Voice is a different matter it requires some decent bandwidth, bluetooth can provide it for wireless headsets. The telcos charge exorbinant amounts for the very low-bandwidth SMS services, why ? Because they have centralized user-management and routing systems, they also theoretically have a lot of QoS, security and privacy policies. Yet again in the club scenario SMS is one of the best ways to communicate, voice will be lost in the din and will require the callee to switch location.
Let's consider how we can break the monopoly without paying zillions to licence our own mobile band. Solution will be to build a user maintained/powered/administered zigbee mesh. Zigbee can power itself from energy-harvesting - thumping on the dance floor, peltier sucking off some of the coldness in your beer or the heat in your coffee. We always go over the top in our energy use, it would be nice to channel some of it into free/cheaper communication. The zigbee mesh can take and channel the first hop, suppose the SMS target is beyond mesh reach, what do we do ? We hop on the old faithful - IP.
But at the end someone has to pay the piper (the transmitter of data). Working out who does that and how much is a political issue, but I definitely want a cheaper piper. If energy harvesting lets me sing and dance to send an SMS I will do that.
1 comment:
Mesh is awesome technology in the developing world.
In rich countries it won't fly because of the inertia of entrenched providers. People won't buy alternative technology when the mainstream technology works more reliably and is within a cost band that citizens of rich countries can afford.
Basically, when discussing communication technology, you'll happily use whatever your neighbors are using, so that you can continue to communicate, regardless of the technical strengths or weaknesses involved in said technology.
In rich countries the business arrangements only need to be affordable for the users, they needn't be "as efficient as possible". People are more concerned with ease of use in rich countries.
If you want to see what mesh networks are capable of, focus on economically constrained environments. They'll also be good for places where line of sight and the cost of trenching can be issues.
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