Rodent Regatta

Many home and small office users of bandwidth are elated with their upgrades to DSL or cable modems from dial-up connections to the Internet. They have immediately experienced the difference in a speed of approximately 40Kbps and something between 1000Kbps to 2000Kbps. In other words, they’re seeing the practical connection speed of 56K modems contrasted with the practical connection speed of a 1.5Mbps to 2.0Mbps line. Here’s some data.

The connections vary in price (approximately) like this:

• Dial-up $15.95 to $23.95 per month
• Residential DSL or cable $40 to $50 per month
• Business DSL, cable or fractional T1 $100 to $300 per month

Here’s what I’d like to build:

Why can’t an ISP provide an 802.11x signal over a wide area at a price of say $30.00 per month for the consumer or $150 for the business? Users could work at home or the office. The 802.11x network could have truly high speed bandwidth for the backhaul. Ultimately voice-over-IP will come (reliably) to 802.11 networks. Why isn’t this the fountain of youth for an ISP? What are the gating or limiting factors? Is it technology that’s not available (802.16)? Is it a capital problem? Is it fear of cannibalizing existing business?

If 802.11x signals could be provided reliably from an antenna over a 2 to 5 mile radius, it wouldn’t take many towers to cover a city area that is 25 to 100 square miles. In fact, if the antenna covers a 2-mile radius, that’s an area of 12.57 square miles. A radius of 5 miles gets 78.54 miles.

At the extremes, this means that from 1 to 8 antennae could do the job. Even if such a rough calculation is off by a factor of 2, what could 16 antennae and the associated equipment cost? $15,000 each? $25,000? $100,000? These are not large amounts of money when one figures that customers will be subscribing at $30 to $150 per month.

What’s missing? Why isn’t this being done?