1. Home
  2. Wireless Networking
  3. Public(Free) Wi-Fi Speeds?

Public(Free) Wi-Fi Speeds?

"SKS" hath wroth:

Chuckle. In New Orleans, the new city wide municipal wi-fi system is running at 512Kbits/sec (thruput) for the duration of the state of emergency. After that's over, it goes down to 128Kbits/sec as part of the compromise agreement with the Telcos and ISP's, who correctly consider free municipal wireless to be a threat to their service income. I suspect deployments in Philadelphia, SF, etc will follow a similar pattern. Fast enough to be useful (i.e. 128Kbits/sec), but not so fast that it competes with wired and wireless (EV-DO) data.

formatting link

When hell freezes over and possibly later. EV-DO and HSDPA function at this time because there's a small number of users. Figure on

600Kbits/sec download and about 150Kbits/sec upload this week. As the number of users increases, the cellular providers have to add additional sites, additional frequencies, or throttle bandwidth. I'll bet on throttle.

Let me know when you find it. I just love reading science fiction and press releases. There's LMDS and mobile WMAX that will theoretically go faster. EV-DO can go faster when they bond more channels. You can kinda guess what it will cost. At this time, I can get: 14.4Kbits/sec cellular for about $5/month more. 1xRTT at 120Kbits/sec costs about $30/month. EV-DO at 600Kbit/sec is $60/month. Wanna extrapolate what 10 mbits/sec will cost from your friendly smiling cellular provider?

There are also some major technical problems with delivering such speeds via cellular technology, but I won't go there right now.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann
Loading thread data ...

Just by way of interest, can anyone say what the speeds of "free/public wireless Internet" are? I am talking about the free citywide Wi-Fi coming up in cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco or Long Beach. Or are being talked about, at least.

And, when are we going to have more widely available (for a price) Wireless Internet - like Verizon and Sprint offers EV-DO - but at higher speeds? I read somewhere that the successor to EV-DO/EV-DV/3G will be similarly priced but deliver over 20 times the speed.

SKS

Reply to
SKS

Frank hath wroth:

Oh that. HSDPA is here now.

formatting link
formatting link
is delivering it in the SF Bay area using WCDMA.

500-700Kbits/sec at this time.

Although capeable of much higher speeds, they're "only" delivering about 500Kbits/sec at this time. That's for good reason as most of their cell site have only between 1-4 T1 lines per vendor as their backhaul. It's going to take some major infrastructure upgrades to make greater than 600Kbits/sec HSDPA work over a wide area. HSDPA can theoretically go to 10Mbits/sec. (EV-DO can theoretically go to

2.4Mbits/sec and EV-DV to 3.1Mbits/sec). Also, the necessary release 6 handsets (which use MIMO to get the speed to 20Mbits/sec) and cards are not currently available.

The problem is that the really high speed HSDPA tests all still testing. There have been no offers of service at above 600Kbit/sec and no prices set. I don't think they can until they beef up the backhauls. When they do offer 10 times the speed of EV-DO, methinks the price will be rather high, or the restrictions rather limiting.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

MetroFi is currently wireing Sunnyvale, CA for free WiFi access at 1.0mbs.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Werner

formatting link

Reply to
Frank

There is a lot of testing going on in Europe at the moment and "Manx Telecom" have rolled out a "Data only" system.

Manx Telecom?s new 3G HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) network offers speeds of up to 1.2Mbps.

Pronto Connect DATA-ONLY 3G has no connection charge and is offered in three packages, Connect 10, Connect 100 and Connect 1024.

Connect 10 costs just £9.40 per month (inc. VAT) and includes 10Mb of data per month with additional data charged at 90p per Mb.

Connect 100 costs £39.95 per month (inc. VAT) and includes 100Mb of data per month with additional data charged at 60p per Mb.

Connect 1024 costs £88.13 per month (inc. VAT) and includes 1024Mb of data per month with additional data charged at 60p per Mb.

I think business use only!

By the time O2 roll it out to the rest of the UK,this year, it is hoped to be a 3.6Mbit service.

Reply to
Frank

"Chris Werner" hath wroth:

1Mbit/sec download max. 256Kbits/sec upload. I have no clue what users are actually getting.

Free in Sunnyvale. $20/month elsewhere. I think this is their 4th or perhaps 5th business model. The others were to charge for the service in various ways. Now, they're following the Google plan of offering free wireless in trade for shoving advertising in your face. Pay them $20/month and the ads will go away plus you get a free wireless modem.

formatting link

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Frank hath wroth:

The US is years behind Europe and the far East on wireless connectivity. I can rant on the subject if you want. Also, no data-only service (except paging) has ever made money.

Well, at 1.2Mbits/sec the 10MBytes (80Mbits) can max out in 67 seconds. Wonderful. I get to use the service for 1 minute per month and then pay measured rate by the byteload.

Better. I get 10.1 hours per month. 1GBP = $1.76. So that's $50/month (not too horrible) plus $0.34/MByte (ouch!!). My average use at home is about 100MBytes per day (and I don't do file sharing). That's $34 per *DAY* (after the first 10 days where I max out my

1024MBytes limit). No thanks. Do you know anyone that can afford that?

I learned a few lessons watching Metricom. Their service was offered as a business travellers answer to connectivity. There were a few that used it that way, but the greatest number just plugged the modem into their desktop and used it as a replacement for a dialup connection. Speed didn't matter much. It was not monopolizing the phone line or paying by the minute that was important. I wonder if Proto Connect allows full time connections.

Hmmm... 3 times the speed, 3 times the price?

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks for all the very informative responses! I followed up most of the links included and discovered a wealth of material out there - though the devices themselves are not there (as of yet, at least) or in the planning/testing stages.

The part about the municupalities limiting their speeds to 128 Kbps for free access was interesting.

Regards all, and thanks again for the info.

SKS

------

Reply to
SKS

Yeah, I was looking at Canadian wireless options (not that they're actually options in my neighborhood) and had the same problem. People complain about the FAP on my satellite service, which slows downloads after the first 150MB, but I can at least get over 100MB per day for the same CDN$90/mo fee. Wireless from the telcos isn't close to competitive on price.

Reply to
Derek Broughton

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.