Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Ted, what?

I know free phones are a big deal, but...
Each handset has an effective range of about one kilometre.
That's 0.62137119 miles

I can't even reach my nearby neighbors nor my children with this "free phone" service.

Maybe I'll wait for more.

Via A Bunch of Numbers (hint: Ted Compton).

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3 Comments:

Blogger Ted Compton said...

I don't know, sounds like a good idea to me. The thing here is each phone acts as a relay for every other phone within range. So in principle you should be able to talk as far as you want if only you have another phone every half mile or so along the way. A network without the towers.

The thing I find a bit iffy is that it's being put forward as a solution for underdeveloped remote areas where building a conventional network with towers is difficult or impossible. Seems to me it would be a lot more effective in a densely populated area like, say, Manhattan, where you should be able to almost guarantee there's a phone operating within half a mile of any given point. Ought to work just fine in a case like that (assuming the whole thing's more than vaporware to begin with).

Anyway isn't this sort of how some of those distributed downloading schemes work, every client also becoming a node in a distributed server?

9/12/2007 01:17:00 AM  
Blogger SPIIDERWEB™ said...

Duh! I think I get it now.

It still seems a little iffy only because everything is lacking in some countries, but its a start.

AAA (As An Aside): Its so strange to be in a third world country and see cell phone towers everywhere.

9/12/2007 10:19:00 AM  
Blogger Ted Compton said...

Yeah, that does sound strange. What would be even more strange is seeing cell towers everywhere here. Here in deepest New England we have some kind of spotty service. I suppose it's partly due to the terrain and partly due to the fact we're still using the original network the Pilgrims installed, talk about your aging infrastructure.

I don't know if this P2P scheme would work any better in a place like this. I might try beating drums or sending up smoke.

9/12/2007 07:06:00 PM  

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