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CostEffective IT: 100 Megabit Wireless
Cost-Effective
IT: 100 Megabit Wireless,
by
Richard Sonnier
Houston
Business Show "Advisor" Richard Sonnier, of the Information
Technology Services firm Nimble Services, Inc., provides weekly
information on our show about business technology issues. He can be
reached at 281-445-4800 x250 or rsonnier@nimbleservices.com.
This week I will discuss new networking technology being developed at
Rice University.
Market Opportunity
Professor Edward Knightly is working on a new vision for a national
network. It called the 100x100 project and is funded by the National
Science Foundation. The goal is to provide every home in the United
States (approximately 100 million) with a 100 Megabit per second
connection to the Internet. This is called universal broadband access
and the Brookings Institute concluded in 2001 that it would be worth
$500 billion annually to the US economy. See 100x100network.org for details.
Rice TAPs
There are several proposals for getting to the 100x100 network. Many
involve running fiber optical cables to every home. However, Professor
Knightly points at that fiber to every US home would cost an estimated
$100 billion. He believes we can leapfrog wires and cables with 100+
megabit per second wireless. His research team at Rice has developed
Transit Access Points (TAPs). The general idea is to setup multiple
fixed wireless access points that can link together to bring high speed
Internet to a large area at a fraction of the cost of wired
connections. Rice is planning a prototype network to be deployed on the
Rice campus and nearby neighborhoods. The first prototype TAPs are
being deployed and tested today. These devices deliver 440 megabits per
second or 400 times your DSL Internet connection.
This is research level technology and there are many technical issues
to be
worked out. However, given the success of other wireless technologies
like the cell phones and wireless LANs, I think TAPs has a very good
chance. The economics look very good. You read more about this research
at Professor Knightly's website.
Next week I will
discuss more new IT being developed by Houston ventures.
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