cellular net access?

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I don't think so. Of course, I may be wrong.

A mobile phone is constrained by technical limitations, that
are built-in the cellular network you are using.

Current GSM networks, due to their architecture, cannot allow
you to have more than 9.6 Kbps of bandwidth -- this has nothing
to do with the type of transmission (digital or audio) but
with the speed of the GSM protocol itself. While I am not a
specialist of other (analog) cellular systems, I believe they
are even worse in this respect, since they do not have the
error checking and digital transmission GSM offers.

More than that, but a "56" Kbps transmission depends on having
digital links (read: fiber optics) between your modem to the
other one. In short, it's an ugly kludge that takes advantage
of some possibilities of the telephone digital switiching
system to increase the available bandwidth.

In some areas of the world, you'll never ever get 56 Kbps, since
the phone system is almost 100% copper wire and analog switches.
And even if your telephone system is all fiber optics and digital
switches, you'll never *exactly* get 56 Kbps: the best I can have
is about 50.xxx Kbps, and I am in an area which is almost pure
digital & fiber optics -- to the point that getting a DSL line
is a matter of days, not weeks.

On GSM, again, you bump into the limitations of the GSM standard
itself: transmissions are limited to 9.6 Kbps -- period. Getting
an audio connection to go faster than this seems very dubious.

Disclaimer: of course, everything I say here could be completely
wrong. In that case, I would be very, very, very interested in 
getting one of these cards... Email and web access anywhere...
Oh, yes!   <grin>


On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 04:26:42 -0500 (EST)
Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org> wrote:

> Actually I believe there are cards that will let you use a mobile phone as an
> audio connection - in principle capable of giving you 56k...
> 
> chaals
> 


/-------------------------------------\
|   Gil Andre -- Technical Writer     |
|Knox Software: http://www.arkeia.com |
|     email: gandre@arkeia.com        |
\-------------------------------------/





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