This Man Says He Can Speed Cell Data 1,000-Fold. Will Carriers Listen?
"on Wednesday morning, hell give the first public demonstration at Columbia University in New York"
This Man Says He Can Speed Cell Data 1,000-Fold. Will Carriers Listen?
By Cade Metz 02.19.14 12:01 AM
Steve Perlman is ready to give you a personal cell phone signal that follows you from place to place, a signal thats about 1,000 times faster than what you have today because you neednt share it with anyone else.
Perlman the iconic Silicon Valley inventor best known for selling his web TV company to Microsoft for half a billion dollars started work on this new-age cellular technology a decade ago, and on Wednesday morning, hell give the first public demonstration at Columbia University in New York, his alma mater. Previously known as DIDO, the technology is now called pCell short for personal cell and judging from the demo Perlman gave us at his lab in San Francisco last week, it works as advertised, streaming video and other data to phones with a speed and a smoothness youre unlikely to achieve over current cell networks.
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The project would involve installing entirely new wireless antennas atop buildings and towers across the country, as well as slipping new cards into our phones. Perlman says hes already in discussions with some of the worlds largest wireless carriers and handset designers about the technology, but if history is a guide, the Verizons and the AT&Ts who are still upgrading their networks to the relatively new LTE wireless technology will be slow to make the move, if they make it at all.
In business, there is money in scarcity, says Richard Doherty, director of a technology consulting firm called Envisioneering, who has closely followed Perlmans project. The wireless business models of today are based on scarcity. Opening up the floodgates for any service, for any carrier, has tremendous implications. In our experiences working with carriers they like to have everything defined on their terms, to have breakthroughs arrive when they want them to.
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With current wireless networks, each antenna operates mostly alongside the others, as opposed to working in tandem with them. In fact, if you put two antennas too close, theyll interfere with each other and degrade your signal. But, working hand-in-hand with principal scientist Antonio Forenza and other Rearden engineers, Perlman has developed a new type of antenna that uses signal interference to its advantage. With pCell, interference actually enhances a signal, with multiple waves combining to form even stronger waves. You can locate the radio heads wherever you want them, rather than where its convenient to put them, Perlman says, and they all transmit in such a way that theres huge overlap creating an extremely high-performance signal
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silverweb
(16,402 posts)[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]n/t
jmowreader
(50,557 posts)It sounds like a good idea (I'd like to see what happens when you hit it with a thousand simultaneous users over a wide area, not "eight iPhones" sitting next to each other), but the "oh, and by the way you've got to replace every cell tower you've got" part is a deal killer.
NJCher
(35,670 posts)I knew someone who did that when the original cell towers were negotiated and you would be amazed at how fast they did it.
Cher
bananas
(27,509 posts)It's similar to MIMO, but uses multiple radios instead of multiple antennas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIDO_%28network%29
jmowreader
(50,557 posts)It is an issue but not the big one. From what I've read, he hasn't tested it with a massive amount of users. When he did DIDO he only put ten subscribers on the network.
The huge issue is the need to replace all the towers.
freebrew
(1,917 posts)the antennae atop the towers.
jmowreader
(50,557 posts)NJCher
(35,670 posts)Of course they won't. This country is all about protecting its large, vested interests at whatever the expense might be.
But definitely some other country will take advantage of it, increasing the rapid rate at which we are approaching third-world status.
Frankly, if I had come up with this, I would not even bother with the U.S.
Cher
Recursion
(56,582 posts)As an electrical engineer I have a lot of questions, but I like the premise.
KeepItReal
(7,769 posts)They tout the faster networks with more coverage, but whine that you have to pay per megabyte of data used.
As if the average person knows how much data they use visiting a given site or performing a given activity.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)Too bad he named his lab "Rearden", the fictional magnate in Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged who invents an alloy thats stronger than steel.
Libertarianism runs strong in technology circles.