36meg wireless!!!

2001-04-17

So today I played with 36meg wireless connections to the web. Actually I'm writing this message from one. NTT has a trial running where they have several notebook computers setup throughout Tokyo with their new 36meg wireless internet service. One of those locations happens to be the snackbar at Digital Hollywood. I'm not sure when it will be available for general use. My impression is they haven't installed many nodes yet. The trial period runs from now until August.

They advertise it as fast both uploading and downloading and their demo site has 2mbit streaming movies (as opposed to the usual top end of most sites of 300kbits) I assume you're only going to get 2mbit streams from their servers and not from the net in general. They are advertising it also as portable TV, Cable, Movies and Video Conferencing. In a week or two they are supposed to install Video Conferencing cameras on these and the other machines so you can chat with other people trying it out.

The antenna box you connect to your computer is about the 2/3 the size of a pack of cigaettes long and wide and about 1.3 times the thinkness.

They claim on average it works 100 meters from the base and interestingly they advertise it as a "for indoor use" thing. I wonder if that means they'll have a list of buildings it's installed in when they finally ship it or what. 100 meters seems pretty far in some ways. One per block would do except I'm sure walls and other stuff effect it. In fact my wireless ethernet at home the two computers are only about 6 feet from each other but their connection feels like under 1mbits. I've got to assume it's something in the wall between them.

Note: 36meg is over 3 times faster than current wireless internet.

As a side note, I can't help but wonder if this antenna (and the one on my notebook at home) is beaming cancer into my hands arm and brain. I mean I'm on my cellphone only a few minutes a day at most but my hands are 1 to 2 inches away from that antenna the whole time I'm using the computer. Anybody have any facts or opinons on that?

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The strange Bunny
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