Light data, through the ether

from the light-delivery dept

Terrabeam will soon be offering a service that delivers 1GB/sec data transfer rates to offices in major US cities. The major advantage that this company will have is that it doesn't have to rely on anything but air and data hubs to deliver data and may beat other broadband service providers to potential customers.
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  1. icon
    Mike (profile), 12 Apr 2000 @ 1:33pm

    But will it work

    We've discussed Terabeam here before (Ryan, don't you read Techdirt? ;) and the question really is whether or not it will actually work. I can think of a ton of reasons why it shouldn't. It would be cool if it does, but I'm not willing to jump on the bandwagon yet.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    ScooterBoy, 12 Apr 2000 @ 3:04pm

    Re: But will it work

    what are the ton of reasons that it won't work?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Mike (profile), 12 Apr 2000 @ 3:23pm

    Re: But will it work

    It's based on beaming light... I don't know all the details (admittedly) and I'm no physics expert, but I'd think you need a line of sight connection between routers. Anything gets in the way (including fog - which was the original reason they said they couldn't get it to work in Seattle) and it stops working... Plus, think about how many of these you'd have to set up to make sure you could get line of sight from anywhere in a city. Admittedly, you don't have to lay lines, but I'm not sure this is an improvement. Then again, everyone who's seen it says it's great, and Hesse is a smart guy, so maybe they've got something that I don't know about to combat that. I certainly hope so, because it would be cool...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Ryan, 13 Apr 2000 @ 1:28pm

    Re: But will it work

    umm.... I read techdirt! I the article that I checked out was a little bit of a filler. I sort of forgot that you talked to the current CEO of terrabeam. Why did you insult him, I'm intrigued.
    P.S. My current lack of focus is partially due to my finals, which are in about a week and a half.... AHHHH! The other part is the site that I'm working on (and of course writing for techdirt).

    link to this | view in thread ]


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