MiFi – Making your Home a Hotspot
If you are a Verizon broadband subscriber, you can enhance your WiFi experience by getting a personal WiFi hotspotting device that will allow up to five of your friends to access the internet from their netbooks of mobile phones in your home. The Verizon MiFi basically makes your home a hotspot. But because it’s portable, anywhere you go becomes a hotspot. This device is ideal to any subscriber who has to trek into remote locations with weak or absent WiFi hotspots but has to go online most of the time. It’s also great for anyone wanting to give access to the internet at home without having to spend on all those cables and routers.
How It Works
The MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot from Verizon is a petite battery-run EVDO cellular modem device the size of 8 credit cards stacked over each other. Wherever you bring the MiFi with you, once turned on, it detects a Verizon Wireless 3G network near you and enables a more reliable broadband WiFi connection to your laptop, netbook or mobile phone. It even lets your iPod Touch connect to your laptop.
The MiFi’s lithium-ion battery can give for 40 hours on standby mode just like any mobile phone. Turning it on with the flick of a miniature side switch gives you 5 hours continuously enveloping you with a 30 foot WiFi radio bubble so you can get your emails or surf on the internet wirelessly. At home you can just tether the device to its charger for indefinite use.
Admittedly you really can’t go unlimited surfing as you’d be limited by the amount of data downloaded specified for a billing period. So depending on the plan you take out, you can go as low as 250Mb up to 5 GB. With a low plan, you might not be able to extend this to your friends or neighbours within a 30ft radius. But if you’re the generous type, why not?
Vodafone Access Gateway
If you are getting frustrated with 3G reception problems at home when using your 3G mobile phone, cheer up. There are solutions available from your telecoms and networking companies that allow you to overcome weak 3G or cell site signals at home.
One of them is from Vodafone. Vodafone is making it easy for your household to boost 3G signals using the Vodaphone Access Gateway device. If you are on Vodaphone’s broadband subscription, just plug the router-like device to the Vodaphone line receptacle at home. These are very small devices that won’t get in the way nor become unsightly as you’d hardly notice their presence. The device gets plugged to your broadband line and four persons can access 3G with their mobile handsets concurrently. This service from Vodaphone can be enjoyed from as low as £5 a month with select pay monthly offers, please pop into a store for more information.
Get more than just a signal booster
Measuring a petite 190(h) x 150(w) x 37(h) mm and weighing just 414gm the equivalent of two mobile phones, the Vodafone Access Gateway is wedge shaped box looking like a fixed line router. It is basically a 3G signal booster that you plug to an existing broadband connection from Vodafone.
It doesn’t matter how bad the 3G signal is in your area as it works like a mini 3G mobile phone base station right in your home or office. Once connected to your broadband router, you can make all the calls and other 3G-related data services available on your mobile phone. In addition, the device can accommodate up to four 3G calls or data services simultaneously from different handsets. Any 3G certified mobile phone works with the device
The Vodafone Access Gateway is made by Sagem, a French telecoms equipment maker using a “femtocell” which makes a low-powered connection between your mobile handset with the nearest Vodafone network using home’s broadband connection instead of the normal wireless mobile cell station.
3G Technology
3G or third generation mobile phone technology is governed by standards promulgated by the International Telecommunications Union or ITU. It defined 3G under the IMT-2000 standards with the sole objective of overcoming the bandwidth limitations of 2G. With HSPA software upgrades 3G can enable download speeds of up to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 5.8 Mbps. Compare that with GSM downloading speeds of no more than 14.4 kbps and you have an idea of the immense improvement in bandwidth offered by 3G networks. With 3G, you have the benefits of high bandwidth-hugging video calls as well are a host of high speed data transmissions that make it a breeze using wireless telephony for internet access.
The Road to 3G
It took some time for 2G networks to evolve into 3G, the last step requiring a total upgrade of its networks. The mobile telephony world saw at least two general upgrade that attempted to solve the bandwidth restrictions of 2G but only to some extent:
- From 2G to 2.5G was the first major evolutionary step with the use of General Packet Radio Service or GPRS capable of data speeds from 58kbps to 115kbps. When it was introduced, you could have WAP or Wireless Application Protocol and MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service on your mobile phone handset. You could get email and browsing but traffic is slow and the traditional circuit modes get your billed per minute of connection regardless of whether you use it or not.
From 2.5G to 2.75G meant going to the EDGE. That’s Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution. It also goes by Enhanced GPRS and IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC). It allows improved data transmission speeds as an enhancement to the standard GSM. EDGE has a bandwidth capacity of up to 236.8 kbps with a latency of about 150 milliseconds with a theoretical maximum of 473.6 kbps on a transmission mode that uses high order time shifting. EDGE has been integrated as part of ITU’s 3G definition and maybe considered already 3G. This was first implemented in 2003 by then Cingular (AT&T) in the US.
HSPA
The Best Thing to Happen on Mobile Phones
HSPA or High Speed Packet Access is the umbrella term that covers two protocols for mobile telecommunications. These are the HSDPA or High Speed Downlink Packet Access and the HSUPA or High Speed Uplink Packet Access. Both extend the performance of current WCDMA protocols used on 3G mobile networks for internet access.
Any Advantage?
Most mobile handsets already sport HSPA features that once belong in high end handsets. When you see their handset’s technical data sheet indicating a 3G HSDPA and HSUPA capability, this just means they sport the downlink and uplink protocols for HSPA and these bandwidths are made available over their 3G network. HSPA benefits can’t happen on 2G networks.
HSPA basically allows a more satisfying internet surfing and downloading experience with its markedly improved data transfer rates peaking at 14 Mbps for downloading and 5.8 Mbps when uploading. That means more than 5 times downloading speed and twice uploading speed over current 2G networks capacities. A no-wait internet access makes the surfing and downloading online experience a breeze.
For network operators, an HSPA roll-out maximizes their utilization of their transmission channels by enhancing modulation schemes to handle more data packets and refining the protocols with which base stations and subscriber handsets communicate. Effectively, the cost per uploaded and download data bit also goes down significantly. Adopting their 3G networks to HSPA capacities is a natural upgrade path that virtually all mobile phone carriers are doing, if they haven’t at this time. In turn, this allows them to offer faster internet speeds at lower cost per bit to their subscribers.
Worldwide Deployment
HSPA is deployed in more than 80 countries around the world in commercial mobile phone networks as a software upgrade for HSDPA and HSUPA to their current 3G WCDMA mobile networks. This gives HSPA an edge over WiMax which still requires its own dedicated networking infrastructure and thus, greater business capitalization.
