RTP-area local music and culture

[ron thigpen <ron AT fuzzsonic.com>]

grady wrote:

> If nextel's cellular broadband is true 3-G, it's going to be more like 
> 500kb/s with "bursts" up to 2MB/s. Which is still nothing to shake a 
> stick at, to be sure. (Sprint is currently offering a 2.5-G service 
> which hovers around 144kbps.)

It's not either.  From what I've read, they're using proprietary 
technology from Flarion called FLASH-OFDM.

You know: Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff with Orthogonal 
Frequency Division Multiplexing.  Lovely acronym.

According to Nextel it's good for "typical downlink speeds up to 1.5 
Mbps, with occasional speeds, or bursts, as high as 3.0 Mbps, and 
typical uplink speeds up to 375 Kbps, with occasional speeds, or bursts, 
as high as 750 Kbps".  That's as good as most DSL packages and what 
cable was before the last round of competitive upgrades.

> It *will* be contingent on you being able to get a decent 
> digital-cellular signal -- here's their coverage map, which is about as 
> useless as any other coverage map: 
> http://www.nextel.com/cgi-bin/localMarketMap.cgi?zip=27510

Nextel Broadband is the service name, and it has it's own map.  Probably 
different equipment on the same leased towers.  And, yeah, ability to 
connect from a given location is hardly guaranteed in writing.

<http://www.nextelbroadband.com/ab_maps.html>

> I'd like to encourage everyone to continue listening to over-the-air 
> broadcast radio, at least until the nation's ISPs get together and 
> implement something akin to true IP-multicast on their routers.

Multicast makes a lot of sense.  If I had to predict, I'd guess there'd 
be fewer people tuning in on general purpose devices connected via 
all-service ISPs and more IP radios accessing their own private 
networks.  Which is sorta how digital cable works, except w/o the cable.

> Just a few more years until FM broadcast goes digital, which means 
> better audio quality in a narrower bandwidth, which should in theory 
> either allow for more stations in any given market, or allow the 
> existing stations to expand their coverage beyond current boundaries.

If the politics of NAB and congress allow it to be so.  Current license 
holders seem to think they own that bandwidth and given the regulatory 
climate, they kinda do.

--rt