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Flat-Rate Wireless Where The Sun Don't Shine (Much) 117

Posted by timothy from the tundra-with-bandwidth dept.
Tantus writes: "Something I've been drooling for for years has finally started to see the light of day... and it's not even close to where I am! I work for a company that does help desk outsourcing for a small startup in the ND, SD, and MN area called Monet Mobile http://www.monetmobile.com, which hopefully will hopefully start a wireless trend that will spread beyond Fargo, ND... Up to twice modem speeds and a $49 flat fee for your laptop or home. Sigh ..." This service sounds much like Ricochet's, for those lucky enough to live in range. Nice to see a wireless option starting up rather than shutting down
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Flat-Rate Wireless Where The Sun Don't Shine (Much) More

Flat-Rate Wireless Where The Sun Don't Shine (Much)

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  • Ricochet Coming Back? (Score:4, Informative)

    by instinctdesign ( 534196 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:16AM (#2548387) Homepage
    Isn't the Ricochet network being restarted by its new owner? Here is a C|Net article on it [cnet.com].

  • Thats sweet (Score:2, Informative)

    by Sunda666 ( 146299 )
    Unfortunately, it will take AGES for something similar show up here (Brazil). The ability to be online in motion rocks. Ive heard on a similar thing around here, but it was limited to one town, and the bandwidth sucked.
    • I would bet that a neighbourhood network would be the fastest way to get wireless access on the go here in Brasil, given the penchant for community efforts here (e.g., community "radios" comprised o a network of loudspeakers, and mass construction efforts, known as "mutirões", where the material is supplied by local government and the labour by the beneficiaries). Since daily access to private computers is limited to the higher middle class and above, I believe that a possible implementation woudl perhaps spread out from university areas (given their higher bandwidth links), although there would probably be legal and regulatory restrictions to that (as well as security issues).

      Just my 2 bits (well, a bit more (several) than that).

      BTW, I would be interested in more material pertaining to the wireless experiment mentioned in the originating email. Thanks.

      ma2oliveira
  • But seems like bound to fail like the rest of the high-speed wireless services. The service area is small (low demand), high speed (lots of money). It's another dead end if they chage for a hourly rate, would be way to expensive for anyone to get it. The government needs to support these companies in order for them to reach profitability

  • Flat Rate Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by atrowe ( 209484 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:22AM (#2548402)
    I think that as soon as providers start offering flat rate wireless, the service will really take off. I used to work for a wireless phone company, and numerous consumer surveys have shown that flat rate pay plans with the same billing each month is what most consumers want. We're already doing this with landline phones and Internet access, and I feel that flat-rate cell plans are the next natural step in this direction.

    The infrastructure to do this has been in place for several years now, and It's just up to cellular service providers to adopt a flat pricing plan and go from there. In fact, there are already several providers my locality who are offering unlimited usage for around $50/month.

    The US has taken a lot of flak from critics about being slow to adopt cellular technologies, and I think this is a definite step in the right direction. We may not have Bluetooth or 3G yet, but nobody really needs those bells and whistles anyway. I want a cheap cell phone that will work just like my regular landline phone, and hopefully that's what flat rate pricing will allow. In some third world countries like Britain and Japan, their regular phones don't even have unlimited usage. You make a local call in a less industrialized nation like Britain, and you're going to be paying by the minute.

    • Japan and Britain are third world countries? God dammit, thats utter arrogance. This kind of attitude is what makes you americans so hated everywhere. Get a clue.
      • I believe the original poster used 'third world' as a way of showing his belief that those countries are behind the times when it comes to phone service. This has nothing to do with arrogance... probably just a bad choice of words.
      • umm, it was obviously a joke. the poster was implying that highly industrialized countries should be able to provide flat-rate phone service.

    • Re:Flat Rate Wireless (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There's already one cellular company that does this [cricketcom...ations.com], at least for local phone calls. They seem to be playing in secondary markets, though, and there's no roaming.
    • Japan has the second largest economy in the world and Britain has the fifth. Hardly third world. Perhaps if you left your bedroom occasionally and got out and saw some of the world you wouldn't be so damnably ignorant. BTW dumbass, Japan has 3G already and Europe is on the verge of getting it, it's only the US that is lagging behind the rest of the world in getting mobile technology going.

      • Re:Flat Rate Wireless (Score:2, Interesting)

        by thened ( 530582 )
        Japan has 3G if you consider a small part of Tokyo Japan. Japan is very high-tech when it comes to cell phones, but in the dark ages when it comes to pricing. For example, I have a JSH-03 cell phone. It has a built in digital camera which I can use to take and send pictures to my friends. This is a fun feature, especially in a cell phone that only cost me 50 bucks US. However, paying for the cell phone is a pain in the ass. I was on a plan that cost 5600 yen a month and gave me 2600 yen in free calls at the cost of 30 yen a minute. So esentially I got 86 minutes. But it also cost me 2 yen for each message I sent with my phone, and more money for using the phone to view websites. I was also charged for a full minute if I only used the phone for a fraction of a minute. For a country that has a population density greater than just about everywhere in the world, why should I be paying so much money to use my phone. When I lived in America I had 250 minutes for 30 bucks a month. I didn't even have to worry about running out of free minutes, and if I ever were to run out of minutes I could spend another 10 bucks and get a whole bunch more minutes. The thing that bothers me most is that 3G is going to be a failure, and the cost of that failure is going to be passed on to the users of regular cell phones. What cell phone companies should do is incorporate 802.11b into their phones and allow people to use their own private networks as well as public(In train stations/convinience stores and the like) base stations to download videos/music on to their cell phones to be viewed whenever they feel like it. Although the idea of having a fast internet connection on the go seems like a great idea, the idea of paying for every packet you send/recieve is a very painful idea.
        • Your $50 phone was clearly subsidised - a typical high-end phone in the UK or Scandinavia costs about $600, and your model with built-in digital camera might have been more than that without subsidy. Your US phone was probably quite basic, costing far less, so your comparison of tariffs is fairly useless - you need to look at the total cost over a fixed time, including handset costs as well as subscription costs and call charges.

          Assuming $1 = 100 yen roughly, 2 yen (i.e. 2 cents) per message seems quite reasonable. Even if you send 100 messages a month, that's only $2... Paying for packets is obviously not as nice as flat rate, but wireless operators need to make money or go the way of flat-rate operators like Metricom/Ricochet. GPRS operators in Europe work on a packet-charging basis, but you can get a monthly 'Bundled Kbytes' for a flat fee. As long as you use a PDA or phone as the GPRS client, you won't run up a huge bill.

          802.11b is a great technology for laptops and higher-end PDAs, but it's quite battery hungry, and it's not designed for wide coverage - it would be a pain to have this draining batteries very fast in a cell phone and still have very incomplete coverage. GPRS (packet mode GSM) is a lot slower than 802.11b, but it works well with a mobile phone (I still get 2 days battery life on my Ericsson T68 phone, even with colour screen, Bluetooth, and lots of game playing).

          Bluetooth is a really key technology as it decouples your PDA, laptop or whatever from the wireless wide-area technology - in Europe, use a GPRS or 3G phone as your 'router' most of the time, then switch to a CDMA2000 phone in the US, and use an 802.11b device where you have coverage (e.g. turn your PDA with an 802.11b Compact Flash card into a Bluetooth to 802.11b router, and use your phone via your PDA/router).

          Bluetooth is going to be in lots of devices, and is best viewed as the basic glue between these devices - 802.11b, GPRS, 3G, and so on are longer distance technologies that complement Bluetooth pretty well.
          • My phone here was subsidised, I have to pay 500 bucks or so if I cancel my contract within 7 months. My phone in America was also subsidised though.

            I am not saying that 802.11b should replace technology used in current cell phones, but it should compliment it. Having the option to use 802.11b to browse the web/download data instead of using the cell phone when I am near a basestation makes a lot of sense.

            What I am saying is that 3G is a waste of money. Whatever benefits it may provide are not worth the overall cost. Right now it costs 600 for the cheapest handset, and you can only use it in a limited area. for 600 you could buy two basestations and put them in the two areas you are most likely to need the bandwidth - work and home. The other services associated with FOMA(the service that NTT is offering with 3G) are worthless anyway. What good is video conferencing on a 1 and a half inch screen when you have to to have the phone at a weird angle just to be able to have the other person see you talking into a phone that you are holding a foot away from your face. Downloading music to a phone is nothing new, as there has been a phone on the market for quite a while now that uses sony's memory stick as a mp3 storage device

            Cell phones should be more like storage devices than broadband browsing devices. How important is it for you to pay for packets as you recieve them in order to listen to a song or to watch a video when you could just as easily download a song or a video onto your PDA before you leave for work or school and listen to it while you are on the train? There is no real market for immediate access to multimedia. Paying a small amount for text based information is one thing, but heavy multimedia that costs more simply because you are downloading it to your phone, well that just doesn't make sense.

            • I think 3G will happen in some form (it's essential in Japan because their 2G cellular network has reached capacity). I agree that it's much more cost effective to download data in advance than to stream packets - the former just requires memory, which is cheap, and software, which is coming (Java phones will help). However, there will always be a demand for instant browsing, and wireless operators will need to charge for packets until technology improves a lot - you just can't get a lot of capacity per cell, even with 3G.

              I suspect that non-videoconferencing applications will take off first, e.g. sending pictures in email, multiplayer gaming, etc.
            • > Kinda funny, sounds like what some great visionary may have said a few years ago..."Who needs a phone that go with you anywhere. I usually only need my phone at home and at work and I have them there. If I am on the road, there are pay phones everywhere I could possibly need one." My point is, perhaps today you do not see the need for 3G (by the way there are many more benefits than just higher data rates), but perhaps there will be in the very near future.

        • Still doesn't make it a third-world country as the ignorant parent poster said.


          From my very limited experience of Japan, everything is horribly expensive, not just 3G, although the Japanese do get paid a lot more than Americans, so it probably all balances out in the end.

    • > and you're going to be paying by the minute.

      Well, as much as I dislike paying per minute, doesn't it make sense?

      Of course, one could say once the infrastructure is build, it doesn't differ how much I telephone.
      But it does differ.
      The infrastructure is build to serve only a small percentage of the subscribed users users simultanously (Usually about 1%, IRC.)

      This applies for land-lines and even more so for radio.
      You can only supply a certain percentage of the population simultanously. This becomes most obvious on certain events. Ever tried to use your mobile on new year 24:00?
      That's where demand and supply comes into play.

      Even if it didn't make a difference, don't you think, that those, who use a service more intensive, should pay more?

      Well, I shouldn't speak so loud... someone may get on the idea and meter my internet-access :)

      There are several things one doesn't like, but that doesn't have to mean that they don't make sense.
      • Actually, no, it doesn't make sense to pay per-minute. Providers don't pay per-minute for access, why should we? They pay a flat rate for those DS3 trunks...
        • Because, if they don't meter the access, the bandwidth usage rises. This can usually attributed to a small percentage of the users (to whom I count myself)
          The rise has to be compensated with another DS3 trunk, which leads to increased costs.
          These costs are equally distributed on the subscribers.
          Is that fair?

          How about your connection to your ISP?
          Modems and ISDN adaptors aren't connected directly with the DS3. Usually, they have some kind of modem-rack which provide access to a certain amount of users simultanously.
          Now assume everyone is permantly online, this means that there have to be as many dial-in ports aviable as there are users. This leads to another increase in costs.

          Usually, the costs for ISPs are reduced by resource-sharing.
          If I'm only half a day online, I'll give someone else the chance to use the same hardware. This reduces costs. If I do not download the newest distribution/music track just for fun, I'll save bandwith and give someone else the chance to use it.

          How do I achieve a sensible use of (usually limited) resources? I'd say by fees.

          As I said, I wouldn't like it as it would be to my disadvantage, nonetheless it'd make sense.
    • The US is truly the third world country when it comes to celluar technology. (Compared to the Nordic countries and even Britain ie.)

      Your coverage sucks big time, roaming charges is out of this world and your selection of celluar phones are laughable. When I go into a cell phone shop here in the US, it's like going back 5 years in time.

      And what is it with you merkins and the flat rate and "free" minutes stupidity. Is it such a strange concept that the users that actually use the service pay for it.

      No, give us GPRS and some competition, that'll take care of my communication needs on-the-road for years. In GPRS you pay per MB transferred, you can be online all day. Perfect for SSH terminals and such.
    • Bluetooth is a personal area network technology, so the US already has it - just buy a Bluetooth phone and PC/CF card and you have a Bluetooth network...

      Japan is way more advanced in its use of wireless and many other technologies than Europe and the US. They've had packet-oriented (2.5G) wireless phones for over 2 years with i-mode, and have just deployed 3G. Britain is also way ahead of the US in its use of mobile phones - something like 75% of the population has a mobile phone, and we can use the same phones throughout Europe, Russia, Asia and Africa. Not bad for a 'less industrialised nation' ...

      One reason why the US doesn't have widespread use of mobile phones is that it has free local calls from wired phones, and that it didn't allocate new area codes for mobile phones - the result is that when calling from a wired phone to a mobile phone in the local calling area, it would be unreasonable to charge the caller extra for calling a mobile. Hence, mobile phone users have to pay for incoming calls, which doesn't happen anywhere outside North America, and they are understandably reluctant to give out their mobile numbers.

      Near flat rate billing (i.e. huge number of bundled minutes) is the way US consumers seem to like things. Strangely enough, the same model applies to European mobile phones - you just buy bundled minutes. If you are really concerned about price, there are some very low cost options, down to a few US cents per minute for national calls.

      Hint to the troll: your clueless xenophobia is showing - countries that do things differently from the US are not necessarily 'third world'.
      • How does i-mode compare to GPRS? GPRS is finally available in the US. I don't know when it rolled out, as I only discovered it recently (couple months?) Voicestream, here in the Eastern US now offers the data service on their GSM network. Plus we can use the GSM global roaming with a compatible phone (dual or tri mode.)
      • The bundled minutes model isn't the only one widely used in at least the countries in Europe I've experience of. Instead of this model (i.e. subsidised phone, bundled minutes, cheaper call charges, monthly fees, minimum contract length) a lot of people are paying nearly full price for the phone then paying per minute for all their calls, but without monthly fees or minimum contract length.
    • I am currently subscribed to a service that seems to operate on the same priciples... wireless internet @ "164K/s" ... odd number, yes... must have some wierd overhead... but I digress

      The modem used is a serial modem... serial connections can operate at up to (IIRC) 112K/s... ok... so not quite what they advertise, but it is twice a 56K....

      I've been to several bandwith testing websites, and none of them have rated me over a 33.6 connection. So overall, I am dissatisfied with the service. I'm approx 1 mile from the antenna, and get full reception according to the software.

      Don't get me wrong, it's not worthless, and for really rural communities, it could be very good, but this is NOT a replacement of any other broadband services...


    • -atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.

      Toleranse? Wow! If I join Mensa, will I spell as well as you?

  • The site is really thin on tech info. I appears to work only on Windows and Pocket PCs however.

    Does anybody know if they are using any sort of standard below the IP level?

  • Check *this* out... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jcapell ( 144056 ) <john@capell.net> on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:35AM (#2548422)
    [boast]

    Just got it installed this week:

    My Internet Connection [capell.net]

    I got tired of my cable modem losing signal everytime it rained, and DirecTV-DSL (Telocity) was dissapointing, so I got me a dedicated 1.54Mb microwave wireless connection from MCI Worldcomm about 2 hops off UUNets's backbone.

    Ok, so its about $340.00 a month, but I can write it off ;-)

    While I'm bragging, also check out my Tower [capell.net] O' Power [capell.net]

    [/boast]
  • There's no scale on the coverage maps, and I don't know the region, but it looks like the signal is only on the order of miles in range.

    Twice modem speed, limited roaming and ~$50/month?

    It's in an urban area that is probably already going to have some sort of higher speed connection (though perhaps not...). This would make more sense to me in a rural area, but the range isn't great enough.

    I suppose if the cost of the individual cell was low enough that you could put them everywhere it might work (economically speaking) - but from reading the website, it looks more like this is just sort of a cool "Looky - I can check stocks at lunch!" sort of thing.

    (I use a my cell phone and a cable to my laptop if I really really need that sort of thing - it's not as fast, but I don't use it all that often. I'm sure not interested in paying that much more.)
    • Yeah, basically the entire area shown covered on the map is already covered by CableOne cable modem service, and, for a large portion, Qwest DSL. So the usefulness of the service is, for the most part, limited to mobile users (and I suppose for someone who happened to be in a cable and DSL dead zone).

      Now in rural areas not far away, companies such as Wiktel (http://www.wiktel.com), who I work for, are installing wireless in smaller towns, with a coverage of 10-20 miles outside of the town. Inside most small towns, people can get cable or DSL, but the rural areas can only get DSL if they happen to be close to town or close to a remote fiber closet.

      Between us and a competitor, Rural Access (coverage map: http://www.ruralaccess.net/wireless/map.htm -- for reference, Grand Forks is 70mi north of Fargo) we'll have the border regions of Northwestern Minnesota, Northeastern North Dakota, and Southwestern Manitoba completely covered within a year or two.

  • Several such things exist. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Segfault 11 ( 201269 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:48AM (#2548441) Homepage
    Having worked for an ISP out of Mankato, MN, I can tell you that there are several areas with wireless access. Rural areas are taking to wireless as the solution for their local utilities' lack of interest and/or ability to provide alternatives:
    http://www.wirelessinitiative.net/ [wirelessinitiative.net]

    In Duluth, my friend used to work for Superior Broadband [superiorbroadband.com], where fixed wireless is available throughout the city and neighboring towns.

  • This isn't the only option for wireless access here in the north country... Also check out http://www.ruralaccess.net/wireless/Default.htm

    One more thing, almost all cities here greater than a few thousand in population have access to DSl &/or cable, it is the rural areas (basically everywhere) that are driving the need for wireless. (Remember, North Dakota has 4 cities greater than 30,000 popultion, with a total state population of 500,000)

    And finally, if you want to see what else we do here since "the sun don't shine much", check out the recent aurora! [ryankramer.com]

  • For (soon-to-be) college kids (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ekrout ( 139379 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:57AM (#2548449) Journal
    If you're thinking wireless, and you're considering college, check out Virginia Tech. They just bought four OC-12's, and are supposedly putting up wireless thru the entire campus this winter, or spring. Its already available in some parts of campus. I don't go there, but I've heard good things. Georgie Tech and Bucknell also are pursuing (and using, to some extent) 802.11b.
    • Clemson University [clemson.edu] has already installed wireless in most parts of the campus and we will have full coverage next year. Here is a coverage list [clemson.edu].

    • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, is painted, but I'm not sure that the service is completely available. They're changing their security from wep encryption to blocking all but registered MAC addresses. I was really surprised when I fount out that the whole campus was painted. I guess when they started an initiative two years ago to put an internet kiosk around every corner they also thought to put a Cisco access point in each one.

      People at universities are smart.

    • Here at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) we've been required for the last 3 years to buy a laptop freshman year. 802.11b is available in most of the important places on campus (lecture halls, student union), and anywhere it's not (eg. labs) its because there's already ethernet jacks built into the tables. OC-3 to the internet and even bigger pipes to Internet/2 spread over about 4000 students ends up being pretty nice =)
    • Remember all the hype about Bevnet? Blacksburg was going to be the most wired town in the country. Well, a few apartment buildings and offices do have incredibly cheap ethernet, but the rest of the town can't get any broadband at all, except for the horribly oversold cable company, and a smidgen of DSL. Also, even if they did buy 4 OC-12s, what are they connected to? The backbone through the whole area isn't even that big.

      VA Tech's "wiredness" is just a bunch of hype- and always has been.
  • At first I was excited to see this as I live in Fargo, but now that I've looked into it I can see that this Monet Mobile is not for me (I'm writing this from FreeBSD-5.0-CURRENT).

    Strike 1:
    The site www.monetmobile.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

    Strike 2:
    They don't enough details, it's all a big fluffy sales pitch.

    Strike 3:
    Monet wireless modem supported PC platforms: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows 2000.

    What we need is some geeks with capital.
  • My ISP offers shared bandwidth up to full T1 speeds, with minimal 128k for $49.95/mo. We meter how much you use, you get 10GB of xfer for the 49.95 base price.
  • Why would you want wireless where travelling with your laptop can involve snowshoes and other winter paraphenalia?
    The weather here is less likely to quarantine me to my computer(s) at home, making wireless seem more sensible in a climate like mine ;-)
    (I live in Phoenix, AZ, the Sun City)
  • As someone who has worked for a struggling fixed wireless company for the last two years, I can see that this company is extremely optimistic about what this technology can do. A quick check at Mapquest shows that their coverage area is about 4 miles radius. I assume that they are using the 2.4 GHz frequency since these are the most widely available pcmcia cards. The problems we have found on a fixed wireless network is that there is no way 2.4 GHz will transmit these kinds of distances without external directional antennas. Add to that shadows from buildings, terrian features and trees and you're going to see many lost packets and retransmits which will bring the network to it's knees. Plus, as you add more customers, you will see the ambient signal levels rise due to scattering from all those antennas which will lower the signal to noise ratios. Hopefully they have found ways to combat these problems and I'm wrong but it sure looks like deja-vu to me. snoig
    • Well, having lived in the Dakotas for 22 years, I'll toss in my two cents.

      1. It's flat - a moderate power FM station with a 150 foot tower will broadcast 150 miles. There are no terran features outside of the Black Hills in Southwestern South Dakota. There are few trees in the Dakotas outside of the Black Hills.

      2. On farms/ranches most people already have a CB or two-way radio tower. Alot of people have been getting thier own cell towers over the last 13 years.

      3. When you are talking about the Dakotas and urban centers, you are talking about a town of about 2-900 with one story buildings and a scattering of 1-400 more people living within 5 miles of the town in single family houses. The "big" urban areas are 5-15 thousand (Pierre, Bismarck, Aberdeen, Watertown, etc) and the cities are 25-100 thousand (Fargo/Morehead, Sioux Falls, Rapid City). The big cities already have modern Internet services. The majority of people live on farms or ranches at least a quarter mile from the next house.

      The Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming are unlike anyother place in the US and while the poster above has the insight from working for a wireless company...the Dakotas are just different and I'm not sure that one can make a general judgement call on them unless you've lived there.
      • Thanks for the 2 cents, but just so you know, the company I work for has/had towers in Nebraska and Montana among others. Your points are well taken and terrian features are much less of a problem there than where I am (Colorado mountians) but your points about FM and CB's are comparing apples to oranges. I'm not sure what the FCC FM power limits are in the Dakotas but they are several orders of magnitude larger than what can be broadcast from a pcmcia device and power is proportional to distance. Remember, we are talking about digital packet switching here, not analog transmission. As I said before, people trying to communicate from fringe areas will generate packet retransmits which can flood the network bringing it to it's knees. Also, most of my points have to do with the mobile aspect of the service, well designed fixed wireless networks will work great in that part of the country. Hopefully, they have found ways to combat these problems but when I was testing all this stuff, the basic conclusion was that it worked great when you had just a few subscribers but as you added nodes, things degraded.

      • My sister lives about 80 miles northwest of Yankton and they receive their 'cable tv' via a little directional antenna that looks a bit like a DSS dish, but smaller. The signal is broadcast from the cable operator in the town about 10-15 miles away. They've had that for several years before DSS became widely available.

        Most of the little towns have two story buildings along their main streets, but the major obstacles would probably be the grain elevators and storage silos. Those and water towers are usually the only things one sees poking above the trees.

        That area is great. I'd like to find a *nix job there and move back.

      • I think that you underestimate the size of our larger cities here in the Dakotas. The first part about small towns is quite accurate. However, I don't think anyone really considers the 5,000-15,000 person cities to be "'big' urban areas". The objection I have to your comments is that you classed Bismarck in the less than 15,00 range, when in fact it has more than FIFTY thousand people. This is in fact around the size of Rapid City South Dakota as well. The Fargo/Moorhead metro area is almost twice the size that you have quoted, coming in around 175,000. I understand that you may have lived here, but get your facts right and don't make our cities look smaller than they actually are!

    • Actually No (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Check out the Faq, first. They are not using 802.11. They are using cdma (cell Phone technology). Do note they are on somebody elses spectrum as they are at 1.9GHz. They will suffer the same problems as CellPhone.

      While they don't describe the data rate, it should be 128K.

      They do mention that login is 6-10 secs. What is interesting is that you will suffer the same problems that Cellphones users suffer. That is, if not enough towers with low power, then it will quickly saturate. But in doing so, they will limit what they cover.

      http://www.monetmobile.com/support/displayFaqCat .a sp?catID=8
      • Thanks for the url, I looked all over thier site before I posted but couldn't find it.

        Obviously cdma will work better than 802.11 for mobile use but it will still have the problems that cell phone users experience.
    • They are using CDMA2000, not 802.11b - initially 1x, with later upgrade to 1xEV-DO (2 Mbps). They are not doing fixed wireless - they are called Monet *Mobile* Networks. CDMA2000 is likely to be in existing licensed spectrum.

  • The Midwest... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drenehtsral ( 29789 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:45PM (#2548556) Homepage
    The midwest is a wireless imlementor's dream. There's no hills, no trees, no mountains, and few cities. Any line-of-sight wireless system will thrive there because initially when the customer base is small, they can still cover a large service area with a small number of towers, and then ass they fill up decrease transmitter power and increase density of towers.
    • This is a good strategy but as you increase the number of transmitters, you do have problems with overlaping frequencies so there is a limit to how much you can do this.
    • no hills or trees? you're not from there, are you? It's far from pool table flat.

      • That depends on which state and the part of it. IIRC, the area in question is somewhat flat, but it still has a few hills and trees. I saw a digital elevation model for one part of ND that a friend was processing and the major changes in elevation in the section they were working on were due to road ditches.

        In general, it's would still be a good place for wireless.

      • I live in Fargo, and it IS as flat as a pool table.

        The entire Red River Valley is the bottom of the glacial lake Agassi that covered a few states back a few thousand years. :)

        Being the bottom of a lake, it is completely flat.
  • Storm [storm.ca] does it... the setup price last I checked was about $450 ($3.00 USD) but it seemed to be very good service and speed. (comparable to @Home)

    I just never checked it out, but it seems that here in Canada, Ottawa is 'wire-less' too.
  • I hate to tell you, but AT&T had flat-rate wireless CDPD access 3 years ago. It was only 19.2, but it was about $55/month, all you could eat. Handy for downloading email in the bakground on my laptop.
    • They also had a higher-speed fixed service. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/221240 [slashdot.org]

      Bird in hand, two in bush ;) Similar service from Verizon is slightly cheaper, but it's also not available (at least in the flat-rate plan) all that far ... this is cheaper, for more speed, but of course, does mean living in places that most people don't want to live. (They don't look bad to me, necessarily -- I like cold, but not sure if I like it *quite* that much.)

  • Wireless in MN (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dave3138 ( 528919 )
    I'm using Xtratyme [xtratyme.com] wireless in Minnesota. Their strategy is to partner with local businesses (mosty farm co-ops and grain elevators) to provide service. For the most part, their access points are located on grain elevators and water towers in small towns. Here is a coverage map [xtratyme.com]. I'm paying $39.99 a month, I'm allowed to run servers (if I'm respectful of bandwidth), and I'm getting a /29 network routed to me.

  • Monet Sucks (Score:2, Informative)

    by Laslo7 ( 415939 )
    I am the only user of Monet in Sioux Falls SD. All I have to say about the service is, can't deliver. They claim the the 2x modem speed yet repeated trips to dslreports.com and their speed test reveal 20-50 kps about the same as dial in the area. Also I have a desktop computer and the pcmcia card reader they gave me is serial and if I remember correctly that has a bandwidth of 112kps so I will never get their claimed speed of 153kps.

    So far the only thing that has impressed is the 30 trial period, of which I have 14 days left.
    • Since you obviously work for Monet why don't you tell me why I received a serial pcmcia card reader, according to the numerous techs I have spoken with is the only on they have issued, is serial and not USB? I would also like to know if you live in ND or SD. The sales person that I spoke with promised me in excess of 300kps that is a pipe dream considering CDMA technology in its present form is limited to 153k and that is the manufacturers of the cards themselves. The Merlin C201 from Novatel has and I quote: reliable wireless data communications at speeds up to 153.6 kbps. This information can be found at http://www.novatelwireless.com Also the Gtran card that I received came with buggy software, now I realize that this is all beta software and that the card hasn't even received FCC approval yet. But you would think that a piece of software would actually allow you to boot into your OS, and in this case Winbloze 98. And yes I did the install correctly and a tech told to uninstall the software and reinstall with his guidance all to no avail.

      All I want out of the service is what I was promised. If it is not delivered then I won't be a subscriber of their service. And if you are an employee of Monet then that is another strike against them. Even though the Customer Service that I have received so far is exemplary.

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