Thanks for staying on top of this.

You need to do what I did and get a new Intel Mac... Best of both worlds Jonathan... Best of both worlds... Bootcamp works very well and I heard it is built into Leopard.

I actually just bought my first MacBook a few weeks ago... first mac in 20 years... I absolutely love it... best laptop I have ever used... I actually thought I'd use the windows side more, but I am digging MacOS, so I only use the PC side when I absolutely have to...

Great POST BTW!

I submitted this item to Slashdot when Obama announced:

Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband.

I found this article interesting:

FCC Gets Earful About Wireless Net Neutrality

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/0 6/04/fcc-gets-earful-about-wireless-net- neutrality

We have something like this being tried out in our county.  The county made a deal with a local broadband company to put free wifi in place.  The company offers it at the free rate, but you can pay a few dollars to get something faster.  It's a pretty good deal.

I've been with Sprint for cell phone service for 6 or 7 years now, and have used the 2 cell phones I've had with them during that time (yeah, you can tell how old I am by how infrequently I change phones) to connect to the internet remotely.

The first was really slow, like an old 14k modem, but was ok for occasional email (I used it with a Palm Pilot so the slow speed didn't matter). The second is faster, comparable to a 56k modem, which is ok for email and light browsing. I used it when I'm away from home and there's no free WiFi available, and it works ok for that. The nice thing about it is that I can use it anywhere I can use my cell phone, which is just about anywhere. But it's nowhere near fast enough to compete with my home cable modem service.

Anyway, I'd heard about Sprint's newer EV-DO Power Vision service that is supposed to be a lot faster, and since it's time for me to think about upgrading my cell phone anyway (the case is cracked, hinge coming apart, battery dying faster), I gave Sprint a call today to see how much faster and better this service was. According to the rep I spoke to, it's comparable to DSL service--downstream AND upstream, which can be be important if you send and receive a lot of big files. They're also starting to roll out an even faster service called Rev-A, which is supposed to be comparable to cable modem speeds, also up and down.

There are two ways to get it. One is through your phone (you need a newer phone for these services, of course), connecting it to your laptop via either a USB cable or Bluetooth. You need to add the Power Vision service to your cell phone plan to do this, which costs from $15-$25 a month depending on which plan you get, and then your time online gets deducted from your included plan minutes just like a phone call, with unlimited minutes off-peak. For heavier users, you can also get a special PCMCIA card or USB device, and sign up for an unlimited plan at $60/mo. This also frees up your phone for talking (you can't do both at once with the first option).

I'm sold. I just need to get to a local Sprint store to see which phone to get, but one way or another I'm going to get this service as it seems silly not to. I can keep my current plan which has way more minutes than I'll ever need, and I just have to buy a new phone, which I was going to do anyway. I connect to the internet on my laptop often enough that this makes sense for me, and it would be great to have true broadband speed instead of the fairly slow connection I get right now.

I have absolutely no connection with Sprint, other than being a longtime customer. I'm only posting this information here because it is relevant to this diary, and I thought it might be helpful others who need to be able to connect to the internet at decent speeds away from home or work, and don't want to worry about finding WiFi hotspots or paying for multiple WiFi plans. This will work anywhere a cell phone works (including a plane when it's on the runway and at the gate, the boarding area, trains, cars--passengers or when pulled over only!--Starbucks, the beach, etc.), and since it's broadband speed, it's effectively nationwide wireless broadband. Hell, if this works as well as the rep told me, this is fast enough for decent-quality remote videocalling.

Now if we can only make this a bit cheaper, so everyone can have this.

Hope this helps.

I think you and quite a few people are harboring a number of misconceptions about what the free use of this spectrum would mean, Jonathan. In particular, there's no return path built into that system by default, not like there is with the cellular network. For the home, you'd need a dedicated return-path, such as an existing broadband connection (which defeats the point) or dial-up.

First generation internet/cable systems used modems as the return path, and older models of DirecPC's system still use them now. In fact, I have one, as it's the only connection available above dial-up where I live.

The first thing you'll want to know for the home is that the download speed is going to be limited by the upstream speed, and if we're talking about modems, that's going to be about 3-4K/s. That's actually a considerable bottleneck. In my experience, it only takes a download rate of about 200KB/s to completely saturate a modems upstream capability just with TCP/IP overhead -- packet requests and ACK's.

Given the shared spectrum, you'll be sharing the pipe with far more people that any other system. You think cable can get slow when your entire neighborhood is home? Try sharing it with four different counties.

As for roaming, you can forget about that too. Without any upstream, you've got no way to request data. At best you'd have to setup shop near an open/pay 802.* access point to send out your requests, again defeating the point. You might get away with data/cellular for sending out the requests, but you'll still be bonded to the cell network, and you'll face the same speed limitations (if not worse) as the ones I described above.

I know how badly people want it to be, including myself where I'm stuck on DirecPC (often tops out at 90KB/s, can't download more than 170MB every four hours before they cut you off, dies in the rain, costs 2x more than DSL) but this simply is not a last-mile solution.

It's not even a good suburban alternative.

Not to mention the fact that when that spectrum goes dark, it's not like the broadcasting system the TV stations have is going to just fall into the publics hands for internet use. They own that equipment and will likely tear it down once they don't need it anymore, meaning that entire infrastructure will need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Who is going to do that, and why would they bother when the system is so incredibly limited?

I just don't see anything happening. Any company who would try to launch broadband service in this spectrum is going to do the same exact thing every other new service does when they launch: focus on the city and suburban areas to take customers away from DSL and cable.

There's a reason you don't see companies testing BPL in truly rural areas, because there's more money in competing for people who are already sold on broadband and can afford to pay high rates for it.

And frankly, people who want nationwide roaming access when they probably already have it at home, they can suffer for all I care. Homes that don't have it need to get wired first, roaming access can wait.

    I don't see it happening either. The government could use WiMax (Sprint is going to launch this). It would be very expensive, they'd need to basically build out a cellular-like network. We're talking throusands of sites. That'd be costly (more worth it than the Iraq War though).

    But, Republicans and I am sure many Democrats wouldn't allow it. It would eat into Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile, Comcast, etc's profits. Not saying I agree with them. It would be nice, my parents will never pay for broadband access (or even dial up). I think there are a lot like them out there.  

    Glad to hear Sprint is working for you. I get around 1100 kbps download on my card. Which card did you get Jonathan?