Steve Perlman claims to have a new approach to revolutionize wireless networks w pCell/Artemis

[bigsnake49]

Exactly, charlie has been very quiet as of late, and this could be his way of making a big splash.

 

Possibly something similar to what sprint planned with clear? And possibly a little investment from Sprint?

 

It will be a blockbuster for everybody involved. A lot of intense negotiations still going on. If egos don't get in the way!

[The Dave]

If this did result in a partnership between wireless providers and the likes of Dish, just think how this will play out in the cable industry. It would be great to finally provide a true alternative to big cable and help bring the industry down to a more down to earth business model for everyone. I would love to jump on a Sprint-Dish solution if this new pCell technology can deliver.

[dnicekid]

Please feel free to chime in.

 

My thought is with charlie seemingly backing down and claiming "Softbank is too much"

He either has a very "sneaky" Plan, or he has a ally or friend with Softbank. While dish and sprint already have the broadband deal, this would be icing on the cake!

 

Pcell apparently gets much better reception, so streaming video would be the norm, that's what charlie wants... Not only would he be able to get stable home broadband speeds but you could add a pcell Sim to your LTE phone and have TV etc on the go with his service.

 

Sprint and dish together can now compete with everyone from cable to Cellphone service,

The scary thing is with the possibility of the merger this could potentially blow up fast!

 

I wonder how much money a company could possibly save by deploying this in between lte weak/dead spots. This could be a starting point in urban areas and possibly save millions in rural areas, just stick them on lights on the highways or telephone poles.

 

Just some thoughts

[bigsnake49]

Please feel free to chime in.

 

My thought is with charlie seemingly backing down and claiming "Softbank is too much"

He either has a very "sneaky" Plan, or he has a ally or friend with Softbank. While dish and sprint already have the broadband deal, this would be icing on the cake!

 

Pcell apparently gets much better reception, so streaming video would be the norm, that's what charlie wants... Not only would he be able to get stable home broadband speeds but you could add a pcell Sim to your LTE phone and have TV etc on the go with his service.

 

Sprint and dish together can now compete with everyone from cable to Cellphone service,

The scary thing is with the possibility of the merger this could potentially blow up fast!

 

I wonder how much money a company could possibly save by deploying this in between lte weak/dead spots. This could be a starting point in urban areas and possibly save millions in rural areas, just stick them on lights on the highways or telephone poles.

 

Just some thoughts

 

Yes, the possibilities are endless. The problem is backhaul.

[bigsnake49]

I'm also very intrigued by something that Steve said during the Columbia demo about the application of the concept to non-communication areas and said it was mindblowing. Anybody care to speculate what that might be? 

 

This concept is definitely a major breakthrough!

[milan03]

Keep in mind that with pCell technology, Charlie wouldn't even need a wireless operator to partner with. They could easily fund their own deployment in major cities, then spread out. They have more than enough spectrum for very solid internet service using pCell technology.

 

Technology appears to be working very well, and Artemis seems to push for low cost LoS mesh networking and millimeter wave radio which will provide significant cost reduction to operators. That's what they use around their offices in San Francisco, and claim 5ms on existing LTE device, or sub 1ms using native pCell radios.

 

Artemis could also use unlicensed 900Mhz spectrum and partner with content delivery companies like Netflix to deliver the content themselves, but you can only imagine what could Apple do with this technology, eliminating the middle man (Comcast, Verizon, TWC) and delivering the content straight to your AppleTV! Same with Google.

[dnicekid]

i am not sure, but i thought charlie was hurting for cash where selling to dtv was considered. i guess he could sell off some of his spectrum for a quick cash infusion?  However, if he doesnt partner it could finish him if it doesnt pan out or if isnt exclusive to him in the beginning. especially if he hurting financially.

 

If he did partner with softbank, this could see its way overseas with softbank and be global quickly, which son would love for sure.

 

With all the possibilities of pcell this could really shake things up in the wireless world, or make it an even playing field between the 4.

 

Gov will want to step in , as they might end up losing a lot of money from spectrum sales.

[dnicekid]

I'm also very intrigued by something that Steve said during the Columbia demo about the application of the concept to non-communication areas and said it was mindblowing. Anybody care to speculate what that might be? 

 

This concept is definitely a major breakthrough!

just guess... but some type sat tie in?

[bigsnake49]

just guess... but some type sat tie in?

He said it had nothing to do with communications.

[bigsnake49]

Keep in mind that with pCell technology, Charlie wouldn't even need a wireless operator to partner with. They could easily fund their own deployment in major cities, then spread out. They have more than enough spectrum for very solid internet service using pCell technology.

 

Technology appears to be working very well, and Artemis seems to push for low cost LoS mesh networking and millimeter wave radio which will provide significant cost reduction to operators. That's what they use around their offices in San Francisco, and claim 5ms on existing LTE device, or sub 1ms using native pCell radios.

 

Artemis could also use unlicensed 900Mhz spectrum and partner with content delivery companies like Netflix to deliver the content themselves, but you can only imagine what could Apple do with this technology, eliminating the middle man (Comcast, Verizon, TWC) and delivering the content straight to your AppleTV! Same with Google.

 

Steve mentioned Apple and Google in his interview with Bloomberg TV. Apple, get off your behind and invest in infrastructure!

[milan03]

Steve mentioned Apple and Google in his interview with Bloomberg TV. Apple, get off your behind and invest in infrastructure!

It really takes one big signing to start the ball rolling and change the entire industry. Just hoping they don't sell out easily.

 

If let's say Apple decides to include pCell native radio on their next iPad or AppleTV products, and install their own pWave radios nationwide for media content delivery, the entire wireless and wireline landscape could quickly change. Dish could become a major player with their own massive and completely unused spectrum, but Google, Apple, or anyone else could provide content in the 900Mhz band, driving the CableCo prices down.

 

Just hoping these tech giants recognize the potential and aren't afraid to commit and disrupt, because we all know how unregulated the wireless industry really is...

[bigsnake49]

It really takes one big signing to start the ball rolling and change the entire industry. Just hoping they don't sell out easily.

 

If let's say Apple decides to include pCell native radio on their next iPad or AppleTV products, and install their own pWave radios nationwide for media content delivery, the entire wireless and wireline landscape could quickly change. Dish could become a major player with their own massive and completely unused spectrum, but Google, Apple, or anyone else could provide content in the 900Mhz band, driving the CableCo prices down.

 

Just hoping these tech giants recognize the potential and aren't afraid to commit and disrupt, because we all know how unregulated the wireless industry really is...

 

Dish does not have massive amounts of spectrum, Sprint does. As far as the tech giants are concernerned, they are probably more open to a disruptive model than are the carriers. I hope that Sprint and Tmobile hop aboard.

[milan03]

Dish does not have massive amounts of spectrum, Sprint does. As far as the tech giants are concernerned, they are probably more open to a disruptive model than are the carriers. I hope that Sprint and Tmobile hop aboard.

Sprint clearly has the most incredible spectrum portfolio, but Dish doesn't have any issues with legacy technologies, their spectrum is completely greenfield. They can deploy pCell native if they wish and achieve greater efficiencies, or go with LTE/pWave, and still do incredibly well. 

 

The point is that if technology delivers as advertised, new players can finally start competing with current wireless operators and cable companies, driving the quality up and price down.

[utiz4321]

I don't get how this is suppose to work.

[Nickel]

So, I'm reading this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/5g-service-on-your-4g-phone (thanks Milan!)

and if I'm reading it correctly then you have "dumb" cells that are hooked up to fiber or microwave backhaul and there in the example they use there's ten of them. That sounds really expensive.

[milan03]

So, I'm reading this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/5g-service-on-your-4g-phone (thanks Milan!)

and if I'm reading it correctly then you have "dumb" cells that are hooked up to fiber or microwave backhaul and there in the example they use there's ten of them. That sounds really expensive.

"“They’re dumb devices,” Perlman says, serving merely as waypoints for relaying and deciphering signals. Each one could be placed anywhere that’s convenient and would link back to the data center through a fiber or wireless line-of-sight Internet connection."

 

What they mean is much less complex radio heads when compared to the existing LTE deployment since all of the base station leg work is done remotely at the data centers not at the cell site silicon.

[Nickel]

"“They’re dumb devices,” Perlman says, serving merely as waypoints for relaying and deciphering signals. Each one could be placed anywhere that’s convenient and would link back to the data center through a fiber or wireless line-of-sight Internet connection."

 

What they mean is much less complex radio heads when compared to the existing LTE deployment since all of the base station leg work is done remotely at the data centers not at the cell site silicon.

Yeah, I got that after a little more reading, did you read the first comment? Really interesting:

 

I cannot believe IEEE Spectrum has posted this article. It is OK for New York Times to fall for the propaganda of a startup, but IEEE? Come on. This is just the centralized version of the well-known Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (COMP) transmission, Network MIMO, or cloud RAN, etc. (there are many terms for it, and DIDO is the term they invented). It was well studied many years ago, and some version was also enabled/standardized in 4G/LTE. Just do a Google search on these terms and you will find hundreds of papers on the topic. The basic idea is to just connect many basestations together to a central processing unit and treat them as one super basestation and use standard multi-user MIMO technqiues (my bet is that they are just doing linear precoding not dirty paper type nonlinear coding since the mobiles need little updates) across all antennas in this super basestation to isolate users. Judging from this personal-cell propaganda, my bet is that they are doing coherent CoMP to ensure coherent signal combining at each user location and perfect isolation among users, and perhaps time-division-duplex (TDD) to acquire channel responses at the central unit by exploiting the reciprocity of signal paths in uplink and downlink directions. Since some iPhone 5s/5c support TDD-LTE bands (bands 38-40), they may be using the existing uplink sounding reference signals (SRS) in the LTE standard for the super basestation to estimate the downlink channel responses, from which the antenna coefficients needed to isolate the users can be computed. If you have a total of 40 antennas (say, 20 basestations, each with 2 antennas), you can isolate 40 users by basically just inverting a 40 by 40 matrix of channel responses. If you just want to serve 8 users, you can isolate them even better since you have more degrees of freedom. The number of users that one can isolate is limited by the total number of antennas over all connected basestations (unless they are doing non-linear dirty paper type coding). They would also need to either calibrate the transmit and receive radio chains of each basestation (but no need on the phones if they demonstrate with the same phone) or do some compensation adaptively so that the signal paths including the radio components in uplink and downlink directions are truely reciprocal. This centralized CoMP requires tremendous amount of low-latency, high bandwidth backhaul resources and is not scalable. Also, if the whole georgraphical area only has this one super cell using the frequency band, you will see tremendous throughput gains. But once you need to partition the basestations into groups with individual central units (e.g. due to backhaul or latency limitations), the uncoordinated interference between groups will substantially reduce the throughput. You still see gain but is not as drastic. But I bet they are only doing one super cell to show huge gains using their testbed. There are decentralized versions of COMP that do not need the central processing unit, which, in my opinion, are better.

Please do not claim you "break the Shannon laws" with this, as Perlman did in some previous articles. It is offensive to communication engineers and especially information theorists. :-)

I like the look of the access node though. Nice!

[TaiKing]

It would kind of depend on how much was known about this around the industry before the announcement but now I'm wondering it this had any kind of hand in drama that's been going on in the cable industry when Charter seemed to be desperately trying to do a hostile takeover of Time Warner Cable and then shortly after that it comes out about Comcast buying TWC. Now that this is out in the public I'm definitely wondering if the cable companies had gotten word about this a while back and they're trying to protect themselves by consolidating.

[iansltx]

Consider my interest piqued.

 

This sounds like something that's best suited to really dense deployments...due to the number of base stations required unless I'm mistaken (and I probably am)...so it's something that operators would use in place of a DAS. For office buildings, malls, hotels, airports and maybe even large apartment complexes this steps up the capacity game when spectrum would otherwise be the limiting factor. That's pretty cool. But if you have lots of spectrum already, you can keep speeds higher for longer as the network gets loaded. So Sprint is in a nice position here.

 

As for this competing with wireline broadband access, I doubt it. The density of backhaul connectivity required to pull this off probably means that those same backhaul providers could just run a wire to the end user. Unless they're using 60GHz or some other wireless backhaul medium, or pWave ends up being a substitute for home WiFi (which could happen...that'd be interesting, though speeds would be lower than 802.11ac can provide).

[MrZorbatron]

Ha! Still bullshit!

 

I actually have been writing a letter-length post to explain a few of my points, but as I have been inordinately preoccupied over the last few days, I haven't finished it.

[richy]

I'll leave others far more informed to discuss how possible this is, although some of the technologies mentioned have already found use in wifi and newer implementations of LTE so some of it at least is not entirely seamonkeys. 

 

However I see some significant benefits for sprint, unless I misunderstand how this works, it would mean Sprint wouldn't need to buy as much or any 600MHz spectrum. It's relatively limited Nextel spectrum would 'go a lot farther' capacity wise and even range rise. It should also help in rural areas.

 

I'll reserve judgement until it's deployed in anger but it has potential, although it does seem a little too good to be true. I would love to see this used for VOD and fixed location broadband. It would allow Sprint to do rain havoc on a few companies that have gotten complacent, fat and far to used to screwing consumers who have very few if any alternatives. 

[cavendano]

Steve mentioned Apple and Google in his interview with Bloomberg TV. Apple, get off your behind and invest in infrastructure!

 

 

I don't see Apple laying out infrastructure. They may just be on board to test it on their devices avoiding another antennagate.

 

 

 

Loved what he said about VZ and AT&T:

We had a business meeting yesterday where the guy brought an AT&T and a Verizon phone just so he could talk to a partner neither of them worked he said can we have a landline.

I wonder if there were any AT&T or VZ users watching this video that said "ok now this is BS I pay top dollar and get service everywhere!"

[bigsnake49]

 

I don't see Apple laying out infrastructure. They may just be on board to test it on their devices avoiding another antennagate.

 

 

 

Loved what he said about VZ and AT&T:

 

I wonder if there were any AT&T or VZ users watching this video that said "ok now this is BS I pay top dollar and get service everywhere!"

 

 

On some of the higher floors of skyscrapers there might not be coverage, particularly if the antennas are on the roof of a lower building because of the downtilt. So it could happen....I have no idea if it did happen.

[utiz4321]

 

I don't see Apple laying out infrastructure. They may just be on board to test it on their devices avoiding another antennagate.

 

 

 

Loved what he said about VZ and AT&T:

I wonder if there were any AT&T or VZ users watching this video that said "ok now this is BS I pay top dollar and get service everywhere!"

VZw and ATT customer don't pay top dollar to get service everywhere, not even in there home town because ATT and vzw or any wireless provider for that matter don't offer service everywhere. Not even in a coverage area, read the disclaimers on their coverage maps if you are skeptical.

[cavendano]

VZw and ATT customer don't pay top dollar to get service everywhere, not even in there home town because ATT and vzw or any wireless provider for that matter don't offer service everywhere. Not even in a coverage area, read the disclaimers on their coverage maps if you are skeptical.

Are you serious? I was being sarcastic. Although there are VZ and AT&T users that think that way. Just go to engadget and read the comments of anything wireless related.