Now more coverage!  Still unlimited talk & text for $30/month

Tag Archives for signal

Future For Mobile Phones

When WAP was first announced, it was hailed as the latest stage in an information culture that would allow people to access the things they need at a moment’s notice. WAP promised up to the minute news and local information that would revolutionise the way we lived, but failed to deliver.

The technology at the time of WAP’s introduction was limited by cost, so mobile phones had small monochrome screens, and were unable to show much in the way of information or pictures. The other major problem for users was that very few webmasters at the time offered a version of their site that would be suitable for use on the smaller screens of Mobile Phones, which meant that vast areas of the web were all but inaccessible.

The download speeds offered by early WAP phones were another hurdle, although had websites been available in a stripped down format, the access speed would have been much higher.

Of course in the intervening years since the first WAP phones, the state of mobile internet has improved enormously, with huge steps being taken in both the accessibility of individual web sites, and also in the ability of the phones to handle the information that they are sent at a reasonable speed.

The latest mobile internet standard 3G offers internet download speeds comparable with a home broadband connection, and provided that you have a good signal, it is possible to access information at high speed whenever you want to.

Perhaps the main selling points for the future of the mobile internet are in easing the interaction between the user and the publisher, for example making it a simple matter to post a video onto YouTube or another sharing site, update your blog on the go with a photo or your thoughts. The other major space for expansion in the mobile internet world is in local services, by which the mobile phone will transmit its location to the network, and you will receive appropriate adverts and local news such as traffic information that are suited to your exact position.

Since it was first introduced, mobile internet access has increased in importance to become a major part of how we use our mobile phones every day, and the more we come to require information at any given time, the more we will come to rely on having access to the internet wherever we are, and whenever we want it.

Mobile Internet For Your Car

So, you just finished watching MTV’s “Pimp Your Ride” and you need to add a little something different to make your car stand out from the crowd. What can you do? How about adding Mobile Internet to your vehicle. It is not as hard or expensive as you might think.

Here is what is needed

Mobile Router:

This is similar to a typical home router with one exception. It uses a Sprint Mobile Broadband Card to provide the internet, allowing you to use it anywhere, even in motion! It converts a Mobile Broadband Card into a Wi-Fi signal that up to 5 laptops can use at the same time. One of the best options for this would be the CradlePoint PHS300 or the CTR500 Mobile Router. Why? These are some of the smallest (about the size of a wallet) mobile routers on the market and are well under $200. The PHS300 is even battry powered so you don’t even need to plug it in! For the other models, just plug an inverter into the cigarette lighter and the unit is now powered up and ready to surf the internet, even while driving down the road at 75 MPH. Of course, that would be for the passengers to enjoy, not the driver!

Mobile Broadband Service:

This is the increasingly popular Mobile Internet service that Sprint, Verizon and others are now selling. For just $59.99 a month, Sprint and Verizon offer high speed internet access anywhere in the USA. These services can be used directly in a laptop for one user, or in this case, directly into the Mobile Router so that multiple users can tap into the same card at the same time.

Laptop:

This one is quite obvious, but there are two ways to connect the laptop to the Mobile Router. One is with an Ethernet cable direct from the router to the computer. The second way would be to just connect through wi-fi. As long as the laptop has built-in wireless, as all newer laptops do, the laptop will find the wi-fi signal the Mobile Router is producing.

Extras:

If extra range is needed on your Mobile Internet set-up, or if the vehicle is often in remote areas there are two products that can greatly increase your performance. The first is an external Antenna. All the current Mobile Broadband Cards have ports to attach these antennas, enabling a more powerful antenna to boost the signal and thus the performance of the card. Amplifiers are even more beneficial. These devices add up to 3 watts of power to the Antenna, which can turn a very weak signal into an average or even strong signal. Not only will these add-ons help your performance, but they will add a bit of the “WOW” factor when people are admiring your unique vehicle.

Mobile Internet Satellite Broadband – chapter 1

Being on the road has its advantages; the freedom is the biggest one. One draw back was the Internet Service, but having done much study on the mobile Internet Satellite Systems and future technologies; I was able to become a beta tester of the MotoSat system in 1999. I have used the system ever sense.

My company, the Car Wash Guys had joined forces with a Strategic Alliance of GM Hughes Satellite Division to beta test the First Fully Self contained, fully Networked Mobile Corporate Office, taking advantage of the newest in WiFi technology. We were the first in the world to have this powerful capabilities which at the time nearly blew away the Pentagon’s Performance with their 77 million dollar investment and Iridium Bailout.

Mobile Corporate Offices are the Wave of the future, where Network Centric Warfare (Net-Centric) in the marketplace combined with strategic mobile command centers used to create a network of networks, which will eventually dominate all of their market sectors. Corporate Giants are slowly learning the game is changing. And we are the ones teaching them. We are the leaders in technology and they will have to learn the hard way. Car Wash Guys are leading everyone’s industry this time. As far as the car wash industry is concerned we left them in the dust a decade ago. Today we use 20 times less water, a third of the labor and spend less than a tenth of the capital to do it. We now have much bigger fish to fry as we go for the gold. To work with this technology you must move your business at the speed of thought.

We at our Bravo research team of WashGuys, had been studying the newest in satellite technologies. Most of our recent studies have been on satellite data transmissions and as many of you know we have become very knowledgeable over the years with satellite communications, I happened to live next door in Malibu from a physicist who worked at the Rockwell Research Center in Thousand Oaks CA. First we would like to talk about actually data transmission speeds and problems associated with relays and problems of security of data when data jumps from satellite to satellite or from satellite to ground. Also with the problems of relay where any and all data can be recorded. As everyone knows the Pentagon bailed out the Iridium project, which is good since we have learned so much from this. The 75 million dollar contract helped pay the bills of 7 million a month including the 40 million per year to Boeing who flies the satellites. Iridium was nice in that it covered the whole Earth, all oceans and remote areas, with spare satellites ready just in case. Iridium had 66 satellites in orbit in use at about 485,000 up. Very close and helps with data lag associated with satellites which is normally a half second or more. The data can be transmitted at 1Mbs, which is slow considering the Wash Guys data transmission capabilities of 10-12.265 Mps up load and the 1Mbs download, faster than that of the US Department of Defense. The other problem we see with their system is the relay in Tempe, AZ home of Motorola, which is unsafe due to the newest wave of possible terrorist devices such as the brief case electronic impulse devises which work from building tops and could easily destroy its relay station. This is why other systems, which are not voice systems and generally web based and data use satellites are much better such as the Globalstar System.

With Globalstar, which is in debt and filed bankruptcy, due to small amount of debt to Qualcomm who is also in trouble and Loral, it may cease to exist. EuroCom has a neat system, which is used in the shipping industry and there is an interesting article in Professional Mariner this month about them and a few others. It is similar to Imersat and supports PBX and PABX systems on ships. Of course the bent pipe approach by GlobalStar is worth considering its 48 operational satellites and the four spares. Only real problem is the range of 70 degrees north to 60 degrees south. And also the gaps if you let’s say in the middle of the ocean at sea level in the South Atlantic and or middle of the Pacific. Several satellites can transmit the coded signal but unlike the Iridium system the Satellites do not talk to themselves. But all in all Global Star data transmissions are still about 9.6 KBPS and actually slightly less than the Iridium system, which does not have the lapse in service.

The Iridium of course is the Arthur C. Clark theory in practice and is worthy of note; the big problem right now with data transmission is the problems with direct sight to satellite, which we have encountered. Hard for submarines, and below decks on vessels or in buildings. Good for catching bad guys who have to go out in the open to use the phone, they do not work in caves either. Iridium like all of Microsoft software has triple redundancy, and uses CDMA technologies to gateway the data from transmission point into the terrestrial system. Inmarsat Systems include the I-4 system, which can transmit data at 432 MBPS turns out to be excellent for things like video conferencing. The newest satellites by Inmarsat are said to be able to 10 times more communications than the current ones. Since the Inmarsat satellites are at 22,300 miles up three satellites cover the Earth with 3 back-ups. But remember with that altitude there is a time delay. You will notice this when you see video feed from the Middle East Wars on live broadcasts on TV, CNN.