201–210 of 299 posts
"I love those who yearn for the impossible." -Goethe I wish other large companies showed such ambition. Telecoms like AT&T can't even be bothered to roll out the network upgrades they promised in the early 2000's.
Minor nitpick: AT&T has done a shit-ton of research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs edit: apparently a different beast than today's AT&T
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Whoa?! Care to elaborate on that or at least point to a relevant link? You really made me curious...
He's slightly exaggerating, IIRC, but it's conceptually correct. Regarding the share structure, Google has two classes of shares, or maybe three by now. Class C shares don't get to vote, and I can't remember if they exist yet (IIRC they were voted into existence a year ago, but only pending various hurdles that I think might not have yet been cleared). Class B shares are worth 10x as much as Class A shares, for votin…
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Wireless is a hack, it will never replace wired. Sure, in Africa they get online with mobile phones, but that's only because it's not profitable _yet_ to run landlines. Even 56K would be better than mobile, but since it's Africa they don't even have that. Give it a few more decades and they'll be wired just like everyone else.
Particularly over long, sparse networks, wired connectivity is not as cost effective as wireless connectivity, even including the cost of pole assets and antenna mounts. And data rates of > 1 Gigabit for wireless connections are readily achievable these days. [1] [1] http://www.bridgewave.com/solutions/whitepapers.cfm
People say infrastructure is too expensive to build, it's not. When you have a discerning customer base with the purchasing power to demand it, infrastructure is the only way to serve it. Wireless cannot support that. As soon as the developing world stops being developing, in will come the telcos to build real kit.
Very well in line with their mission statement. I love it because it's so much "ah screw it we'll just try this crazy sounding idea"
[I wrote a paper during my university time that was a thought experiment on the availability of cheap internet for everyone...time to dig it up :D]
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Wireless is a hack, it will never replace wired. Sure, in Africa they get online with mobile phones, but that's only because it's not profitable _yet_ to run landlines. Even 56K would be better than mobile, but since it's Africa they don't even have that. Give it a few more decades and they'll be wired just like everyone else.
> Wireless is a hack It's been years since I've had a landline phone. I'm sure I'll eventually drop my landline high speed internet connection too.
In the developing world, cell towers connect to other cell towers wirelessly. That's a hack. It's the reason why hotel Internet blows. Not its proper use case, engineering-wise. Service sucks but the customer base isn't discerning enough to notice and wouldn't be able to afford better.
We have Clear Internet service in Atlanta. We had it for awhile, but crappy reception due to trees even though we were well covered by three towers made us go back to cable. Dialup would have been better. I had another friend within eyesight of a tower, he dropped it too because service got so crowded and bad that he couldn't stand it.
Current wireless technology could never replace wired and deliver the same quality of service that wires do. For proof, head down to your local Starbucks and try to get work done. I've not seen one yet where the connection didn't cut out at least once an hour. Radios degrade over time, copper doesn't.
I don't see the percentage for developed countries - seems maladaptive.
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It's not like in mid-90's the Internet started getting big and the telecoms started running wires because it was the best option. They based the new network offerings on the infrastructure that had been in place for decades. Developing areas don't have that existing infrastructure. Perhaps setting up a wired infrastructure will make the most financial sense. However, I don't think that's a foregone conclusion, and a…
I think the key is that wired networks were ideal in the situation where customers would pay off the investment. Wireless is way cheaper - one station could be 20+ people and take far less investment upfront.
It's not cheaper if you have to build that trunk line, and the latency and equipment start getting costly when you're looking at going tower-to-tower over a long distance, since with a single fiber you can run over 100km before you need another relay (and carry a lot more data).
Where this initiative by Google works is getting the rest of the world onto the internet somehow, and profiting off being the base-level service provider. Which would be quite a thing - a world where everyone could send some packet data at any time, would be very different to today where even leaving my house raises serious questions about how online I maybe over the next 48 hours.