FON Boards

As I have stated before: that is totally wrong. It is not true that only 1% of the spectrum is actually used.

You seem to have no idea how it works. Frequencies for commercial use are auctioned. There is lots of money involved. Millions if not billions. Why would a company invest millions in frequencies that they never intend to use? Even if they wanted they could not. With the assignment comes the condition that it is actually used for the purpose it was assigned. Some Dutch companies had to return frequencies to the pool for failing to build the network within the allotted time frame. Poof goes their investment...

I have a degree in physics and have been a radio amateur for over 40 years. I know what I am talking about.

It is not because of regulation by the FCC, it is because frequencies are never shared by competing telecoms and the transmitters for cell phones are subject to strict discipline and coordination. That is only possible if the frequency assigment is exclusive and all control for that assignment is in one hand.

It would not work because one can never exclusivele assign a set of fee channels to one authority. So the strict discipline required can never be enforced.

Why would the owner of a hotspot reduce power - and lose customers - so that others could attract more customers?

That assumes there is enough room for everyone. As I told you before, that premise is false. Finding a true free channel is as hard as finding a free parking space in the centre of a big city.

Other than that, I think you can simply forget it. There are plenty of competitors having an eye on those frequencies and willing to pay for it. There is no way that a large enough portion to be usable for the purpose - say 50 MHz - in that band is going to be re-assigned to free use.

The same arguement can be applied to any other part of the radio spectrum.

All very noble, but it would not work. Frequency space is a finite and scarce resource and without regulation it will be the law of the jungle.

And some things need to be regulated lest not the strongest take all.

How about cause the regulation would forbid it and anyone hacking routers to emit with more power than regulated would instantly be found out and banned from the network and not even be able to get paid?

It's like, any manufacturer of equipment not obeying the rules of the FCC get banned from selling on the US market.

Then how come we mostly have pretty crappy bandwidth on the 3G networks in most countries when trying to use that technology in densely populated areas?

What's the point of them advertising for 7.2mbit/s download speeds when they mostly cannot even deliver 1mbit/s reliably without constantly disconnecting people?

What is the level of intensity of the spectrum that is established by health organizations is the safe level that one may have at any specific place? How much of that is actually used?

I am not talking about the % of the spectrum that companies have exclusive rights to use. I am speaking about the % of the spectrum that is actually in use at 100% of the capacity that is allowed to be used.



How about the reason being AT&T, Verizon, Deutche Telecom, Vodafone, Orange and a few others have 1€ trillions of revenues per year using their current spectrum monopolies for Mobile phones and their cables for Internet that they own exclusively for ADSL, Cable and Fiber Internet networks.

Let's consider that an Auction might cost them $10 Billion to own the exclusive lease at underterminate length (no specified end to the lease), which means they basically buy that spectrum and own it forever.

If they are making $500 Billion per year selling Voice, SMS and ADSL in their current monopolistic situation, why would they have any incitement to build yet another new network on 700mhz to provide everyone with cheaper and even better bandwidth?



The fact that they provide a little coverage in all the places that they were supposed to, does not mean that every consumer can buy $10 per month access to 10mbit/s wireless broadband with very high monthly bandwidth usage limits and no obligated contracts.

The carriers just provide minimum coverage, they are allowed to advertise it as being 7.2mbit/s or 16mbit/s wireless broadband, while not even providing 1/10th of that bandwidth reliably, there is absolutely no rules setup by the Governments for the quality of that bandwidth, the quality of that coverage.



If unlicensed use works relatively well for wifi, then why not on the 700mhz as well. This is the only suggestion and question I am asking in this thread.

Considering that wifi was implemented by engineers without setting up any basic rules for roaming, for interoperability, for non-interference, for coverage, for bandwidth throttling, for unencrypted HTML-login standards, for billing/pricing of the roaming. All those things do not exist for wifi because the Governments have never regulated wifi, so the only such standard we have is a private initiative like FON which works reasonably well for 1 million Foneros, but still has a very long way to go to reach blanket coverage with wireless broadband for everyone in the world.

Wifi is not regulated at all. I am suggesting that unlicenced wifi-like Internet sharing on 700mhz should be regulated.

The idea is instead of waiting 5 years to get a few new $100'000 high power and high cost base stations owned by private monopolies that only care to make profits (and already are making $1 Trillions per year and have $100 Billion invested in current infrastructure so have no rush to build new cheaper networks), we could get many more $30 routers installed within months emitting much more bandwidth in smaller diameters at much lower power intensities but yet all connected to the same regulatory system on the Internet to coordinate the exact coverage, bandwidth, connections and other details of how people connect to the networks.

The only obvious result from my plan, is the extermination of the Telecom and ISP industry and the new beginning of the free unlimited wireless broadband Internet for all. I say good riddance.

Yes like health care and education and every penny that is raised through bandwidth leasing is a penny the rest of us dont have to pay in direct taxes to support genuinely worthy causes.

The effective power output (as measured from a certain short distance from the antenna) does need to be under 1 watt.

I am not talking about observing the general power limits by the manufacturers - 1 Watt ERP in the US and 100 mW PEP in Europe - I am talking about the user reducing that power by network discipline to much lower levels, down to 100 microWatts to reduce interference. No way that can be enforced in a free for all environment.

"Unlicenced" and "strict regulated discipline"do not go together.

Assigments by auction are not forever. The ususal period is five to ten years.

Sorry, I give up. You do not listen at all too what I say, all you do is to come up with new "factoids" every round. You only demonstrates you have no idea what you you are talking about.

I am telling you that the chance of getting an exclusive assigment of 50 MHz between 500 and 1000 MHz for the FON community is smaller than hell freezing over. I could put up a much better case for assigning it to the HAM community. And I know that has no chance either.

So I leave you to your quest for Nirwana.

Have a nice day.

Why indeed would a hotspot provider increase his amplitude, and create a hotspot that was too far across for mobile units to transmit back? The only thing I can think of, is that he might wish to generate interference for his competitors.

We are talking two different things here. There is indeed not much point in having a hotspot generate significantly more power than what the intended clients can make. Significantly more power than the client will only increase visibility but not increase the range or the quality of the connection.

Cell phone devices however can - and do - vary the power over a wide range, several orders of magnitude, to adapt to the need. They never use more than required under the circumstances. Both to reduce battery drain and allow cells of variable size.

I do not see that happen on a voluntary basis for WiFi. And it can not be enforced in a licence free environment.

Licence free spectrum does not have to be unregulated.

All products sold on any given market with wireless emitters have to be approved by Governmental authorities like the FCC. That would absolutely not change with the unlicenced 700mhz propositions.

I am not the only one asking for this to happen as soon as possible. Google, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Dell, HP, Philips, Earthlink, Samsung and others are all marketing for it:

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/ ... group.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spaces_(radio)

White Spaces unlicenced use of 700mhz is going to be used no matter what the telecom companies think. The question is, how soon will it be implemented and where first. Because it is absolutely sure that some countries will implement licence free 700mhz Broadband Internet usage soon. The USA might be the first to implement it:



http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... onomyId=15



The European Union is considering licence free use of TV Spectrum as well!!! http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/200 ... sition.ars



Martin Varsavsky should join the campaign for it with EU politicians showing some 30€ working prototypes of the Fonera 3.0 routers, basically with built-in 700mhz Fem2cells and software functionality prototypes for unlicensed but not unregulated use of that spectrum. Basically, instead of the 700mhz Fem2cell speaking with the Telecom company's database for spectrum usage (deciding the emitting power intensity, frequency, user authentication and more) it would instead connect to a Governmentally controlled White Spaces database with all the rules of non-interference, the user authentication and more.

Dear Charbax,

as usual I appreciate your optimism and ideas like in the "Cheapest NAS ever (special Fonera 2.0 hard drive enclosure)" thread. What you say is certainly possible and extremely nice. But it's quite disconnected from reality. Currently I can find on Fon's page only 2.0n router for 79 EUR, more that twice 30. And it's based on hardware that exists for years and it probably consists of 95% rebranded hardware anyway (which got cheaper and cheaper with the years). Remember when the dumbest 802.11n router was 150+ EUR? Or when the cheapest PCMCIA 802.11b (yes, b) card was about the same? It'll be the same for any new hardware. And it will cost Fon much more than it could ever afford to develop hardware in a new band.