Volk Fi counts data usage and bytes shared via WiFi. Every user gets the amount they share, unlimited. If a Volk user consumes more data than they share in a month, there is a 5GB data cap. After that, the user can pay the super cheap price of $1/GB for additional data.
I would love for this to be just an app on a standard Android device.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To answer my own question, as per the FAQ: Volk Fi counts data usage and bytes shared via WiFi. Every user gets the amount they share, unlimited. If a Volk user consumes more data than they share in a month, there is a 5GB data cap. After that, the user can pay the super cheap price of $1/GB for additional data.
I would love for this to be just an app on a standard Android device.
But radio technologies are pretty widely understood and while I'm no expert I've not heard of anything that could achieve what they're suggesting. So I'll remain skeptical until I understand better what that "long-range radio hardware" is and how it makes such a mesh network feasible.
I don’t get the invite model. Ask someone already invited to send you an invite? I guess it prevents spam reservations but I don’t have Facebook or twitter, so I guess I’m out of luck.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VolkFi/comments/b1dyqy/lets_just_ge...
"Every Volk phone has a SIM card slot and supports use on traditional LTE networks.
However, a SIM is not necessary and the phone will always prioritize the Volk network first.
The Volk network works as such: every Volk user gets a special router with their phone. The router acts as a wireless Qi charging pad also. The router connects to your existing internet via Ethernet or something similar.
The router is what connects phones to Volk and allows calls, texts, and data to go through.
If a router isn't nearby, the phone will try to find another Volk phone to use as a hop, until it finally reaches a router.
All Volk phones have strong radios and can go more than half a mile if terrain is clear.
If there are no routers or Volk phones nearby to hop to, you'll either not have service, have to use Wifi, or fallback to LTE if you have a SIM card installed and it has active service."
(https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/aq3hul/volk_fi_claim...)
So the backbone of the mesh network is their charging stations / routers, and phones can (?) mesh but not necessarily that far.
What I still don't like about this is that nowhere they talk about the frequencies on which they operate, not even in the "Specs" section of the website. This makes it very hard to verify any range claims they make.