Is Cellular the New ISP?

By: John Shepler

Internet Service Provider technology has evolved dramatically in the last few decades. It stated out as audio modems over classic landline phones. Then came broadband with DSL and Cable. Business broadband started with ADSL, T1 lines & DS3, upgraded to SONET fiber and then Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. Now we may be headed back to telephone technology, as 5G cellular make a move to become an accepted Internet Service Provider.

What’s 5G Got to Offer?
5G is the latest in a long line of technology evolution for wireless mobile phone service. The earliest cellular 0 and 0.5G emerged in the 1970’s, followed by 1G and 2G technologies in the 1980’s. These were voice technologies designed to make the traditional telephone set wireless and mobile. SMS messaging appeared in 2G with e-mail and simple Web browsing added with 2.5G and 2.75G.

The first mobile service that really could be called broadband Internet access was 3G, 3.5G and 3.75G. This is what supported the rise of smartphones. The next generation (G stands for generation level of technology) 4G and 4G LTE (long term evolution) made cellular broadband a real contender as an Internet Service Provider.

The latest phones with 5G are seeing Internet speeds in the dozens to hundreds of Mbps with low latency, jitter and packet loss. The millimeter wave bands support Gigabit per second service and that may be upgraded to 10 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink with 5G-Advanced upgrades.

5G vs Cable and Fiber
More and more business is being conducted on smartphones and tablets vs desktop computers and even laptops. WiFi is useful indoors to avoid burning cell usage quotas, but while mobile and at customer locations you’ll likely be connecting via 5G from your service provider. Since that applies to all of your mobile devices, the value of an Ethernet connection is limited to desktops and wired phones, with WiFi helpful in moving about in the office or at select locations, such as restaurants.

With so much computing being done via 5G, is it possible to replace everything with a 5G account that supports all your devices?

For an increasing number of consumers and small business users, the answer is yes. Replace your cable modem or fiber termination equipment with a 5G hotspot and continue using the Internet as you always have. You may not even notice a difference in performance. Let’s face it. Once you’ve got all the bandwidth you can reasonably use at one time, doubling or tripling it doesn’t make things go any faster. The limit will likely be the server at the other end that you are connecting to.

Since 5G speeds are often a couple of hundred Mbps or more, the difference between wireless, DOCSIS 3.1 cable and Ethernet over Fiber might not even be noticeable. Where the difference does show up is in your usage limit. That’s only important if you are a heavy user or a corporate operation with dozens or hundreds of users online at the same time. It’s especially true if your business applications are being run from the cloud and accessed via the Internet.

Limitations of 5G Broadband
Yes even with “unlimited” plans, you can’t hog all the bandwidth of the cellular provider all the time. The system isn’t designed for continuous uploads or download from a single customer. Bandwidth is scarce and must be shared with a multitude of users on each tower. Your provider may not drop your connection, but you might find it slowing down severely, especially during busy times, when you are using more that your fair share of capacity.

Another issue to consider is upload vs download performance.Casual web browsing and media streaming is demanding on the download side and not so much for upload. Business applications that transfer large files to and from remote servers or the cloud may well need upload bandwidth that rivals download performance. Video conferencing and telephone call centers also need both upload and download capability about equally. This is where fiber shines. Business fiber is typically symmetrical with upload and download speeds the same. This is also usually provided with no usage restrictions, something you are unlikely to find with cable and 5G.

Selecting a Service
What service works best for your business? It depends on what you are doing and how intensely you are doing it. Some companies will find that only high speed fiber optic service will meet their needs. Others will be fine with cable or 5G wireless service at a lower cost.

Another consideration is ability to connect. While fiber may offer the best performance, there may be no fiber near your rural location or you may be in a dense metro location that hasn’t been “lit” yet. Some companies have found it best to quickly connect with a 5G hotspot and use that service while waiting for fiber to be brought in over a period of weeks or longer.

If you have a need for new or expanded broadband Internet service or are simply curious if you can make a better deal, learn what business broadband options are available and suitable for your business.

Data Caps: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

By: John Shepler

If you are a moderate or heavy online user, you have probably bumped up against data caps at some point. Just what's the story behind these seemingly arbitrary usage limits and how do you work around them?

OK, What IS a Data Cap?
A data cap is nothing more than a limit to the amount of data you can transfer through a communications channel over some period of time. While providers could set limits per hour or day, data caps are almost always defined now as so many MB or GB of usage per month. Your allocation is reset at the beginning of each month or 30 day period. You draw down your allocation over the time period as you surf the web, transfer photos, videos or data files, or backup your computer to the cloud. If you run out of data before you run out of month, there are consequences.

Why Caps Are Imposed
Data caps, especially tight ones, tend to be imposed on channels where capacity is limited. There are so many users and they each would like to have the link to themselves. If there isn't enough bandwidth to go around, the capacity that is available has to be rationed among the pool of users. This can be done by apportioning the bandwidth in Mbps among the pool of users. The other option is to let each user have the max bandwidth they are paying for but limit how much they can use the channel. That keeps heavy users from "hogging" the resources 24/7 so that lighter users never get much in the way of access.

Where do you find these data caps? Wireless services have had them from the get-go. Satellite is really another form of wireless and has similar usage limits. Wireline and fiber optic services have much more capacity than wireless channels, so the data caps are set much higher. While you might be limited to 20 GB per month on a LTE cellular wireless plan, that limit is more like 500 GB on a cable broadband plan. Only the heaviest Internet users will likely hit the cable usage limit so most people think there really is no limit.

It's important to note that data caps are really there to police fair usage of a limited resource that is shared among many users. All consumer broadband services and their equivalents sold to businesses are shared bandwidth services. The service provider buys an unlimited usage telecommunications line and then divvies it up to serve its paying customers. Each customer is assigned a bandwidth limit of "up to" so many Mbps and a usage limit of so many MB or GB per month. This arrangement keeps the most customers happy most of the time.

What Happens If You Go Over the Limit?
There are various ways of enforcing fair use of an Internet channel. Cellular plans started out setting a fixed usage limit and then automatically charging for every MB or GB you went over the limit. The danger of a plan like this is that you may not know how much you've exceeded your allocation until you get an astronomical bill. Most providers will give you the courtesy of a notification when you approach or exceed your limit to avoid the sticker shock.

A more draconian method of dealing with overages is to simply cut off service once the limit is reached. At that point you have to manually contact the provider and buy some extra capacity to get through the month or cease usage.

Neither of these usage limit methods goes over well with broadband customers. A kinder, gentler arrangement is to forget about cutting off service, but limit your access speed once you hit the limit. You might get throttled back to 10 percent or so of normal service bandwidth until your account resets at the start of the next billing period. This is unpleasant, but at least you can always get online to some extent.

What About Unlimited Usage Plans?
Check the fine print on your contract. You're likely to find something that specifies a "fair usage" limitation. Sometime they don't specify a hard limit but say that the provider has the right to impose fair usage restrictions. In fact, you may have all the capacity you want... at least for awhile. The fair usage clause tends to be imposed if you are someone who is using the service far and beyond what the bulk of other users are doing, or if the provider lands a lot of customers and doesn't have the ability anymore to give them all they want.

Services like satellite and cellular wireless have definite limitations due to the number of radio channels they are licensed to use and the carrying capacity of the particular technology they are using. Higher speed doesn't automatically get you higher data caps. If you aren't careful, that higher bandwidth will simply allow you to use up your allocation quicker.

Is There Any Way Around Data Caps?
You might not know this, but there are dedicated private lines and Internet connections that don't have any data limitations at all. These are the professional grade copper and fiber lines that the service providers themselves order and partition to sell to you and a hundred or a thousand other customers. Businesses, but not residential customers usually, can also order these telecom services and have all the capacity to themselves.

Typical line services are T1 at 1.5 Mbps, the classic standard, T3 or DS3 at 45 Mbps, OC3 SONET at 155 Mbps, Ethernet over Copper at 10 to 50 Mbps, and Ethernet over Fiber at 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. These are called "dedicated" line services because all of the resources are dedicated to YOUR business. That means you get 100% of the line speed all the time. It also means that you get all of the line capacity. You can load up a 100 Mbps Ethernet line to full capacity for the entire month and not pay a penny extra. Your monthly lease cost is fixed.

How About Costs?
Well, that's the rub. You will pay more for a dedicated line service than you will for a shared bandwidth service, as you'd expect. Even so, there's little value is paying a low ball price for a service that doesn't give you the capacity you need. If you wind up paying overages every month, it might make a lot more sense to simply pay up for a line that doesn't have overages. You can then forget about having to watch your usage all the time or limit the activities of your employees.

When Does Dedicated Line Service Make Sense?
If your application naturally taxes the capacity of a communications line, such as a service or content provider or a company that has critical business applications in the cloud, you may be happier with dedicated line services beyond the unlimited usage. Dedicated lines have constant rather than varying bandwidth, plus low latency, jitter and packet loss.

What type of bandwidth service is best for your company and your applications? Check dedicated and shared bandwidth service options and get free consulting help now to help you sort through the options available for your business location.

How Maestro Smart Antenna Improves Fixed Wireless

Accel Technologies, a division of Accel Networks, is introducing a game changer into the fixed wireless space. It’s their new Maestro smart antenna system. What Maestro looks to do is make 3G and 4G fixed wireless broadband more competitive with more expensive business connectivity solutions, such as T1, MPLS, VSAT, Frame Relay and point to point microwave services.

So, what is this Maestro and what’s so smart about it? Like all other smart devices, Maestro incorporates active technology improve performance. In this case, the improvement is to an inherently passive element, the RF antenna. Antennas are used for all electronic communications. They can be as simple as a foil trace on a circuit board to a multi-element Yagi beam antenna. Satellite dishes are antennas, or antennae if you prefer. So are long wires used with short wave radios or vertical tower arrays for directional AM radio broadcasts.

The thing that’s important about antennas is that they are the first point of contact with any incoming signal and the last element involved in outgoing signals. An antenna can be any random length conductor or it can be a finely tuned system. Most antenna designs are “cut” to a particular size that resonates with the frequencies you are using. The right antenna length greatly improves transmission and reception. You can tune antennas by adding other passive elements, capacitors and inductors. By adding more elements or creating a parabolic reflector (satellite dish) the gain of the antenna is increased. Gain is like amplification. It gives you a stronger signal. As a passive device, you can’t get something for nothing. That gain in a particular direction comes at the expense of reduced sensitivity in other directions. For most applications that’s an additional advantage. A directional antenna reduces pickup of otherwise interfering signals coming from other directions.

Now, take a look a the antenna on your wireless router. Looks like a little black vertical stick, doesn’t it? Is it a particular length selected for the frequencies involved? Yes. Is it directional? No. A vertical “whip” antenna radiates and receives equally in all horizontal directions, although not so well in vertical directions. That’s nice if you want to blanket an area for reception, like a WiFi hotspot. You need broad coverage if you have users scattered all over or moving from place to place.

Now, how about an antenna to connect with a fixed wireless service? Is a simple whip antenna good enough? It is if you have a very strong signal. But what if you are just far enough away from the tower that you don’t have 5-bar coverage? In the case of smartphones and USB modem aircards, you take what you get or do without. These devices are designed to be nomadic, so they have to have universal coverage that brings with it mediocre pickup performance. However, if your business location is fixed and the towers are fixed, you can do better with an antenna that optimizes for the transmission path.

This is what Maestro is all about. It’s a high technology patent pending design that includes eight antennas, three switchable filter banks and an embedded LNA (Low Noise Amplifier) that adjusts to maintain the highest carrier to noise ratio for the 3G or 4G service you are using. Maestro has over 500 discrete setting options to fine-tune for optimum performance.

Why go to all this trouble? Accel Networks has specialized in leveraging the near-universal availability of cellular broadband service across the US and Canada. We think of cellular as a way to get broadband for our mobile phones, but it can also be used as a fixed location broadband service. It sometimes doesn’t work so great within buildings because those itty-bitty antennas on USB dongle adaptors and MiFi boxes can’t deliver a strong enough signal. Put a decent antenna ahead of ahead of the transmitter/receiver and you’ll have a robust signal that won’t go dead or reduce connection speed.

Maestro will be available in about a month from this writing. Accel expects that its introduction for 3G and 4G fixed wireless broadband service will challenge other solutions that businesses have employed to get high speed Internet access. These include VSAT satellite dishes on the roof, T1 lines, DSL and Cable that may or may not be available, frame relay and even microwave fixed wireless systems. Most businesses, especially small retail stores and offices, don’t need massive bandwidth. They need basic connectivity for credit card verification, email and website access. A 3G or 4G cellular service can provide the bandwidth, reliability and latency they require at a substantial cost savings. Accel has over 6,000 installations now that prove just that. With Maestro, many more locations will be able to gain these benefits.

Is your business located in an area where broadband service is hard to come by or unreasonably expensive? Check availability and pricing for fixed wireless broadband. You may be pleasantly surprised by how affordable it is and how well it works.

Fixed Wireless Moving To 4G

There are a couple of faces to fixed wireless broadband for business. First is the licensed microwave services that you’ll find downtown in major cities. The coverage is limited to a few thousand feet with strict line of sight requirements. Bandwidth is high, but availability is very limited.

The other approach is to piggy-back on the 3G cellular broadband services that already blanket the country. This approach offers lower bandwidth, similar to a T1 line, but is available just about anywhere you can get a cell phone signal. That has made it perfect for rural locations, temporary stores and small businesses that need a broadband connection fast.

Accel Networks has been a leader in 3G fixed wireless in the United States and Canada. Their winning approach has been in contracting with multiple wireless providers and creating a proprietary hardware solution that is plug-and-play for the user. Your equipment package comes pre-programmed for the optimal carrier signal available at your location. The Maestro antenna system ensures a solid RF link. All you need to do is connect to the serial or Ethernet connection and you are ready to go in as little as 3 days from order placement.

What do you get in the way of performance. You have a static or dynamic IP address on a PCI compliant private Layer 2 connection. Typical 3G data rates average 1 Mbps download by 512 Kbps upload. A service level agreement assures you of 99.9% availability. Coverage includes 99% of all retail locations in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico.

As good as 3G fixed wireless is, businesses are pressing for more bandwidth. Fixed wireless providers are following the cellular upgrade path from 3G to 4G as it is fielded. Accel Networks has launched their 4G service with a proprietary antenna and embedded modem technology. Speeds are expected to increase to 6 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload with under 100 mSec of latency.

How long until you can upgrade from 3G to 4G? The industry changeover is expected to be completed within the next two years. It will depend on where you are located as to how quickly you can install 4G fixed wireless broadband.

If you’ve been following the consumer smartphone upgrades from 3G to 4G, you know that there are a competing technologies. The ultimate is LTE (Long Term Evolution), a GSM technology that looks like it will become the universal standard. That includes a switchover for CDMA carriers like Verizon. In the mean time, carriers are performing intermediate upgrades to their existing networks to squeeze out a little more bandwidth. Why? It’s quite expensive to install new circuit cards in every cellular base station to change the technology of the signals being transmitted. Simple evolutionary upgrades often involve only a software upgrade to existing hardware. T-Mobile is taking this approach with an upgrade from HSPA to HSPA+ prior to full deployment of LTE.

The other limitation to higher speed cellular deployment is backhaul. This is the connection between the cell tower and the centralized switching equipment. Up till recently, T1 lines were used for cellular backhaul. They offer 1.5 Mbps in both upload and download directions and are both highly reliable and available anywhere twisted pair telephone wire exists. That’s just about everywhere, including out in the boonies. Bonding T1 lines can increase bandwidth by adding two, four, six or more T1 lines in parallel. That’s good to about 12 Mbps. After that, you need either microwave backhaul or fiber optic connection.

Fiber optic is the way to go if at all possible. The bandwidth is nearly unlimited and you only pay for the construction costs once. The problem is that there are several hundred thousand cell towers sites that need to be upgraded to fiber. In remote locations, fiber is nowhere nearby and needs to be brought-in. Even in the cities, there is a cost and time involved to upgrade each cell. That, plus the cost of the hardware and labor for site just to switch to LTE limits how fast the carriers can move. Even so, cellular broadband is so lucrative that billion dollar investments will continue to flow until the job is completed.

Will fixed wireless work for your business situation? If so, prices are very attractive for both 3G and 4G fixes wireless broadband solutions. Check pricing and availability to see if you really need those landline connections after all.

Fixed Wireless For Rural Retail

Retail businesses in small towns and rural locations often find it difficult or expensive to get the broadband connectivity they need. Many go with two-way satellite or T1 lines to get the point of sale and Internet access they need. Others have discovered that 3G wireless gets them a reliable and secure connection for credit card verification at half the cost of a T1 line.

We’re all familiar with 3G as the cellular broadband service for smartphones. It is also used with USB aircards to get Internet access for laptop and notebook computers. There’s a less well known service that leverages the availability of 3G wireless signals with the robustness of high performance multi-carrier equipment and a secure VPN network. This is what you need for serious business applications.

Conventional cellular service is fine for mobile applications and has the low cost advantage for personal use. The Accel Networks fixed wireless solution adds performance reliability, coverage and security for installation in business locations. The idea behind fixed wireless is that you set it up once and forget it. It’s always on and connecting you to the data center. You can safely turn your back and forget about tweaking antennas or charging batteries. This network is managed to ensure that it is always up and running. Think of this solution as a replacement for T1 line service or a satellite dish on the roof.

Accel Networks has addressed the issue of poor rural broadband availability by leveraging the broadband signals that are available. You know that you can get cellular phone service just about anywhere. The only question is whether the carrier you are contracted with has coverage everywhere you want to go. Accel gets around the limitations of carrier coverage by contracting with multiple cellular carriers to provide coverage to over 90% of business locations in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. They have a proprietary provisioning system that determines which carrier has the most robust signal for your particular location. That data is used to configure a unique modem, router and antenna equipment package that is sent to you in a couple of weeks, although it is possible to get expedited delivery in as little as a few business days.

Once you get your wireless equipment bundle, you simply plug it in and you are up and running. No need to wait for a service technician to install an outdoor dish or roof antenna or go through a complex configuration setup. None of that is needed with the Accel Network system. You’ll be ready to go in 15 minutes after you open the shipping box. The rental of the equipment is also bundled with your bandwidth lease so that you pay by the month, without having to buy any hardware. Even at that, the cost of a bandwidth service that is competitive with many T1 installations is about half the price.

What kind of performance can you expect? You’ll get 3G data rates bursting to 1 Mbps download and 512 Kbps upload on a 99.9% available network. That’s more than adequate for most small retail applications. This connectivity is on a PCI compliant private layer 2 network that gives it a big advantage for meeting credit card verification requirements. Use it with a single card terminal or hook up all your electronic cash registers and get fast response times, especially compared to dial-up telephone line solutions.

Accel’s fixed wireless package is perfect for retail POS, security, inventory polling, tank monitoring and digital signage. Oil and gas companies have found it works great for remote site management. Other applications include lottery machine and ATM support. Specialty retail stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, automotive retailers, restaurants, payday loan stores, and car dealerships have all found that fixed wireless meets their needs.

Is your business located in a rural or out of the way location where business broadband is either hard to come by or expensive? If so, check out fixed wireless business broadband service as a high performance low cost bandwidth solution for your business location.

3G Fixed Wireless For Business

We all know how 3G cellular wireless service has transformed the mobile phone into the smartphone. Did you also know there is a fixed wireless service available that uses the same technology? It’s a unique solution to getting business grade Internet access where everything else is too expensive or not available at all.

What the cellular industry has done is to build out a vast infrastructure of wireless base stations all over the country. You can think of these as a blanket of mobile phone coverage and you’d be right. You can also think of this infrastructure as a blanket of broadband coverage. You’d be equally right. The familiar cell towers are transmitting both voice and data signals on different channels through their microwave radio equipment.

On the data side, the 3G (3rd generation) wireless broadband service acts like a collection of Wi-Fi hotspots with much greater coverage and all linked together. You need a wireless modem aircard and a subscription to pick up this service. It doesn’t use the same channels as WiFi. It’s also not free, but for businesses the cost can be lower than other alternatives.

Many small and even medium size businesses use T1 lines that are available almost everywhere. Cost varies with location, but is typically several hundred dollars per month. Fixed wireless broadband can be had for half of that for a primary connection and even less if you only want backup service.

Unlike DSL and Cable, other SMB bandwidth choices, T1 and 3G wireless are available just about anywhere you want service. That includes locations that are off the beaten path if they can still get solid cell phone service. Fixed wireless is unique in that installation can be in a matter of days and you can have it installed at temporary business locations, such as fairs, conventions, and short term holiday stores.

Accel Networks is a leader in 3G fixed wireless for business. Their equipment and system are optimized for consistent bandwidth and high reliability. That includes proprietary RF optimization and RF level management and a proprietary antenna design that maximizes signal strength. This goes far beyond the simplistic design of the USB aircard modems you buy for mobile computing.

The other advantage of Accel Networks is that they have agreements with all three major providers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon) to ensure extensive signal coverage. You know that no matter which carrier you pick, there are places where you’d be better off with one of the other carriers. It’s a matter of who has the most towers and channel licenses in a particular area. Accel picks the carrier that has the best signal at your particular business location. Since this is fixed service, it doesn’t matter that they’d make a different choice if you were located in another town.

What is 3G fixed wireless best for? Credit card verification is extremely popular. Accel Networks specializes in this technology and offers a layer 2 PCI compliant network meeting credit card industry requirements.

Most small businesses need credit card verification, but many also need general access to the Internet for Web browsers, email, and perhaps automated ordering, inventory, bookkeeping or data transfers between locations. Accel Networks managed broadband wireless solutions offer a minimum of 750 Kbps download and 250 Kbps upload broadband speeds. They also provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that includes 99.9% availability, minimum acceptable data rates, maximum acceptable latency, and mean time to restore.

Is fixed wireless a good fit with your business? Get a complete set of options and prices so you can compare 3G Fixed Wireless For Business with competing services, and then choose what’s right for your situation.

Can You Get To The Cloud?

Cloud computing and cloud storage are the emerging architecture for how we’ll all use computers before long. Advantages of doing everything in the cloud include not having to buy or maintain software, automatic backup for stored data, being able to access the same tools and data from anywhere using a variety of devices, and smaller, lighter computers themselves. In fact, your computer might turn out to be a netbook, cellphone or tablet. It sounds promising, but there remains one nagging question. Are you sure you can get to the cloud?

The WAN or Wide Area Network link is the weak link in this chain. If most computing is done locally or by downloading applications from an in-house server, you’ve got control of the system. You only lose your ability to communicate with the outside world when your link goes down. But lose that link on a cloud-based system and your client device becomes the proverbial doorstop -- one that's really too lightweight to make even a good doorstop. If everything you do is in the cloud, you’ve got to have a pathway to that cloud at all times.

Mobile device can get connection redundancy by having two wireless technologies embedded. The primary link is through the carrier’s data network that’s on the same towers used for cellular telephone service. You are more likely to encounter a weak signal area than for the carrier service to fail. But Hurricane Katrina taught us that even well designed wireless systems can go dark if the emergency is dire enough.

A commonly used second path is WiFi connectivity. WiFi has a couple of advantages. There’s almost always a WiFi hotspot, and usually a free one, within walking or driving distance. If the nearest hotspot is down because a line break has shut down all telecommunications in the area, you can simply venture out further until you find a place that’s connected to a different broadband service. It might be inconvenient, but at least you can get to your apps and data.

It’s not quite as easy to work around an outage in a bricks and mortar office or store. You can’t easily just have everybody pick up and move to the nearest coffee shop with service. Instead of depending on someone else for backup, you need to provide that redundancy yourself.

What makes a good backup service? A carbon copy of what you have now is better than nothing, but has limitations. For instance, if a nearby construction activity cuts the wire bundle containing your T1 line, it will likely cut through your second T1 line as well. In backing up T1 or DS3 connections, you want service from two separate suppliers that approach your building from different directions and have no wires or equipment in common. You may elect to set up your routers to use both lines normally but fall back to the single working line when failure occurs. That cuts your bandwidth in half, but everything else continues to work as usual.

You should think about what you need to get by during an emergency. Perhaps less bandwidth will slow things down but can be lived with for a short period of time. A T1 line makes a good backup for DS3 service despite the huge difference in bandwidth: 1.5 Mbps versus 45 Mbps. Since T1 is copper based and DS3 is fiber based, outages that affect one won’t necessarily take down the other.

You should also look at the newer Ethernet services for primary or backup bandwidth. An advantage of Ethernet is that it is often much lower cost per Mbps than traditional carrier grade services. It offers high reliability, and the lower speeds from 1 to 45 Mbps might be available over copper as well as fiber.

What’s the best backup service for your cloud based computing architecture? Check out the variety of bandwidth services available for your location.

New Role for Wireless as Wireline Backup

We tend to think of wireless as the future of all telecommunications. Perhaps it’s all the hoopla over BlackBerry devices and iPhones. So why would anyone consider wireless as a wireline backup instead of the other way around?

The nice thing about wireless communication is the freedom it brings. You simply grab your device and go. Can’t do that with a desktop PC connected to an Ethernet network. But who’d want to. You’d look as silly as those people who carry around full size telephone handsets connected to their cell phones.

For big and heavy PCs, servers and printers, there’s not a lot of incentive to get rid of the network wire. That’s especially true if you need an AC power cable anyway. The one exception might be a printer that sits in an area with no network connection nearby. In that case, WiFi connectivity makes sense.

The other thing to remember is that wireless bandwidth is a scarce resource compared to copper wireline networks and fiber optic connections. Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps is the norm for desktop equipment. Many network access cards are now 10/100/1000 Mbps. At Gigabit Ethernet speeds, even wireless access points get pricey. WAN bandwidth gets really pricey.

So if most LANs are going to remain primarily wired and WAN connections are usually cheaper per Mbps over copper or fiber, then where does wireless fit?

This cost/benefit analysis breaks down if your application needs to be portable or mobile. It also breaks down if the wireline connection breaks down. What I mean is that if someone with a backhoe cuts through a cable bundle and severs all the copper telephone cable and fiber optic strands on a certain path, wireless may be your only option to connect with the outside world.

Several companies are marketing solutions for the business that wants to be as sure as possible that no disaster will take out its connectivity completely. Vocal IP Networx and Accel Networks, to name two, have wireless Internet solutions available. Cellular broadband networks are well suited to this application because cell signals are so widely available. With HSPA and EVDO Rev A readily available, it is possible to get Mbps connectivity with a single aircard.

Satellite broadband offers another wireless solution that doesn’t depend on landline availability as long as you can run on backup power. All you need is a clear view of the southern sky to point the dish and you can have two-way communications. Latencies on Geosynchronous satellite tend to be prohibitive for real-time applications such as VoIP, but email and most Web browsing runs just fine.

Are you concerned that your operation may be vulnerable to a complete loss of connectivity due to single point failure? If so, you should see how affordable backup wireless solutions can be to give you peace of mind. This is also a good time to check prices on wireline connectivity. WAN prices for T1, DS3, Ethernet and other services are much lower than they were a few years ago. Find the best prices on all bandwidth services now.

Cell Phone Plans With Aircards

Wireless modem aircards are the way you free yourself from the tyranny of the WiFi hotspot. With an aircard, your laptop computer suddenly becomes a mobile computer. But how do these work and what types of service plans do you need to use aircards?

An aircard is basically a digital two-way radio. But it’s a special kind of radio. Its signals are digital computer data rather than telephone calls.

But aren’t aircards set up to run on cell phone networks? Indeed they are. Right now the vast majority of wireless modem aircards are designed to meet one of the two major cellular broadband standards. Those are EVDO for Sprint and Verizon Wireless or EDGE and HSPA for AT&T and T-Mobile. There is another standard called WiMAX that is just being deployed in major cities by Clearwire.

As you may have surmised, you need a cellular service plan to use the cellular network. For an aircard, you buy what is called a data plan. That’s different from the voice plan that you would order for normal cell phone operations. The data plan gives you full time access to the provider’s nationwide data network. It’s just like having DSL or Cable broadband but without the wires.

There often is one limitation. Because the cellular networks have limited wireless capability, you are limited to a certain number of Gigabytes downloaded per month. For most mobile users the 5 GB limit won’t be a limitation. But if you expect to be downloading a lot of video, especially HD video, you could exceed your monthly limit and have to pay overage charges.

Cellular broadband is not intended to replace a wireline BB connection. It’s really just to let you have access to the Internet while you are on the go. Many business users buy aircards so that they can take their laptops into a customer’s office and make a presentation or enter an order. They can also sit in a parking lot, airport, or restaurant that doesn’t offer free WiFi and be on the Internet.

Most of the newer wireless modem aircards look like USB flash memories and simply plug into your computer using an open USB port. Other models have PCMCIA or ExpressCard connectors. If you order one of these, be sure your computer has compatible ports.

Some devices come with aircards already built-in. These include the new netbooks, which are very small notebook computers designed to run on a particular cellular network or WiFi. The more advanced cell phones or smartphones also give you Internet access without having to buy a separate aircard. That circuitry is included in the radio within the phone. You will have to buy a data plan as well as a voice plan to use your cell phone for both talking and surfing the Web.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Cell Phone Wireless Broadband

If you are only using a cell phone to talk, you're missing half the capability of the cellular networks. What started as a mobile voice network is now both a voice and data network. Not just text data, but wireless broadband Internet access that rivals fixed DSL and Cable broadband offerings.

What's available in mobile Internet service today? If you haven't used this capability or been following industry developments, you may be surprised by how available and how fast cell phone wireless Internet access has become. There are two rival systems in use today, with two more even faster networks starting the build-out phase.

AT&T has championed their HSDPA and EDGE networks, with the most talked-about implementation being the Apple iPhone. The original iPhone runs on EDGE, with broadband speeds around 100 Kbps. That's at least twice what you'd get with dial-up, but modest by broadband standards.

The new iPhone 3GS runs on the HSDPA or High Speed Download Packet Access network. That jumps the download speed up to a maximum of 3.6 Mbps, with typical user speeds around 500 to 700 Kbps. That's more what you'd expect in basic broadband service and enough to enable fast Web browsing and video downloads. Right now AT&T is upgrading its network to a faster technology called HSPA which should double your access speeds.

T-Mobile uses the same technologies for voice and data as AT&T. Both are worldwide carriers based on GSM service that is popular internationally.

Verizon and Sprint are CDMA rather than GSM carriers. That means they use a completely different technology. On the data side this is called EVDO for EVolution Data Optimized. EVDO is highly competitive with HSDPA, with a basic Rev 0 speed offering bursts of up to 2.1 Mbps on downloads and a typical speed of 400 to 700 Kbps. EVDO Rev A takes that up to 3.1 Mbps download bursts, although typical speeds are only modestly improved to around 800 Kbps. What Rev A really does is improve upload speeds to 300 to 400 Kbps.

As you can see, the 3G networks for the major cellular carriers give you similar performance. Your choice probably will revolve more around the coverage available in your area and the particular model of phone, aircard or netbook that you choose.

What's even more interesting is the 4G wireless broadband in the development and early deployment phase right now. Sprint has partnered with Clearwire to create a new service called WiMAX that will run on completely different frequencies. AT&T and Verizon are working to develop a competing technology called LTE, or Long Term Evolution, that will also use different frequencies than are being used for cellular service now. That means that 3G and 4G networks will co-exist, at least for awhile.

How fast will 4G be? They'll start out about 10x as fast as 3G and go up from there as the technology is refined and deployed everywhere. The 4G wireless networks will be the equal of faster wireline broadband services today and will easily support services such as real-time two-way video.

While 4G is the coming thing, 3G is the hot mobile broadband service readily available today. Discover the wide variety of cell phones, smartphones, wireless modem aircards and netbook computers available with cell phone wireless broadband, often free or at very attractive discounts.

MiFi Hotspot Comes to Sprint

Wait! What's that slim silver box? Is that a cigarette case in your pocket? If so, how retro is that?

No? It's actually a WiFi hotspot? How avant-garde is THAT?

The silver case is actually the new Novatel MiFi 2200 Personal HotSpot for Sprint PC wireless service. A WiFi hotspot? Yes, indeed. OK, so where do you plug it in and where's the RJ-45 network connection?

You don't plug it in. It's wireless and portable. There's no power cube, no network cable, no stubby rubber antenna. All you see is a silver case that could be concealed in your palm or shirt pocket. There's a button on the front to activate it and LED indicators so you know the operational and battery status. But make no mistake about it, this is really a WiFi hotspot that performs as well or better than the ones you find in the coffee shop.

What's inside that slim silver case is a cellular transceiver that connects to the Sprint PCS data network. It runs the EVDO Rev 0 and Rev A mobile broadband protocols, with fallback to the slower 1xRTT if necessary. Peak download speed is 3. 1 Mbps. That's a LOT faster than what I've been seeing on the free restaurant WiFi services.

The other component inside the box is a WiFi transceiver that works with just about any Wi-Fi enabled device from laptop computer to gaming console to digital photo frame. Like any good hotspot this one reaches out 10 meters or 30 feet. You may not care about a 30 foot radius if you've got it in your shirt pocket, but your eager friends will. That's because this hotspot will support up to 5 simultaneous users. Be kind and share with family and friends. Or hog it to yourself. Security includes WPA2-PSK, WEB and SPI Firewall. That should keep the unworthy wretches from slowing down your connection and using up your 5 GB monthly bandwidth quota. Wretches, meaning those people who use to speak to you before you started bogarting your broadband.

Oh, there's one other important component inside your MiFi 2200. It's the 1150 mAh Li-ion battery. Like a cell phone or digital camera, this battery is both small and potent. You'll get up to 4 hours of continual usage for a single Wi-Fi client. Standby time is up to 40 hours. How do you recharge it? With the included wall charger or through a USB cable connected to your computer. That could be the same computer that makes use of the cellular broadband service provided by the MiFi. It's a symbiotic relationship.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Novatel MiFi 2200 Makes YOU a WiFi Hotspot

If that's a WiFi hotspot in your pocket, they're going to be glad to see you. That is, if you're willing to share. For making instant friends, the MiFi has more potential than a box of hot donuts. Just be the only one on the bus or in the waiting room with broadband connectivity and you'll have them eating out of your hand.

What's a MiFi? It's the latest mobile Internet gadget, and perhaps the product introduction of the year. You've seen those little portable routers that you can carry in your briefcase? This is better. This is a WiFi hotspot that slips into a shirt pocket. With it you can provide 3G connectivity to up to 5 WiFi devices within a 30 foot radius.

How does it work? The Novatel MiFi combines a wireless modem aircard with a wireless router in a package smaller than a touchscreen cellphone or a good size candy bar. It measures a mere 2.5" x 2.3" x 0.4" and weighs-in at 2.1 oz. In addition to the aircard and router, there's a rechargeable Li-Ion battery good for 4 hours of continuous use and 40 hours of standby. There's also a micro-USB connector so that you can plug the MiFi into a computer and charge it or use the handy wall charger as needed.

The way it works its magic is that the wireless modem aircard connects to a cellular broadband signal, in this case one from Verizon Wireless towers. Verizon has been a leader in 3G wireless for cell phones using the EV-DO data standard. The MiFi will run on just about any Verizon tower signal it can get, although some out in the boonies might be on the slower 1XRTT standard. That means that anywhere you can get reliable Verizon cellular service, you can have an Internet connection for your hotspot.

Now, you have a choice. You can keep the MiFi hidden discretely in your pocket or bag and just say that your laptop computer is configured to pick up cellular broadband. Or you can be generous and offer to share your mobile Internet signal with up to 4 other grateful nearby users. That's the function of the built-in wireless router. It works just like the one at home, except no wires.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

I'm Not Paying For That Aircard

Office wireline business Internet connections offer fast and reliable broadband service... as long as you stay in one place. For mobile operation you need to hunt down WiFi hotspots or get a wide area wireless service, such as cellular broadband. But very few laptop and notebook computers have the communications interface for cellular broadband built-in.

What you need is a carrier specific interface called an aircard. Sounds expensive, right? Well, they can be but not if you know where to look. What you want is the best free aircard you can get that will work with your particular computer. Fortunately, there are lots of choices available.

An aircard, sometimes called a wireless modem, is not all that different from a plug-in WiFi access card. A few years ago, laptop computers came with built-in telephone modems as their communications solution. If you wanted to connect with a WiFi router or wireless access device, you needed to buy a special card. Most often these plugged into the PCMCIA port on the side of the computer.

Nowadays, nearly all portable computers come with WiFi capability built-in and only some still offer telephone modems. But WiFi is only good within a few hundred foot radius of the connection point. If you want to travel around town, cross country or have broadband service available in a client's place of business, you need a wider ranging wireless Internet service. The best option right now is usually cellular broadband.

Cellular broadband is exactly what it sounds like. Every cell tower transmits both voice and data channels. The voice channels are used to carry cellular telephone calls. The data channels carry broadband Internet service to cell phones and other devices that can access them. A cell phone doesn't need an aircard since the data access circuitry is built-in. All it needs is a data service plan in addition to the usual voice service plan.

A notebook computer needs both the aircard interface and the data service plan for the carrier you want to use. That's another difference between WiFi and cellular broadband. WiFi is more standardized and compatible. Cellular systems generally fall into two distinct technologies. GSM is the worldwide standard and the one used by AT&T and T-Mobile. CDMA is popular in the United States and is used by Sprint-Nextel, Verizon and Alltel.

GSM standards include the 2.5G standard called EDGE and the 3G standard called HSPA. There's also a fallback to an earlier standard called GPRS. CDMA carriers support EV-DO as the 2.5G standard and EV-DO Rev A for 3G. Sprint and Clearwire are starting to deploy a 4G standard called WiMAX, but it is only available in a few places right now. Verizon and AT&T have stated they'll both be using another 4G standard called LTE, with build-outs just starting later this year.

If you want cellular broadband service right now, it's available with speeds that rival DSL, T1 lines, and Cable broadband service in most medium and larger cities. Farther out, you may have to settle for the slower 2.5G services or even dial-up level performance in some rural areas. If you can get solid cell phone service, you can probably get at least some wireless Internet connectivity. It's best to check the coverage maps for the carrier you are interested in to get a better idea of what speeds you can expect.

The other decision you need to make is how to connect the aircard to your computer. Some PCMCIA cards are still available. Newer interfaces include ExpressCard/34 and USB. Nearly all computers now have USB connectors, so that is the most universal interface.

So, where can you get a free aircard that works with your computer? Right now, there are just under a dozen different models available for the major carries. They're all the same price... free... so your decision will be based on size, connector, carrier of choice, Mac or Apple compatibility, and other features that include things like built-in memory card slots. Check the selection of free aircards now. Be sure to click on the features of each card you are interested in to get a summary of the specs. You can also compare multiple aircards side by side. When you find the one you want, click on the order button for more details on the aircard and data service plan. It's that easy to get mobile Internet access for your business or personal needs.

Speedier Network For The iPhone

The Apple iPhone is something of a mixed blessing for AT&T. On the one hand, they have the exclusive cellular voice and data network for the one phone that's still a hot item in this decidedly cool economy. On the other hand, the sheer power of the iPhone's Internet applications is creating a nearly insatiable demand for more bandwidth. It's a challenge that AT&T is rising to meet.

Cellular towers communicate in two ways. One is through a set of channels assigned to handle telephone calls. The other is through a separate set of channels that provide wireless Internet access. It wasn't that many years ago that data was an afterthought for cell phones. Texting was the primary application, with email rising in popularity. Dial-up speeds were plenty good enough to handle slow text based services. But then cell phones started including cameras. With cameras came the demand to be able to send those pictures to other phones and post them on Internet sites. Web browsers started to be included. Today, the best ones are full HTML capable and work the way you'd expect on a desktop or notebook computer. The final straw is video. People aren't satisfied waiting for short low definition video clips to download. Now they want high quality streaming video and even live TV.

As you can imagine, these faster applications have increased the demands on cellular service the same way they did for home and business access. Dial-up is totally inadequate. Entry level broadband is noticeably poky. What everyone wants is the same speeds they get at home and at work. That's typically in the 3 to 10 Mbps range for what's considered "fast" service today.

The first Apple iPhone operated on what is called the EDGE network. That's an acronym for Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution. It refers to a protocol used by GSM carriers, a popular International standard. AT&T is a GSM carrier. AT&T advertises EDGE download speeds as being in the range of 75 to 135 Kbps on the average. Peak speeds are higher, but it depends on how close to the tower you are and how many other users are sharing the service. Enhanced means enhanced over the previous dial-up speeds offered on the network.

The second version of the iPhone runs on the AT&T 3G Network which uses a different protocol called HSPA or High Speed Packet Access. Download speeds are improved to 700 Kbps to 1.7 Mbps, with fast upload speeds of 500 Kbps to 1.2 Mbps. Peak speeds can hit 3.6 Mbps. That's a lot faster, and more typical of what you need to run today's demanding applications even in a mobile environment.

But there's no way that AT&T can afford to rest at this plateau of performance. In fact, they're reportedly doubling their HSPA technology with software upgrades to achieve a peak bandwidth of 7.2 Mbps. That probably equates to 1 to 2.4 Mbps on average for typical use. There is also another upgrade possible to double that to a peak capacity of 14.4 Mbps.

The days of 3G are numbered, however. The hot new technologies are LTE (Long Term Evolution) and WiMAX which promise bandwidths of 10 Mbps or more. Sprint and Clearwire are building out WiMAX. Verizon and AT&T are going with LTE. This technology will have the designation of "4G" to imply another generation of wireless technology. Until the economy picks up, though, don't expect a rapid deployment of 4G this year or even next. After that, 4G could become the new 3G and everybody will wondering when they're going to get something really fast... like 5G.

AT&T HSUPA Aircards Have the Edge Over EDGE

AT&T, like the other major wireless carriers, has been on a determined program to upgrade its cellular data capabilities. Broadband is the service in demand for everything from Web browsing to streaming mobile video. Wireless is the broadband service in demand. Everyone wants to be connected to the Internet 24/7 wherever they happen to be. AT&T is only too happy to scratch that itch.

If you've been dutifully plodding along with your wireline broadband connection at work and/or home and get by with a basic cell phone for staying in touch verbally, then you may have missed the latest initiatives in the mobile broadband revolution. Even if you venture out with your trusty laptop to enjoy a hot cup of joe and relax with your favorite websites at a nearby WiFi hotspot, you may not be getting all the mobility you could have.

WiFi hotspots have been the rage for years, with free WiFi now expected in restaurants and hotels. What's really helped establish this technology is standardized interfaces built into nearly every laptop, notebook and netbook computer. Many smartphones are also WiFi enabled. WiFi has given everyone the idea that the Internet needn't be a tether to your desk. But WiFi has some real limitations.

This is what the much heralded WiMAX is supposed to address. Think of WiMAX as a WiFi hotspot that covers a town. Sounds pretty good, right? But WiMAX has been in development for years and is only now starting its years and years of nation-wide buildout.

In the meantime, the established mobile communications providers - the cell phone carriers - have been thinking that they've already established their turf and have the transmitting towers in place to provide near-universal wireless coverage. The one thing they've been lacking is a really fast Internet service to go along with their mobile telephone service.

This is the system that AT&T has been building out. It's been done in stages with connectivity similar to a dial-up ISP being launched first. Next came true broadband with a service called EDGE or Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution. EDGE gives you bandwidth similar to entry level DSL services at around 384 Kbps. That's not bad for email or general Web surfing, but most users are now spoiled with higher speeds and bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming video.

To gain more bandwidth, AT&T has been upgrading to a faster technology called HSPA or High Speed Packet Access. HSPA comes in two flavors. HSDPA is High Speed Downlink Packet Access. It is focused on a large download bandwidth of of up to 3.6 Mbps with a relatively small upload bandwidth. HSUPA offers a true broadband upload channel with download speeds up to 2 Mbps. I say "up to" because the performance you experience will vary with signal strength and how many other users are trying to access the network at the same time you are connected.

How do you get connected to the AT&T 3G BroadbandConnect and Nationwide EDGE networks? You'll need a wireless modem, such as the Option Quicksilver USB Modem, that plugs into a USB connector on your mobile computer. This particular aircard, as wireless modems are called, works with both types of networks. The Nationwide EDGE network is available in 13,000 cities. The faster 3G BroadbandConnect network based on HSPA (including HSUPA and HSDPA technologies) is now available in 260 U.S. metro areas.

The Quicksilver modem works with both PCs and Macs and is available free with your Wireless Data Plan order. The plan runs $60 a month and includes 5 GB of data per month. That's way more than most people will use on a mobile computer.

Sierra Wireless also offers a USB modem called the Sierra Wireless Mercury USB Modem for AT&T. It is also available free of charge with a data plan service order. The Sierra Wireless modem includes a built-in GPS receiver that can be used with location based services and a microSD slot for expandable memory.

If you prefer an aircard that plugs into a PCMCIA slot on your laptop, there are several to choose from. A free one is the Option GT Ultra PCMCIA PC/Mac Card which has a retractable butterfly antenna. Others available for a small cost include the Sierra Wireless AC881 PC/Mac PCMCIA Card, and the Option GT Ultra ExpressCard PC/Mac Card that fits into the ExpressCard/34 (mm) slots on some computers. Pick the card and interface that works best with your computers.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

How Aircards Work For Mobile Computing

Broadband Internet access has become a standard utility for nearly all businesses and home office users. DSL and Cable Internet is readily available and reasonably priced for individuals. T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, and Ethernet connections are the choice for most business locations. But what do you do when you leave the desktop environment and venture outside? Are you cast into a disconnected limbo between WiFi hotspots? How can you take your presentations, inventory access and order entry to a client's office when they all require a broadband Internet connection? For that you need a little accessory called the aircard.

An aircard or air card is a wireless modem that gives your laptop or notebook computer a 3G cellular broadband connection to the Internet. Generally, any place you can get cell phone reception you can get Internet access. Both the voice and data signals are coming from the same towers. Each cellular carrier has a certain number of channels available at each tower site. Some are assigned for voice calls. Some are assigned for broadband data. But you need a smartphone or plug-in aircard to access the data channels that supply Internet service.

Most aircards offered today are designed for 3G access, but will fall back to the slower 2.5G or 2G speeds if reception is poor or a particular tower site hasn't been upgraded for 3G. The largest carriers, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, have been in a frenzy to get their tower site base stations upgraded over the last few years. There is a booming market for 3G access, both by aircard users and also for many of the newer smartphones that have 3G access built-in. The Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Storm are just a couple of examples. Broadband service is necessary to support streaming video as well as web-enabled applications and full HTML browser surfing. You can still get by with lower speeds for email and text messaging.

Aircards are specific to a particular carrier, just like cell phones. They also require service contracts, just like cell phones. Wireless service plans for aircards are currently running around $60 a month.

There are differences in the technology used to transmit cellular broadband. Verizon Wireless aircards, Sprint PCS aircards, and Alltel aircards run CDMA networks and use a technology called EVDO. The baseline EVDO service is similar to entry level DSL and offers download speeds of around 700 Kbps with bursts up to 2.4 Mbps when the network is lightly used. The upload link is much slower, typically around 150 Kbps. This network was designed for basic Web access and video clip download. The newly upgraded EVDO Rev A networks increase cellular broadband speeds to cable modem levels of 3.1 Mbps download bursts and a faster uplink of 1.8 Mbps.

AT&T aircards use a different technology called GSM that is more of a worldwide standard. Their basic wireless broadband service is called EDGE and runs at around 250 Kbps. This is the technology used by the first Apple iPhone. But AT&T has now moved to a faster network called HSUPA that has download burst speeds up to 7.2 Mbps with uploads as fast as 2 Mbps. Typical speeds in heavily used metropolitan areas are slower that this, but equivalent to what you'll get on the EVDO networks.

So how do you get an aircard for your laptop computer? That's easy enough. You can comparison shop for aircards by model and carrier right online. In addition to being carrier-specific, there are two styles of wireless modem available. The traditional form factor is a PCMCIA card that plugs into a slot on your laptop computer. But many newer laptops are smaller and have done away with the PCMCIA slots. For those you select the USB models that simply plug-into a USB port just like a USB flash drive. Take some time to check the features of each card you are interested in. Some work only with PCs. Others support both PC and Mac. Some of the USB aircards also have a slot to install microSD memory cards so you can use them as a flash drive as well as an aircard.

Tripping the LTE Fantastic

While a lot of attention is being lavished on fiber optic build-outs and mobile WiMAX, the next dominant technology in broadband communications could be LTE. Would you believe gigabit wireless communications?

For everyone frustrated with sluggish 1G connections or the poky first generation iPhone, the idea of 1,000 Mbps at their fingertips while on the go seems fanciful. After all, there's just so much bandwidth coming off one of those cell towers. Or is there? Apparently, new technical approaches can boost wireless bandwidth a lot more than we ever suspected.

Nokia Siemens Networks recently demonstrated something they call LTE-Advanced. By combining a 2x2 MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) antenna system and an in-band relay station, Nokia claims to have boosted the bandwidth available over LTE to 1 Gbps. And who knows what the real limit will be?

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution. It's a technology being specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a collaboration between various telecommunications associations. The group's name may be the most limiting aspect of this work, as LTE is seen as a 4G or 4th generation technology and LTE-Advanced should probably be called 5G.

These "G's" are coming at us faster than CPU upgrades a generation ago. Most cellular broadband is now at the 3G level, using EV-DO (EVolution Data Optimized) and HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access) with DSL-like speeds typically around 700 Kbps. EV-DO is a CDMA cellular network technology used by Verizon and Sprint. HSDPA is for GSM networks such as AT&T.

LTE was developed as a GSM technology for use worldwide. But, Verizon has already announced it is defecting from its evolutionary path with EV-DO and moving over to LTE for its future build-outs. So eager are they to get a piece of that 4G action that Verizon is expected to deploy LTE on their network as early as the coming year. LTE promises download speeds exceeding 100 Mbps and could be ramped up to several times that without having to wait for LTE-Advanced development. Those are fiber optic speeds or better at today's technology levels.

Why the big rush to switch protocols? Mobile video for one thing. Video is quickly replacing voice and even data as the "kill ap" for digital. Another is the possibility of providing speedy Internet service, also with video in mind, to fixed location business and residential users, as well as mobile. Clearwire is deploying WiMAX with that in mind, so now's the time to capture that market before they get too invested in WiMAX technology.

Both WiMAX and LTE are in the early ramp-up phase of their deployments. For users who want mobile broadband now, there is wide availability of 3G cellular broadband services for smartphones and aircards from AT&T, Sprint, Verizon.

Winter Of Our Disconnect

Now is the winter of our disconnect
Made reliable by redundant connections.

It's perhaps poor Shakespeare, but good business practice to be planning for what will happen when your communications lines go down.

Look at what happened this winter in the Mediterranean. Multiple undersea cables were mysteriously cut, causing a major disruption in Internet service to Egypt and India and slowdowns to many countries in Europe and Asia. The culprit could be as simple as a snagged boat anchor.

Telecom line breaks happen often enough that they have a name: "backhoe fade." A common reason that your voice and data circuits suddenly stop working is that someone digging with a backhoe punches right through a copper or fiber optic cable. Other times, a car or truck slides on the ice and knocks down a telephone pole. Or, an electronic repeater just gives up the ghost at an inopportune moment.

Not that service interruptions in any particular location are at all common for professional-grade telecommunications services such as T1, DS3 or Ethernet. But if being able to use the telephone or Internet are absolutely essential for your company, you might want to think about a way to ensure continuity of service. You can do that with redundant connections.

A simple form of redundancy is an analog fallback circuit for your enterprise VoIP telephone system. Many VoIP interface adapters and IP PBX systems offer a "lifeline" option that is simply a common analog telephone line. Normally you make and receive calls using your T1 PRI or SIP digital trunk line. But if you happen to lose that service, the system will automatically engage the analog line or lines. One or two line are probably sufficient to get you through the outage.

Other systems, especially for point to point and dedicated Internet data connections, employ routers with dual WAN inputs. Two T1 lines plug into the back of the router. The best setup is to be able to use the full bandwidth of both lines in normal operations and gracefully fallback to one line's worth of bandwidth if there is a break.

Now, there is a trick to making this work properly. For true redundancy, your line services have to be completely independent. That certainly means not having both lines in the same binder cable. Preferably, your services come from different vendors and are delivered to your company from different directions.

One low cost alternative for businesses that use DS3 or Ethernet over fiber optic cable is to have a backup T1 line in place. The bandwidth of a T1 line pales in comparison to the higher order services, but being copper-based you can make sure that it isn't bundled with the fiber optic cable. That can avoid common backhoe fade. Electronics failures in either connection won't affect the other's performance.

Wireless options can also offer redundancy for your wireline services. A cell phone will usually still be working when you have an electrical or communications failure in the office. Cellular broadband cards in notebook computers can provide broadband Internet access without the need for either power or telecom lines.

If you are interested in higher reliability communications, especially if you are currently using DSL or Cable broadband at business locations, let our expert consultants find you cost effective redundant communications options to make sure you will always be connected.