     |
Qualcomm's been doing very well lately, and most of those chips it builds are for mobile devices that demand a lot of data to serve their owners' needs -- and as more and more folks jump on the smartphone bandwagon, the demand for data will continue to grow exponentially. Today at Qualcomm's What's Next in Mobile event in Santa Clara, California, the company told us more about its plan to help build a network that'll be able to serve up the data all its SoC's need. The goal is to give us 1000 times the capacity of what we currently have. One of the key parts, as Qualcomm sees it, is small cell base stations in homes, offices and retail spaces working in tandem with the large cell towers that currently adorn so many roofs and mountain tops -- the same thing ex-FCC head honcho Julian Genachowski talked about last year.
You see, macrocells (read: towers) can blanket wide areas in signal, but they struggle to penetrate the innards of buildings, which is where small cells come in handy. For those who aren't familiar, small cell base stations like femtocells and picocells have been around for years, helping to boost cell signal in small areas by hooking into a local wired network. Until now, these small cells have served as a small-scale supplement to macro networks, but Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob sees them comprising a much bigger chunk of the network of the future. According to him, there are a few issues with using them in an expanded role, however.
Filed under: Mobile
It’s easy to see Google Fiber’s burgeoning gigabit Internet service as a harbinger of a new era in the US. Certainly, with average speeds of 7.2Mbps, 1Gbps is in a completely different league. But Japan doesn’t waste any time in reminding the world just how much better they have it. Nuro, a service backed by Sony, has announced the availability of 2Gbps Internet down, with 1Gbps up. This would allow you to download pictures of cats in a fraction of time so small there’s likely no word for it.
And how much are the Japanese to pay for this otherworldly service? A price so high only the rich can afford? You know it’s cheap: “Nuro charges ¥4,980 (US$51) a month on a two-year contract, but there’s a steep ¥52,500 (US$535) installation fee that is currently waived for those who apply online.”
It’s easy to see Google Fiber’s burgeoning gigabit Internet service as a harbinger of a new era in the US. Certainly, with average speeds of 7.2Mbps, 1Gbps is in a completely different league. But Japan doesn’t waste any time in reminding the world just how much better they have it. Nuro, a service backed by Sony, has announced the availability of 2Gbps Internet down, with 1Gbps up. This would allow you to download pictures of cats in a fraction of time so small there’s likely no word for it.
And how much are the Japanese to pay for this otherworldly service? A price so high only the rich can afford? You know it’s cheap: “Nuro charges ¥4,980 (US$51) a month on a two-year contract, but there’s a steep ¥52,500 (US$535) installation fee that is currently waived for those who apply online.”
We got some details on Verizon's (and Time Warner Cable's) so-called six strikes policy for dealing with piracy back in November, but TorrentFreak has now turned up more details on just how it will work. According to a copy of Verizon's full policy obtained by the site, the six strikes are actually divided into three tiers, giving users increasingly serious alerts before their bandwidth speeds are reduced to 256 kbps.
The first of those are fairly straightforward emails and voicemails informing users that copyright owners have filed a complaint against them, but the second tier goes a bit further, automatically redirecting users to a website where they'll have to acknowledge that they've been receiving the alerts and then be prompted to watch an anti-piracy video. If you get to the fifth and sixth alerts, you'll again be redirected to a page where you must agree to either an immediate reduction in speed for two to three days or the same 2-3 day speed reduction delayed until 14 days later. At that point, you'll also be able to request a review of your situation, for which you'll be charged a $35. A TorrentFreak notes, Verizon won't take any further action after the sixth alert, but users could then face possible litigation from the MPAA and RIAA.
Filed under: Internet, Verizon
Source: TorrentFreak
Dodging the issues of spectrum auctions and more cell towers, researchers at MIT have discovered that they can use an algebraic equation to improve data speeds by reducing dropped packets. It's these dropped packets that can build up congestion across a wireless network, as devices attempt to recoup these missing data nuggets. But instead of sending typical packets, MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics created an equation that describes a series of packets. If a packet fails to deliver, then the receiving device is apparently able to "solve" the missing chunk, with the processing load on phones, routers and base stations apparently negligible.
The tech, which can also seamlessly transition a data stream between wireless internet and LTE, has already been tested on WiFi networks over at MIT; when two percent of data packets were dropped, speeds were boosted from 1Mbps to 16Mbps. If five percent of packets were being lost, the researchers then saw bandwidth increase from 0.5Mbps to 13.5Mbps. Companies are apparently already licensing the tech, although MIT isn't revealing more on this just yet. Muriel Medard, project lead, said that there were currently "very severe inefficiencies that should be remedied before you consider acquiring more resources" -- namely more spectrum and hardware, although the gains seen in these early tests are yet to be replicated in real life. There's more on the science and development at the source link below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Science, Mobile, Alt
MIT researchers use algebraic equation that improves WiFi and LTE data streams: boosts speed, reduces network congestion originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink
Fierce Wireless | 
Technology Review | Email this | Comments 
With 99 percent of the nation's K-12 schools hooked-up to the internet, you'd think online learning was an educational staple. Sadly, it's also estimated that some 80 percent of those connections can't provide the 100Mbps per 1,000 students bandwidth the State Education Technology Directors Association recommends. That's why NPO EducationSuperHigway has announced the National School Speed Test initiative, with the goal to take actual stock of the state of internet connections in our schools. The NSST hopes to measure the internet capabilities of every K-12 school, and identify those that are lagging behind. Educational staff and students can also help out by checking their own school's speeds on a dedicated website (linked below). The results of the NSST will be open to the institutions themselves, districts and state departments of education, enabling them to better plan upgrade strategies for the future.
Filed under: Internet
New National School Speed Test hopes to help all K-12 students get effective digital learning originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |School speed test, EducationSuperHighway | Email this | Comments 
AT&T's improving its coverage at live events by establishing a new (impressive sounding) setup -- the five-beam multi-beam antenna. It works by dividing its customers' signals into five narrow parts, illustrated above by the color bands, upping the bandwidth by splitting traffic to each segment, enabling up to five times the data traffic. Ma Bell even used similar technology to craft a "super" multi-beam antenna, which expands the same idea into two rows of nine, possibly offering up to 18 times the speed of a typical single-tower arrangement. AT&T adds that this setup also reduces dropped calls and failed uploads, and is apparently already being put to use at live concerts and games. Not quite wrapping your head around it? Check the video after the break.
AT&T reveals new multi-beam antenna tech for live events, could offer data speeds five times faster (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |AT&T (YouTube) | Email this | Comments Anyone on a slower broadband connection like I am, or heaven forbid on a dial-up connection, knows that modern websites assume you have a decent amount of bandwidth. Downloading all those photos and videos can take ages on a slow connection and Facebook knows the lack of bandwidth is one of the reasons people in some parts the world don’t join the network. Facebook has a plan to fix that, at least in the Asia-Pacific Gateway area.
Facebook has announced it will be investing in a project that will cost a total of $450 million to run an undersea fiber-optic cable. The cable will run from Malaysia to South Korea and Japan with branches splitting off for other countries. The new undersea cable will reduce the number of hops data has to take making downloads and uploads faster.
Facebook won’t say exactly how much money it invested in the undersea cable project. The project is also backed by major Chinese Internet providers and a number of other companies. “Our investment in this cable will help support our growth in South Asia, making it possible for us to provide a better user experience for a greater number of Facebook users in countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore,” a Facebook spokesman said.
[via BBC]
Sprint doesn't have much time to meet its goals and get its 4G LTE network up and running by mid-2012. The Now Network is definitely getting closer, though, and just gave PCMag the chance to test its fledgling LTE in Atlanta. Average speeds on the downlink sit squarely in between AT&T and Verizon, at 9 to 13Mbps, despite Sprint having to use 5MHz channels half as large as what AT&T can muster in some cities. Just don't expect to upload 4K videos from your phone anytime soon: the 2.2Mbps average upload rate is certainly faster than on WiMAX or T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, but it doesn't hold a candle to the 4Mbps or even 6Mbps of Sprint's bigger rivals. We'd likewise take the results with a large grain of salt. Even though Sprint is promising to focus on consistently good speed rather than bragging rights, the tests are in controlled conditions on a mostly unpopulated network. Our hope for now is just that the network goes live and that our EVO 4G LTEs live up to their potential.
Sprint's early 4G LTE network tested in controlled conditions, hangs with the big boys originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |PCMag | Email this | Comments