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The building block of a new wireless future is the size of a box of Fererro Rocher chocolates.[/caption]
Alcatel-Lucent may have the answer to one of the wireless broadband industry's biggest problems -- their cumbersome, expensive-to-expand, network infrastructure. Over a year ago, the former Bell Labs unveiled a radically new system for broadcasting a wireless network. It's called LightRadio, and it can put much of a giant cell tower in the palm of your hand. It promises to be everything the current wireless networks aren't: Easily scaleable, low on power consumption, and high on performance.
The current wireless infrastructure is so 1990s -- big cell towers, big power consumption, and big capital costs. Wireless providers around the world say they're spending crazy amounts of money annually to expand, and upgrade these networks, in what may be a losing battle to keep up with the insatiable public demand for wireless broadband connectivity. The Canadian telecom carrier Telus, for one, has claimed to have spent $100 billion CDN since 2000 on wireless infrastructure -- analysts like this one, can prove Telus' claim is at least two-thirds hot air, but it's the "party line" wireless carriers all over the world are repeating.
In fact, wireless providers claim datacaps, and other restrictions, like deliberately slowing users' download speeds (bandwidth throttling). aren't greedy, price-gouging tactics, or attempts to punish their heaviest data users, but rather attempts to calm demand on their increasingly overheated networks,
Consumers, however, won't be put off. Broadband was promoted to them in glowing terms of real-time streaming media. They want that. They want to download data, like no one ever imagined -- BitTorrent, Netflix, streaming audio -- and they increasingly want to download it on their phones 24-7. Demand is huge now, and reportedly, projections are for explosive growth in the near future. This page delves into some of those numbers, including a projection by Cisco Systems that wireless communications traffic will increase from 300,000 terabytes in 2010 to over 6,000,000 terabytes by 2015 -- a projected twenty-fold increase in five years! The bottom line seems to be that the current wireless infrastructure won't be able to scale up to that demand.
I'm not going to get any more technical, there are better pages explaining the real technical merits of LightRadio. This one from 2011, and this page, already cited above, and naturally there's always Bell Labs themselves.
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In a nutshell: big, expensive, wasteful, "old school" cell towers replaced by small, efficient, scalable, LightRadio units, mounted on, or in, city utility poles.[/caption]
Obviously the LightRadio system is small. It can provide the complete functionality of a current cellular tower, with a footprint that's one-tenth the size. LightRadio is modular -- designed to easily scale up to meet modern demands. And it uses a fraction of the power that a conventional tower does, in part because its directional beams are focused, whereas a tower broadcasts like a radio station, in all directions -- very wasteful. LightRadio even somehow employs cloud computing to good effect. You might say LightRadio is everything the current wireless broadcasting system isn't.
Many of the pages which detail LightRadio suggest it will result in cost savings for consumers. I prefer to think It might reduce the inevitable price increases some, Certainly it represents a major technical improvement, but I think it's earthshaking in ways only industry will feel -- nothing much will change for us, the end users. When LightRadio, or something like it is adopted, it will be reported in a flurry of media reports, but it's adoption will be largely transparent to consumers. One day someone might happen to look up, and notice the skyline looks oddly less cluttered, without realizing it's because all the cell towers are gone.
So what if all the cellular towers disappear? A lot of that transmitting, and repeating equipment is mounted on top of tall buildings. That surely means a loss of revenue for those buildings. But their loss may be your gain -- if you happen to be a city. LightRadio antenna units are designed to provide as good, if not better, cell coverage, than the towers, much closer to the ground. A city's metal utility poles are perfect roosts for LightRadio. My city of Vancouver seems to have noticed this a year ago, when they got behind Canadian writer, and futurist, Douglas Coupland's idea of V-Poles -- metal utility poles incorporating LED street lighting, Wi-Fi via LightRadio, and charging stations for electric vehicles. The inclusion of LightRadio capability is interesting because the city isn't in the business of providing Wi-Fi, but I'm sure they'd be happy to lease the infrastructure that LightRadio could plug into, to a wireless provider like Telus. Even if a carrier like Telus wanted to put up their own poles -- and BC Hydro own lots of the wooden utility poles that line Vancouver's back alleys -- they would have to pay the municipality for the privilege.
In other wireless news... August saw widespread speculation in the Canadian press that U.S. wireless carrier Verizon would bid in the Canadian government's upcoming auction of prized 700 MHz wireless spectrum.* Canada's two biggest wireless players, Telus, and Bell howled just as loudly as their marketing budgets would allow -- deploying a nation-wide PR campaign against government regulations which they said favoured foreign giants like Verizon, at the expense of locals like themselves -- the breathtaking cheek of the weasels! At the beginning of September, the U.S. wireless carrier Verizon popped it's own balloon -- a company spokesperson confirmed to the CBC that Verizon wasn't planning to enter the Canadian wireless market. Neither, it turned out, were other U.S. carriers, such as Sprint, and T-Mobile interested in Canada, according to this FP item. "Bellus" had dodged the bullet of U.S. competition; they were safe -- their customers, not so much. * The 700 MHz airwaves are highly valued for their ability to penetrate buildings and travel long distances, and are being used in the United States to build high-speed networks.
The building block of a new wireless future is the size of a box of Fererro Rocher chocolates.[/caption]Alcatel-Lucent may have the answer to one of the wireless broadband industry's biggest problems -- their cumbersome, expensive-to-expand, network infrastructure. Over a year ago, the former Bell Labs unveiled a radically new system for broadcasting a wireless network. It's called LightRadio, and it can put much of a giant cell tower in the palm of your hand. It promises to be everything the current wireless networks aren't: Easily scaleable, low on power consumption, and high on performance.
The current wireless infrastructure is so 1990s -- big cell towers, big power consumption, and big capital costs. Wireless providers around the world say they're spending crazy amounts of money annually to expand, and upgrade these networks, in what may be a losing battle to keep up with the insatiable public demand for wireless broadband connectivity. The Canadian telecom carrier Telus, for one, has claimed to have spent $100 billion CDN since 2000 on wireless infrastructure -- analysts like this one, can prove Telus' claim is at least two-thirds hot air, but it's the "party line" wireless carriers all over the world are repeating.
In fact, wireless providers claim datacaps, and other restrictions, like deliberately slowing users' download speeds (bandwidth throttling). aren't greedy, price-gouging tactics, or attempts to punish their heaviest data users, but rather attempts to calm demand on their increasingly overheated networks,
Consumers, however, won't be put off. Broadband was promoted to them in glowing terms of real-time streaming media. They want that. They want to download data, like no one ever imagined -- BitTorrent, Netflix, streaming audio -- and they increasingly want to download it on their phones 24-7. Demand is huge now, and reportedly, projections are for explosive growth in the near future. This page delves into some of those numbers, including a projection by Cisco Systems that wireless communications traffic will increase from 300,000 terabytes in 2010 to over 6,000,000 terabytes by 2015 -- a projected twenty-fold increase in five years! The bottom line seems to be that the current wireless infrastructure won't be able to scale up to that demand.
LightRadio to the rescue
I'm not going to get any more technical, there are better pages explaining the real technical merits of LightRadio. This one from 2011, and this page, already cited above, and naturally there's always Bell Labs themselves.
[caption id="attachment_7029" align="alignnone" width="497"]
In a nutshell: big, expensive, wasteful, "old school" cell towers replaced by small, efficient, scalable, LightRadio units, mounted on, or in, city utility poles.[/caption]Obviously the LightRadio system is small. It can provide the complete functionality of a current cellular tower, with a footprint that's one-tenth the size. LightRadio is modular -- designed to easily scale up to meet modern demands. And it uses a fraction of the power that a conventional tower does, in part because its directional beams are focused, whereas a tower broadcasts like a radio station, in all directions -- very wasteful. LightRadio even somehow employs cloud computing to good effect. You might say LightRadio is everything the current wireless broadcasting system isn't.
Many of the pages which detail LightRadio suggest it will result in cost savings for consumers. I prefer to think It might reduce the inevitable price increases some, Certainly it represents a major technical improvement, but I think it's earthshaking in ways only industry will feel -- nothing much will change for us, the end users. When LightRadio, or something like it is adopted, it will be reported in a flurry of media reports, but it's adoption will be largely transparent to consumers. One day someone might happen to look up, and notice the skyline looks oddly less cluttered, without realizing it's because all the cell towers are gone.
One way cities stand to gain from LightRadio
So what if all the cellular towers disappear? A lot of that transmitting, and repeating equipment is mounted on top of tall buildings. That surely means a loss of revenue for those buildings. But their loss may be your gain -- if you happen to be a city. LightRadio antenna units are designed to provide as good, if not better, cell coverage, than the towers, much closer to the ground. A city's metal utility poles are perfect roosts for LightRadio. My city of Vancouver seems to have noticed this a year ago, when they got behind Canadian writer, and futurist, Douglas Coupland's idea of V-Poles -- metal utility poles incorporating LED street lighting, Wi-Fi via LightRadio, and charging stations for electric vehicles. The inclusion of LightRadio capability is interesting because the city isn't in the business of providing Wi-Fi, but I'm sure they'd be happy to lease the infrastructure that LightRadio could plug into, to a wireless provider like Telus. Even if a carrier like Telus wanted to put up their own poles -- and BC Hydro own lots of the wooden utility poles that line Vancouver's back alleys -- they would have to pay the municipality for the privilege.
Trouble on the Verizon for Canadian carriers doesn't materialize
In other wireless news... August saw widespread speculation in the Canadian press that U.S. wireless carrier Verizon would bid in the Canadian government's upcoming auction of prized 700 MHz wireless spectrum.* Canada's two biggest wireless players, Telus, and Bell howled just as loudly as their marketing budgets would allow -- deploying a nation-wide PR campaign against government regulations which they said favoured foreign giants like Verizon, at the expense of locals like themselves -- the breathtaking cheek of the weasels! At the beginning of September, the U.S. wireless carrier Verizon popped it's own balloon -- a company spokesperson confirmed to the CBC that Verizon wasn't planning to enter the Canadian wireless market. Neither, it turned out, were other U.S. carriers, such as Sprint, and T-Mobile interested in Canada, according to this FP item. "Bellus" had dodged the bullet of U.S. competition; they were safe -- their customers, not so much. * The 700 MHz airwaves are highly valued for their ability to penetrate buildings and travel long distances, and are being used in the United States to build high-speed networks.
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