Wireless Dreams: Freeeee
Published January 26, 2003
It is clear that wireless will be the conduit to essentially free broadband access to the Internet - eventually. I'm very much looking forward to saving the $40 per month. The University of Akron, right down the road from me, is out in front of the curve:
- The University of Akron in Ohio is one of the first public universities in the United States to establish a campus-wide, entirely wireless network. CIO Tom Gaylord told NewsFactor that through a partnership with networking equipment manufacturer Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO - news), the university launched a pilot implementation at a branch campus located in a rural Ohio county in 2000. Next came the law school and, in 2001, the entire main campus.
As part of the project, the university stocked its central library with several hundred wireless-equipped laptops that students can check out. Akron student Ann Donkin told NewsFactor that even though her own laptop does not have a wireless card — true for many students — she can use a university machine to conduct research on the go.
Infrastructure Savings
Student and faculty response to unfettered Internet access has been unanimously positive, Gaylord said. The campus computer store is stocking specially priced IBM ThinkPads, he noted, along with wireless cards so that students can equip their own machines.
Although the first implementation was based on the 802.11b wireless networking standard, Akron is currently upgrading its access points to handle multiple bandwidths and connection types — collectively called Wi-Fi.
As an added benefit, Gaylord explained, the university is using wireless broadband technology to provide Internet access to areas that are not cabled for Ethernet. For example, the study cubes in the main library have no network access and are located in an area where it is difficult to provide enough A/C power. To bring the Web to the cubes, the university installed laptops with dual battery packs and wireless cards. The networking portion of the project — which involved 200 machines — cost Akron only US$80,000.
"That's an ROI of 10-to-1 compared to the $800,000 it would have cost to get to the same point with hardwire and electricity," said Gaylord. [NewsFactor.com]
- Wireless Dreams: Freeeee
- Published: January 26, 2003
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- Section: Culture
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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The Wrong Kind of Regulation
The worst way to regulate is based on the self-interest of those you're regulating.
The collapse of the telecom market has caused Washington to consider doing just that.
One advocate is Peter Huber. His latest polemic, for the right-wing think tank the Manhattan Institute (find out who funds it and you know who paid for this Intellectual Astroturf), claims the current mess is "all Clinton's fault" (well, Gore too, and his buddy Reed Hundt). It claims everything would be OK if we'd just go back to regulating things on behalf of the monopolists.
The problem with Huber's analysis is that it takes a steady-state view of the technology world. The approach of the mid-1990s -- de-regulating the Bells and encouraging competition from new providers -- was correct, based on what was known at the time. It was a bi-partisan approach, approved of by both Republicans and Democrats. The 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed by a Republican Congress, and its enforcement was not objected to by conservatives save in retrospect, when they discovered how much money they could get from the Bells by putting things back as they were. Then they simply re-wrote history, blamed it all on the opposition, and advocated monopoly.
In 1996 the 802.11 standards hadn't been announced. The first wireless networking scheme, announced in 1997, ran at 1 Mbps. It wasn't until 1998 that we got to the 11 Mbps 802.11b scheme, and with the arrival of another bug hunk of spectrum (made available by that same FCC), we now have both an 802.11A standard for 54 Mbps and products that can combine both of the 802.11 frequency sets to deliver still more speed.
In other words, regulators didn't know about Moore's Law of Radios. And they didn't properly understand Moore's Law of Bandwidth, or DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing), the use of various colors to multiply the carrying-capacity of fiber by a factor of 10, 100 or even 1,000.
What I object to (especially from a Harvard-MIT graduate) is the re-writing of history for partisan advantage, and the continuing ignorance of how technology has changed in the last 7 years. (Heck, I just went to Rice, and even I know better.)
I guess Huber needs "The Blankenhorn Effect." If you're reading this, Peter, buy yourself a copy. (You, too, Sparky. Yeah, you, behind the screen, reading this.) The Universe changes every day, and regulators have a lot of catching-up to do.
Thanks very much for the info and the perspective.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/2855)
Think of it as compensation for having your team named the "Zips."
Nevermind your CIO is named "Gaylord".
I've been thinking about getting wireless access put in the Casa Brain Garage, but wonder if the the price on .11b gear is going to go down even more with the new .11g getting adopted as a standard.