Hacker News Reader

Comment by doug_durham | Hacker News Reader

Cellular protocols are vendor agnostic. It's just that we keep finding ways to eek more bandwidth out of the spectrum. No one wants 3G or the original CDMA.

View on HN

Personally I was content with 3G, especially 3G voice that was part of 4G LTE until the US carriers were allowed to kill it and force everyone into churning devices. I would likely still be using my S7 if not for that.

I would still be using some Nokia.

3G was fine, without all these pesky people using it. It seems we need the extra capacity provided by newer Gs.

Sometimes I find myself turning 4G off because the 3G reception is better in crowded or remote areas.

The number of users hasn't really gone up since 3G. By that point in the US basically everyone had a cell phone. So your point is more like increased data usage across the board. And sure that's a decent argument why carriers want to deprecate old protocols, although I think carriers being allowed to deprecate what was effectively a single generation old was a travesty.

I'm just saying as far as service level and amount of data on plans, I personally was content with 3G levels. There's so much advertising pushing us into churning for technolust incrementalist spec-chasing, that I find completely uncompelling as what really defines my devices' capabilities is software freedom.

Indeed the technology itself is, but the spectrum is not, it’s allocated by FCC auction and effectively controlled by the cellar companies.

This is what I think may be the source of confusion, since you can’t say, build your own cellar device and tap into Verizon’s network without their authorization, like you can with AM or FM radio waves

frequency allocation has nothing to do with modulation.

Just because AM is easy to transmit or receive in any band, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to.

Right. Spectrum management is a complex subject (I've actually sat on several preparatory committees to make submissions to WARC (aka WRC).

The matter reminds me a bit of copyright law about 40 years ago, back then the GP was hardly aware that copyright existed, nowadays it may not be much the wiser but it at least knows one can't just copy works without permission.

EMI and spectrum management is in a similar position to copyright of 40 years ago. It will be a long slow process to bring the GP up to speed. First we have to begin training electrical engineers in the subject as at present only a handful actually understand the subject at any depth.

Yes, my point exactly, I lacked the requisite vocabulary to express it more concisely

Reply on news.ycombinator.com