Posted by david brooks
The Globe’s tech guru Hiawatha Bray takes the new 4G network from Sprint/Clearwire out for a spin today (read it here, with a video). His lede summarizes it well:
At last, 4G has come to Boston, and I feel like a man who’s gotten a shirt for Christmas. I’m grateful, of course, but I was [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
Sprint, via its Clearwire subsidiary, is launching the first 4G wireless network in Boston next month, says the Globe. (Read it here) It claims downloads of 3 to 6 megabits/second, somewhere around two to four times faster than 3G. Except that 3G, as we learned in a post last week, is a moving target that [...]
One response so far
Posted by david brooks
As we all wait for 4G (whatever that is) to arrive in Northern New England, let’s peruse a fine piece of reporting about how the definition of 3G has changed over, and over, and over again, with examples dating back to 2002. Read it here, and chuckle/cringe.
The key points are these:
This is all a red [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
As I noted back in March (in this bit of prose poetry), the arrival of 4G over the next year or two means we’ll be seeing a lot of confusing mobile-phone techno-speak and also some cool features. AP has a similar piece today, spurred by the imminent arrival of Sprint’s first 4G phone.
This topic is [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
My Telegraph column today is a tour of a nearby cell tower. I’ve always wanted to see what’s inside the control rooms next to those behemoths - truth be told, it’s not too exciting, but you can’t tell until you look, can you? The story is here.
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
Slate has a great piece with a great headline (”I tried to sauté my brain at the base of a cell phone tower. It didn’t work.”) about anti-wireless folks who whip up fears about electronic signals and what they might be doing to our systems. It takes a few shooting-fish-in-a-barrel potshots at “electro-sensitive” hypochondriacs, but [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
As I and many other people have noted before, 4G (as in fourth-generation mobile broadband) is a branding concept rather than a technological term - heck, there isn’t even agreement about what 3G means. Still, the idea of IP-based mobile systems with 4 to 10 megabyte upload/download and short latency is intriguing.
Verizon Wireless being the [...]
3 responses so far
Posted by david brooks
A collaboration of public and private organizations is seeking $66 million to help build a “middle-mile” fiber optic network around the state, to increase broadband expansions.
The proposal was made to the National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (NTIA BTOP) to fund broadband expansion in New Hampshire. From the UNH [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
The Maine Senate and House have killed a proposal to put warning stickers on cells phones warning that they may contribute to brain cancer - an assertion that has little or no evidence to support it. Here’s the AP story; here’s some background.)
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
I’ve got an overview piece in the Sunday Telegraph about how 4G is coming (read it here).
The Twitter-sized version is: Nobody really knows what 4G is because nobody agrees what 3G is, but Verizon, AT&T and Clearwire (Sprint) are spending tens of millions to bring it here anyway - in hopes that you’ll eventually get [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
I’m writing an article for the Sunday Telegraph about 4G plans for New Hampshire by Verizon, AT&T and Clearwire (Sprint). This has required a lot of learning, since I don’t understand this stuff too well. (I will get at least three emails Sunday from telecom techs pointing out errors/omissions)
As part of research I went to the International Telecommunications Union site and found the above chart, which (a) demonstrates the unbelievable alphabet soup of acronyms used in technologies (EVDO! HSDPA! TD-SCDMA-LCH-TDD!), but also has to be the ugliest tech-related chart I have ever seen. It’s too garish for MySpace!
So of course I had to share …
6 responses so far
Posted by david brooks
Getting broadband to non-urban areas remains a problem, for financial more than technical reasons. This article on the telecom industry site Light Reading demonstrates how complicated it can be:
A public/private partnership, Maine Fiber Co., won a $25.4 million (stimulus) grant to build what is called the Three-Ring Binder, an middle-mile fiber optic network that will [...]
No responses yet
Posted by david brooks
The ever-wonderful Improbable Research blog has a post (here it is) pointing to one of the weirdest bits of research I’ve seen in a long time: It claims that use of cell phones over long periods of time correlates with “human parotid gland secretion” - i.e., salivating. It claims that in 50 subjects, there was [...]
4 responses so far
Posted by david brooks
Verizon Wireless is set to roll out its mobile data service called LTE, or long-term evolution (what a stupid name) service, starting in Boston and Seattle. From the CNet story:
Verizon Wireless is in the final testing phase, or “Phase 4,” of its LTE technology. Within 60 days he said he expects testing to be completed [...]
3 responses so far
Posted by david brooks
I encountered this interesting discussion on DSLreports (read it here) which talked about Verizon using its upcoming 4G network called LTE - it starts tests launches this year, in Boston among other cities - to return to Northern New England and scarf up more customers from FairPoint. The writer thinks Verizon ripped everybody off with [...]
One response so far