3G iPhone to include N WIFI to protect AT&T 3G network?

What is the real reason Starbucks is closing for 3 hours later this
montWhy did they switch to AT&T?
Apple is readying something ineresting later this month.
coincidence?

There is a neat TV show called CONNECTIONS! Here is an article that
connects a series of recent news events which will provide more
insight into the actions of Apple, AT&T, Starbucks, Broadcom and more.
IMHO a really neat read.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9458

Starbucks Deal Brewed with AT&T Has Hints of Apple
by Glenn Fleishman

I'm not an oenophile, but I do like wine. I've never mastered the
vocabulary of oaky, brawny, full of tannins, and so forth. But I do
know a whiff of fruit when I smell it. Yesterday's announcement that
Starbucks would switch its in-store Wi-Fi provider from long-time
partner T-Mobile to AT&T had a strong smell of Apple about it. (You
can read my coverage of this at my site Wi-Fi Networking News, or the
article I filed for The Seattle Times.)

In fact, I think the putative 3G iPhone plays a part here as well, and
that we'll see the 3G iPhone rolled out as part of a larger play that
involves downloading movies in Starbucks over AT&T's new network; that
puts the launch between March and June 2008. Let me back up a minute
first.


AT&T Brings Millions of Subscribers to Starbucks -- The deal yesterday
brings Wi-Fi at 7,000 U.S. company-owned Starbucks stores at no
additional cost to 7 million AT&T DSL and U-Verse fiber subscribers -
all DSL customers with 1.5 Mbps downstream or faster connections - and
5 million business customers who use a remote-access service from
AT&T. It also offers free Wi-Fi for two hours a day for a period of 30
days starting each time you make a purchase of any amount using a
Starbucks Card, their stored-value swipe card.

Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.

Monthly unlimited service is also available, although that requires a
little explanation. AT&T splits its hotspot network into Basic and
Premier tiers. The Basic network currently includes McDonald's (8,500
stores), Barnes & Noble, and several airports; Starbucks will be added
to that tier. Qualifying DSL and all fiber customers get Basic service
for free.

The Premier tier adds roughly 1,000 locations in the U.S. like hotels,
airports run by other providers, and convention centers, as well as
53,000 international roaming locations. Premier cost $19.95 per month
for everyone except the qualifying DSL and all fiber customers, who
can upgrade to Premier by paying an extra $9.95 per month.

Subscribers to aggregator hotspot services like Boingo Wireless that
already have a roaming relationship with AT&T will get Starbucks
access at no additional cost, too. Boingo charges $21.95 for unlimited
U.S. access, which includes pretty much all domestic airports and tens
of thousands of other U.S. locations, making it the best bargain.
(Boingo hasn't updated their software client for Leopard, but a
company spokesperson told me some months ago that nearly all Boingo
partner locations allow a Web page login with Boingo credentials.)

The rollout starts in the second quarter of 2008 in major cities, and
will continue through the year. (This deal covers only U.S. company-
owned Starbucks, not the kiosks found in airports or licensed
purveyors in places like Barnes & Noble, and also doesn't affect T-
Mobile's arrangements with Starbucks outside the U.S.)

Starbucks has never expressed dissatisfaction publicly with T-Mobile,
which purchased a bankrupt firm's assets and took over the Starbucks
Wi-Fi buildout in early 2002. It's quite clear that the company made
sure that existing T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers wouldn't be
disconnected when AT&T takes over: anyone with a T-Mobile data
subscription that includes Wi-Fi or who uses their Wi-Fi/cell plan to
place calls using special handsets has unlimited, long-term access to
all Starbucks locations.

Rather, T-Mobile couldn't offer Starbucks anything particularly
special, and couldn't further its relationship with Apple. When Apple
announced that Starbucks would be a partner in a special branded
service available on the iPhone and iPod touch and within iTunes to
extend the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, T-Mobile's name wasn't anywhere
on that press release; nor was AT&T, Apple's multi-year exclusive
iPhone reseller in the U.S.


Overwhelming 3G -- AT&T operates a 3G (third generation) cellular
network, and last week announced that the telecom firm would be
expanding and upgrading that network this year. (See "More Mileposts
Along Road to 3G iPhone," 2008-02-06.). The company also owns a huge
amount of copper and fiber optic in its territory stretching - with a
southwestern gap - from California to Florida. (Qwest owns the
Northwest, mountain time zone, and Midwest; Verizon, the northeast
down to Virginia.)

The company is using Wi-Fi as a bridge between wired service, which
increasingly includes fiber-optic connections to neighborhoods, and
its wireless service. You can push a lot of data over copper and
glass, and have essentially as much of that as you want to build.
Wireless spectrum is finite, and there's never as much as you want.

The current set of auctions for retiring analog television frequency
shows how much interest there is: $20 billion and counting for an
excellent swath, that includes nearly $5 billion for a single set of
national licenses suitable for broadband wireless. AT&T just finalized
a separate purchase of about half the amount of national spectrum
currently up for bid from a firm that bought it in a previous auction.

The long debate over whether 3G or Wi-Fi is "better" disregards the
fact that Wi-Fi has a far higher carrying capacity. While most
hotspots backhaul no more than 3 to 6 Mbps downstream, and most are
closer to 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream, an 802.11g Wi-Fi network
can push 20 Mbps across a single base station, and the new 802.11n
standard can top out at rates over 90 Mbps. (The raw data rates for G
and N are 54 Mbps and 300 Mbps, respectively; the rates I'm citing are
for access in close proximity to a base station but in typical
circumstances.)

AT&T's current flavor of 3G, HSPA, can only carry 3.6 Mbps downstream
and about half that upstream; each phone or device in range is likely
to see the upper 100s of Kbps downstream and half that upstream, with
higher peak rates for sustained transfers. And the more people using
3G connections, the less likely peak speeds are achieved.

When the current iPhone models were released, reports state that usage
of EDGE - a moderate speed "2.5G" network standard that straddles
second- and third-generation standards - tripled in cities like San
Francisco. You can imagine that the release of a 3G iPhone might bring
AT&T's still-expanding 3G network to its knees.

Which is where Starbucks comes in. AT&T and Apple clearly cut a deal
where Starbucks benefits from becoming a digital media hub: It's going
to be the place where people congregate to use Wi-Fi as part of the
monthly service fee that they already pay AT&T - this wasn't announced
yesterday, but it's absolutely coming - and where they download media
from Apple.


It's Not about EDGE, It's about the Edge -- Here's where it all comes
together. Starbucks already has media servers in its stores. These
servers host the songs that Starbucks plays. But they aren't simply
jukeboxes. They also have magic that allows a customer in a Starbucks
cafe to purchase a song they just heard or that was recently played
and have that song downloaded locally - not downloaded over the
Internet from Apple's iTunes. That means that Apple is wrapping DRM
(digital rights management) on songs that require that protection in
each store. Neither Starbucks nor Apple had previously discussed this,
but I interviewed Starbucks's chief technical officer Chris Bruzzo
yesterday for The Seattle Times.

Even though there was no mention of Apple yesterday in this deal,
Bruzzo and I spoke about the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store arrangement in
Starbucks. I asked him if there were any plans to stick media servers
in the stores, and he said, "Right now in our stores that have the
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, you go and buy the song that's playing
directly overhead, and see how fast it transfers."

He wasn't being coy; the company isn't talking explicitly about this.
But he said, compare the transfer speed between songs that were
recently played and those available through Apple's broader iTunes
catalog, and you can see the difference.

He noted of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, "That's a great example of a
location-based service that's highly contextual. And the ability to
use the superior speeds of 802.11g to deliver a file that's relevant
to a particular environment." This isn't very subtle. They have
servers in the stores.

If you were to put, say, a server with a couple of terabytes (TB) of
storage, which is now maybe a $2,000 to $3,000 expense, and load that
with the 100,000 most popular songs and the 500 most frequently rented
films and the few hundred most recent and popular TV shows episodes,
suddenly people can download those files at the local network's speed,
not at the speed of the Internet connection.

If I'm downloading a 1.3 GB movie file on my home network at 3 Mbps
downstream, it's going to take about an hour. Not bad. If I instead
purchase and download it over an otherwise non-busy 802.11g network,
it's suddenly more like nine minutes. If that network were upgraded by
AT&T, say, to use 802.11n, and I'm downloading it to my fancy MacBook,
MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro with 802.11n (Core 2 Duo versions), we're
now talking about...wait for it...perhaps two minutes.

Did I mention that a 3G iPhone is likely to include a new low-power
802.11n chip as well? No? That's almost certainly part of the delay in
producing it, as those chips are just hitting the market now.

The edge network, the network that feeds data locally at local network
speeds, becomes extremely important in this scenario.


Your New Living Room -- Starbucks has always cultivated an artificial
living room: a place probably more comfortable and convivial than most
of our actual living rooms (if we had them); it's also an extension
for Gen-X of the ranch house they might have grown up in that they
couldn't afford to rent.

It's not a leap at all that Starbucks, already a big music producer
and seller, and one interested in revitalizing its business after a
few years of drifting from its core coffee mission, would embrace the
idea of being the place people who don't even like their coffee come
to fill up on media, use the network, and hang out.

All Starbucks' stores in the U.S. are closing later this month for
three hours to retrain the staff on making coffee better. The baking
ovens for breakfast "sandwiches" have started to be ripped out. And
this deal is now in place. It's no coincidence.

Starbucks is poised to be the launch partner for the 3G iPhone, and
they're getting their living rooms cleaned up for the coming hordes.

---

› See More: 3G iPhone to include N WIFI to protect AT&T 3G network?

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:51:03 -0800 (PST), 4phun <[email protected]>
wrote in
<eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-df89889b2dc5@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com>:

>AT&T's current flavor of 3G, HSPA, can only carry 3.6 Mbps downstream
>and about half that upstream;

Easily upgraded to 14.4 Mbps and beyond.

>each phone or device in range is likely
>to see the upper 100s of Kbps downstream and half that upstream, with
>higher peak rates for sustained transfers.

I'm seeing 1.2 Mbps sustained downlink.

>And the more people using
>3G connections, the less likely peak speeds are achieved.

Depends on the capacity of the cell.

>When the current iPhone models were released, reports state that usage
>of EDGE - a moderate speed "2.5G" network standard that straddles
>second- and third-generation standards - tripled in cities like San
>Francisco.

What reports? Internet rumors or something more substantial?
Citation please.

>You can imagine that the release of a 3G iPhone might bring
>AT&T's still-expanding 3G network to its knees.

I seriously doubt it.

--
Best regards,
John Navas <http:/navasgroup.com>

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea - massive,
difficult to redirect, awe inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind
boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." --Gene Spafford

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:21:06 GMT, John Navas
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:51:03 -0800 (PST), 4phun <[email protected]>
>wrote in
><eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-df89889b2dc5@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com>:
>

>
>>You can imagine that the release of a 3G iPhone might bring
>>AT&T's still-expanding 3G network to its knees.
>
>I seriously doubt it.

Navas, you've totally lost credibility.

It doesnt take imaginatioon, just do the math and 3G would be
overwhelmed.

There is an easy, obvious and likely solution for AT&T.

1. As mentioned, expand availability of WiFi (even better if "N"),
2. Limit use of 3G by charging extra for its use.

AT&T currently charges $20/month for the data part of your iPhone
connection. When 3G iPhones are available, seems logical
they'd charge $40 a month for data on those models, as they do for all
current 3G PDA phones.

4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
[email protected]:

> Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
> or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
>
>

See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....

Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
before....it won't SELL, now.

Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.

Free wifi is just good business. Pick any lunch hour at Panera Bread and
see how many people are doing business on their laptops with Panera's
lunch. Walk across to Starbucky's and there's none. Coincidence?

Greedy bastards. Wifi costs near nothing. The cash registers use so
little bandwidth and it's already installed in the stores, lots of stores.

Oh, a little plug for a great little Italian fast food at the corner of
Montague Ave and Dorchester Rd in N Charleston, SC, Pizza Roma. Free wifi
to all from the Linksys I installed over the cash register connected
through Knology Cable. The Jersey boys who own it have laptops...(c; Best
Strombolis I ever tasted! They were raised in Dad's Italian restaurant
back in NJ. Jersey people yell at each other a lot, but you get used to it
when you find out the threats are not serious...(c;

Hmm....time for breakfast....

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:14:45 +0000, Larry wrote:

> 4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
> [email protected]:
>
>> Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
>> or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
>>
>>
>
> See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....
>
> Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
> Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
> before....it won't SELL, now.
>
> Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
> passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.

I agree. I use Panera frequently when traveling. I even have Panera POIs
in my Garmin GPS so I can easily locate the nearest one.

Most mid-priced hotels can also be accessed from their parking lots. Many
of them have open networks.

I dropped my $50 VZW data plan for that reason. It's easier for me to
check and work with email with my notebook PC than with that small phone
screen.

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:14:45 +0000, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

>4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
>[email protected]:
>
>> Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
>> or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
>>
>>
>
>See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....
>
>Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
>Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
>before....it won't SELL, now.
>
>Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
>passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.


Or ask for a password at a Holiday Inn.

I was at a Double Tree, $10/day in your room free in the Lobby.


>
>Free wifi is just good business. Pick any lunch hour at Panera Bread and
>see how many people are doing business on their laptops with Panera's
>lunch. Walk across to Starbucky's and there's none. Coincidence?

McDonalds, Burger King and Jack-in-the-Box are adding free, open WiFi
as fast as they can.

>
>Greedy bastards. Wifi costs near nothing. The cash registers use so
>little bandwidth and it's already installed in the stores, lots of stores.
>
>Oh, a little plug for a great little Italian fast food at the corner of
>Montague Ave and Dorchester Rd in N Charleston, SC, Pizza Roma. Free wifi
>to all from the Linksys I installed over the cash register connected
>through Knology Cable. The Jersey boys who own it have laptops...(c; Best
>Strombolis I ever tasted! They were raised in Dad's Italian restaurant
>back in NJ. Jersey people yell at each other a lot, but you get used to it
>when you find out the threats are not serious...(c;
>
>Hmm....time for breakfast....

Traveling Man wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:14:45 +0000, Larry wrote:
>
>> 4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
>> [email protected]:
>>
>>> Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
>>> or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
>>>
>>>
>> See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....
>>
>> Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
>> Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
>> before....it won't SELL, now.
>>
>> Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
>> passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.
>
> I agree. I use Panera frequently when traveling. I even have Panera POIs
> in my Garmin GPS so I can easily locate the nearest one.

Most of the coffee houses in my area have free WiFi, as well as better
coffee than Starbucks. Of course the whole city has free WiFi as well,
though it's only 1Mb/s.

Last year when I was back in Florida, in my college town, even Starbucks
had free WiFi.

Their new program of 2 hours of free WiFi with a prepaid card is
probably going to work a lot better than the old system.

They needed a way of providing WiFi at no cost to customers that buy
something, without having the customer camp out all day after buying one
cup of whatever. At independent coffee houses I've seen people that
appear to be their for the long haul, taking up a four person table with
their computer equipment, running extension cords across the floor,
etc.. These places have turned into free office space, with people
meeting clients there for business meetings, etc.

For the person that is in a strange city, and that hasn't researched
where to get free WiFi in advance, the Starbucks program is pretty good.
According to most of the stories, no purchase is necessary to get the
two free hours. Of course you could have multiple Starbucks cards to
extend the amount of time, unless they look at your MAC address (in
which case you could use a USB, CardBus, or ExpressCard WiFi adapter.

In article <[email protected]>,
Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

> 4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
> [email protected]:
>
> > Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
> > or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
> >
> >
>
> See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....
>
> Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
> Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
> before....it won't SELL, now.
>
> Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
> passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.
>
> Free wifi is just good business. Pick any lunch hour at Panera Bread and
> see how many people are doing business on their laptops with Panera's
> lunch. Walk across to Starbucky's and there's none. Coincidence?
>
> Greedy bastards. Wifi costs near nothing. The cash registers use so
> little bandwidth and it's already installed in the stores, lots of stores.
>
> Oh, a little plug for a great little Italian fast food at the corner of
> Montague Ave and Dorchester Rd in N Charleston, SC, Pizza Roma. Free wifi
> to all from the Linksys I installed over the cash register connected
> through Knology Cable. The Jersey boys who own it have laptops...(c; Best
> Strombolis I ever tasted! They were raised in Dad's Italian restaurant
> back in NJ. Jersey people yell at each other a lot, but you get used to it
> when you find out the threats are not serious...(c;
>
> Hmm....time for breakfast....

I fee the same way. When out to use my iPhone or laptop, I only give my
buisness to places with free WIFI. Never use Starbucks. Even worse are
the hotels that you pay to stay at that charge you. Generally won't stay
there.

--
To reply by email, remove the word "space"

Kurt wrote:

> I fee the same way. When out to use my iPhone or laptop, I only give my
> buisness to places with free WIFI. Never use Starbucks. Even worse are
> the hotels that you pay to stay at that charge you. Generally won't stay
> there.

The more you pay for the room, the less likely the hotel is to provide
free WiFi.

Still, in some areas the chain motels are exceptionally crappy, poorly
located, and run down. I.e. in Reno, you can usually stay at a place
like the Grand Sierra (formerly the Hilton) for less than a place like
Quality Inn, La Quinta, etc., but there is no free wireless. I've been
in some nice La Quinta's, but not all of the franchises are very good.

Ron wrote:

> AT&T currently charges $20/month for the data part of your iPhone
> connection. When 3G iPhones are available, seems logical
> they'd charge $40 a month for data on those models, as they do for all
> current 3G PDA phones.

It's not just AT&T's 3G network that would crumble if suddenly 3G use
went up exponentially, none of the carriers could handle it.

It's like most local bus systems. They cry that no one uses transit, but
if something actually caused a mass migration from cars to transit
they'd be unable to handle the load until they added more capacity,
which isn't instantaneous. We've seen this happen when there's some sort
of disruption in the road system, or when one transit agency goes on strike.

In any case, with the cost of the plans for the iPhone, as well as the
cost of the iPhone itself, the 3G model isn't going to overwhelm AT&T's
3G network which is very under-utilized.

It's also probable that 3G service for the 3G iPhone is going to cost
more than the current 2G service. They'll likely give users a choice of
which to buy.

T-Mobile may be the carrier that disrupts the 3G pricing of the other
three carriers. They didn't rush in spending wildly to create a 3G
network that few users are willing to pay for.

Kurt wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Larry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>4phun <[email protected]> wrote in news:eb878ca6-09a3-431a-bd69-
>>[email protected]:
>>
>>
>>>Pay-as-you-go service is $3.95 for two hours, down from $6.00 per hour
>>>or $10.00 per day with T-Mobile.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>See? I told ya. SELLphones....nickel and dime you to death....
>>
>>Right across the parking lot from Starbucky's is Atlanta Bread and Panera
>>Bread cafes, here. Free internet for ALL at both places. It didn't SELL
>>before....it won't SELL, now.
>>
>>Stop by the front desk of Embassy Suites and ask the pretty girl for a wifi
>>passcard. Instead of logging on for a free day, it'll work all month.
>>
>>Free wifi is just good business. Pick any lunch hour at Panera Bread and
>>see how many people are doing business on their laptops with Panera's
>>lunch. Walk across to Starbucky's and there's none. Coincidence?
>>
>>Greedy bastards. Wifi costs near nothing. The cash registers use so
>>little bandwidth and it's already installed in the stores, lots of stores.
>>
>>Oh, a little plug for a great little Italian fast food at the corner of
>>Montague Ave and Dorchester Rd in N Charleston, SC, Pizza Roma. Free wifi
>>to all from the Linksys I installed over the cash register connected
>>through Knology Cable. The Jersey boys who own it have laptops...(c; Best
>>Strombolis I ever tasted! They were raised in Dad's Italian restaurant
>>back in NJ. Jersey people yell at each other a lot, but you get used to it
>>when you find out the threats are not serious...(c;
>>
>>Hmm....time for breakfast....
>
>
> I fee the same way. When out to use my iPhone or laptop, I only give my
> buisness to places with free WIFI. Never use Starbucks. Even worse are
> the hotels that you pay to stay at that charge you. Generally won't stay
> there.
>

Why not? It COSTS to create and maintain a network. It costs more to
connect such a network to the internet in such a way as to provide
decent performance for multiple users: Cisco Router or equivalent,
firewall, N port switch where N is at least the number of rooms, T1 or
T3 service. . . .

Last time I stayed in a hotel, I paid a buck or two for internet access.
I felt that I was getting my money's worth.

Ron <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> McDonalds, Burger King and Jack-in-the-Box are adding free, open WiFi
> as fast as they can.
>
>

Mickey D wants money, here. It was kinda high, too, for what you got.

All the Mickey Ds are franchise stores so that may be the reason.

SMS <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> Kurt wrote:
>
>> I fee the same way. When out to use my iPhone or laptop, I only give
>> my buisness to places with free WIFI. Never use Starbucks. Even worse
>> are the hotels that you pay to stay at that charge you. Generally
>> won't stay there.
>
> The more you pay for the room, the less likely the hotel is to provide
> free WiFi.
>
> Still, in some areas the chain motels are exceptionally crappy, poorly
> located, and run down. I.e. in Reno, you can usually stay at a place
> like the Grand Sierra (formerly the Hilton) for less than a place like
> Quality Inn, La Quinta, etc., but there is no free wireless. I've been
> in some nice La Quinta's, but not all of the franchises are very good.
>
>

Also, here in Charleston, there is a chain of UPS Stores around the city.
They all have free wifi you can access from the parking lot free. I can't
ship UPS, though, because some of their employees tried, unsuccessfully, to
steal some of my musical instruments that were coming in to me a couple of
years ago. I ship FEDEX or DHL because of the way I was treated.

The UPS stores are not UPS owned. They're franchises from UPS to use the
logo...shipping points, mailboxes, etc.

"Richard B. Gilbert" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> Why not? It COSTS to create and maintain a network. It costs more to
> connect such a network to the internet in such a way as to provide
> decent performance for multiple users: Cisco Router or equivalent,
> firewall, N port switch where N is at least the number of rooms, T1 or
> T3 service. . . .
>

The "system" I set up in the restaurant was a cable modem hooked to a
Linksys wifi router I got from a thrift shop for $10. Way bigshot system.
256 users can share but there's only about 20 seats in the whole place.
We're not downloading from usenet, like at home, so it works great for all
and he already had the cable running for himself and his credit card
machine, so the extra cost was $10. I was referring to free wifi at
RESTAURANTS, not the Waldorf-Astoria.

Oh, I forgot, we bought an ethernet cable....add $15 because we paid
retail.

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:23:13 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>It's not just AT&T's 3G network that would crumble if suddenly 3G use
>went up exponentially, none of the carriers could handle it.

Simply not true.

>It's like most local bus systems. They cry that no one uses transit, but
>if something actually caused a mass migration from cars to transit
>they'd be unable to handle the load until they added more capacity,
>which isn't instantaneous. We've seen this happen when there's some sort
>of disruption in the road system, or when one transit agency goes on strike.

Ridiculous analogy. Bus systems are very heavily subsidized, and the
real problem is that no more subsidy funding is available. Typical fare
box recovery is no better than 20%.

>It's also probable that 3G service for the 3G iPhone is going to cost
>more than the current 2G service. They'll likely give users a choice of
>which to buy.

Seems unlikely, since there is no difference between 2G cost and 3G cost
for any other device. Cost is by device, not class of service.

>T-Mobile may be the carrier that disrupts the 3G pricing of the other
>three carriers. They didn't rush in spending wildly to create a 3G
>network that few users are willing to pay for.

And as a result has fallen farther behind.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR AT&T/CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AT&T_Wireless_FAQ>