>Sort of off topic, to be sure, but, exactly what does having a universal >standard do for us?
Aren't all the toilet paper rolls the same width for your roller? Donn't all the toilets mount in the same size base fitting? :-) >How long... or, should I say, what, is even the remote possibility, that >Europe will switch should we invent something far better than GSM? Size >creates inertia. Inertia and mass create friction and friction resists >movement. Oh, contrair. With the size of the worldwide GSM there is lots of momentum behind its evolution. GPRS happened and was available in the same time-frame as US based 2&1/2G solutions. Next, GSM is migrating to WCDMA (the "standard" version of the EVDO's we're seeing being deployed around here). >But what's the chances of >getting every nation of the EU to move, other than minor evolutionary >movements with full backward compatibiilty, for some time to come? WCDMA is hardly a minor evolutionary movement. GSM is essentially switching from a 300KHz or so TDMA to a 5MHz CDMA (as I said, it looks very much like the EVDO's you see deployed around here). Every nation in the EU, and for that part, most every other nation on the planet that adopted GSM will move. They enjoy the benefits of price that only come from the power of volume manufacturing far beyond any non-standard US specific technology. >Ahh, but you see chaos and disorder. I see opportunity knocking and >excitement. Yes, very exciting indeed. I worked for a US manufacturer that slid from #1 in world sales down to perhaps #3 in handsets (and off the chart in infastructure) in that very market. All the dominant world manufacturers in cellular today are foreign and riding the GSM world standard. We all know the US has completely lost numerous high technology markets forever. We lost computer memories, automobiles, TVs, VCRs, and cellular (among many others). Behind each lost market is a unique story. In the case of cellular, the fragmentation of the US standards for cellular technology is a direct cause of losing an entire US market. We can all thank the FCC, and a pair of US manufacturers for that. >We HAD a standard, a nice, comfy, understood, universal standard for phone >service... copper. A user-friendly monopoly phone company that had nice >operators and everyone's phone worked like everyone else's. And then the justice department stepped in (circa 1975). Then there were 3 distinct long distance carriers building essentially completely redunant competing networks, where each could (by the law of averages) reap only a third of the customer base of single unified network. Long before wireless, the United States quickly slipped from #1 to behind all other advanced countries which maintained a unified PTT (Postal Telephone & Telegraph ... typically government operated in most countries). Again, we quickly slipped from leadership to almost last place among advanced countries in ISDN and other advanced services ... back when ISDN would have still been fast compared to alternatives. Essentially no single company could be profitable enough in a fragmented market to keep the US on the front edge. >It's always interesting... Hey, I love this ... it's been near and dear to my heart through about 30 yrs in the industry (I spent almost 10 yrs of it in standards group participation). I don't know how others on the list think of the topic. If we're boring others maybe we should continue any follow-up off-line. cheers, Rich ----- Original Message ----- From: wispa To: WISPA General List Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 1:43 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Some "unlicensed" history.... On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 17:31:23 -0600, Rich Comroe wrote > We don't have to agree. I certainly respect differing opinions as > long as their from people that seem to know the field. > > I thought the switch to 2nd gen "put up whatever you want" was a > departure from earlier FCC stand ... when all 1st gen cellular > systems would follow the TIA approved AMPS standard. Why do I think > the change was not for our best? Because the US manufacturers went > from world domination of cellular (you could take your amps phone > anywhere in the world), to last place (almost the entire world > adopted the GSM standard in the face of the US meltdown in digital > cellular standards). So, who set the "standard" for toilet paper roll size? Sort of off topic, to be sure, but, exactly what does having a universal standard do for us? Oh, wait, you can buy toilet paper in several sizes. Doesn't seem to have caused my posterior a lot of grief, though. Ok, silliness aside, we have some remnant AMPS left, a few vestiges of the old TDMA system and the a couple implementations that are CDMA, and then IDEN. Oh, yeah, the US flavor of GSM. That's just where I live. How long... or, should I say, what, is even the remote possibility, that Europe will switch should we invent something far better than GSM? Size creates inertia. Inertia and mass create friction and friction resists movement. It would take quite a sizeable jump in value for say, Sprint or maybe Verizon to decide to leap to a different technology. But what's the chances of getting every nation of the EU to move, other than minor evolutionary movements with full backward compatibiilty, for some time to come? I recall a while back, someone had a sign posted at the intersection of a very muddy back road somewhere in Iowa or Kansas, that said "Pick your rut carefully, you're going to be in it for miles". We HAD a standard, a nice, comfy, understood, universal standard for phone service... copper. A user-friendly monopoly phone company that had nice operators and everyone's phone worked like everyone else's. For decades. Then someone got the hair-brained notion that perhaps it was a little too "comfy". Today, we have a morass, a jumble of flat rate plans, dialarounds, calling cards, measured service, VOIP, cellular, PCS, prepaid, peer to peer, and the list goes on. Yes, it's chaos, but we pay a tiny fraction of what it used to cost for a lot less service. We can get a "solution" to every possible problem, and a lot of solutions without problems to solve, too. I vastly prefer the chaos to the order, though. Chaos is disruptive. There is opportunity in "disruptive" and none in ironclad order. Faster than you can keep up with the changes, new ways of doing old stuff come to exist, even in our telephone world. Now, if we can keep things like CALEA from killing that off, I predict disruptive technological change will NEVER SLOW DOWN, and that in less than 10 years, the US will have some of the most amazingly better cellular systems, and the EU will be struggling to get everyone on the same page, so everyone can switch at the same time, involving huge bailouts and government money to transition as they lag ever farther behind, stuck to a system where EVERYONE has to agree and jump at the same time, before anyone can take a step. Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the idea that my phone work from every cell tower... but I don't think that's the most important thing - after all, my phone works almost everywhere, and does so at very small $ per minute charges, even way out in the boonies FAR beyond the reach of the new GSM system come to town. I think that the most important thing is not stifling what MAY come in the future for the sake of some present convenience, if the way is open for it to come, and that all it really takes is someone brave enough to take the leap and try it. Gee, I'm a WISP. If that's not the definition of "A leap in the dark", I dunno what is. No clear future, no gauranteed present, and no past at all. And a wide open frontier full of people doing it every possible which way it can be done, and even a few doing what can't be done, but were too dumb to know it couldn't be, so did it anyway. You can dislike GSM, but it became the defacto > world standard and you can take your GSM phone anywhere. US > cellular manufacturers world market share plumeted, and > manufacturers that built to the USDC (TIA IS54) and CDMA (TIA IS95) > found very few foreign markets that would accept product. The US > became one of the very few nations on the planet where a carrier > could deploy anything they wanted. The NexTel system, likewise, can > be found almost nowhere except US / Canada. Pick any 2 people in > the US with cellphones, and it's more likely than not they are > incompatible & not able to receive service from the same tower. > Technically it provides everyone in the entire United States with > inferior coverage (considering the number of total towers providing > service), more expensive phones (multi-mode), inferior voice quality > (extra voice decoding / recoding becuase they all have incompatible > voice codecs), and additional voice latency. Eventually European > GSM became yet another US deployed technology adding to the mish-mosh. And? I just don't see a downside that isn't more than offset by opportunity for rapid and mostly unrestrained progress forward. > > US Standards participants coined the phrase "if one standard is good, > multiple standards are better." This is non-sense. If there's not > a single standard you have no standard. A single standards does not > inhibit technology, because standards continuously evolve and > eventually extend to new technologies in a compatible, planned way. > Just look at 802.11 ... it's a classic example of an "evolving" > standard. Standards do inhibit something ... but it's not > technology ... its the choice to deploy whatever you want. It > imposes a certain discipline for the general public ... which I > think is a good thing. It's disheartening as all hell to look at a > field near me with 4 antenna towers (3 of them 500ft) and a > different wisp providing service from each (from an interference > standpoint). There's roughly 30 different 5.7GHz transmitters all > within 1000ft and LOS of each other. There's so many examples like > this which simply scream at you that the wisps would collectively > have benefitted were some minimum media access procedures common > across all these devices. Ahh, but you see chaos and disorder. I see opportunity knocking and excitement. These things are guided by people with brains. Though most of us are pretty darn slow and dimwitted ( aw, heck, even me sometimes ), WE STILL DO USE OUR HEADS or we get out of the business eventually. These things will, because we're capable of reason and thought, eventually sort themselves out. And individuals are ALWAYS more capable than a committee, at using judgement and being more responsive and making decisions and ... well, pretty much better at everything. Which is why a WISP with no money and 4 people can take on the telco and cableco and WIN a share of the market. Which would never happen, if we're all stuck with doing it all the same way. > > Anyways, I appreciate your thoughts and enjoy comparing differing opinions. > > peace, > Rich It's always interesting... Mark -------------------------------------------- Mark Koskenmaki <> Neofast, Inc Broadband for the Walla Walla Valley and Blue Mountains 541-969-8200 -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
