[LINK] DIDO NBN Replacement - I don't think so.

[Tom Koltai]

Quote/
Wireless challenge to 'future-proof' NBN 
A TECHNOLOGY guru who has been described as the Thomas Edison of Silicon
Valley claims to have developed a new wireless technology that could one
day rival the download speeds on the National Broadband Network. 

The new technology, called DIDO, allows internet users to access
download speeds up to 1000 times faster than possible on conventional
wireless networks, without any fall in speed as more users get on to the
network.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the wireless
breakthrough underlined the importance of being "technology agnostic"
when it came to choosing broadband solutions to meet the nation's needs.
/Quote
More--->
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/wireless-challenge-to-f
uture-proof-nbn/story-fn59niix-1226104623595?from=public_rss

White paper on the Topic :
http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf

...in the words of Steve Jobs,
Great inventions are stolen, not invented...
Ok, he was paraphrasing Picasso who said, good artists copy, great
artists steal

Pearson didn't invent beamforming multiple antenna arrays... Nor did he
invent P2P. However both are crucial to the delivery his result.

His discussion about bouncing signals off the ionosphere is gobbledygook
designed to obfuscate and distract. That is a function of the "selected"
spectrum utilised and not his "Dido" technology. E.g.: As any Ham radio
operator will confirm, there is more skip for longer distances at 27 MHz
than 450 MHz.

His invention is based on a version of MIMO i.e. multiple antennas with
multiple transmitter and receiver frequencies... 

Mr. Pearson claims that his mathematics are very complicated.

However, not if you have read the Lucent Labs 1999 paper on "Capacity of
Multi-antenna Gaussian Channels"
 http://mars.bell-labs.com/papers/proof/

Regular linkers will remember the Koltai 1997 concept of PCD's Personal
Communication Devices all talking to each other via adhoc routing and
obtaining an increased throughput as a result.

This is not really new technology. It is just a well written rewrite of
a bunch of other peoples technology. 

If we examine Pearson's previous patents, they are invariably for other
people's inventions; e.g.: WebTV (1996) was actually a bunch of
different technologies (Xing, etc - Oracle Ncube patent)bundled together
to look like something new. His Quicktime Movie Player would appear to
the researcher to be merely a GUI skin on top of the ON2 technology
re-labelled.

Unfortunately, the same applies to the Dido technology.
And also unfortunately, it really isn't very technically unique. Just
clever packaging of MIMO, Beamforming and P2P technologies into a single
package. It will be sold because Mr. Perlman is an expert and very slick
product packaging salesman.

Just like the "WebTV invention..."

I think it's a shame that Malcolm Turnbull has been "conned" into
believing that this technology is a unique NBN busting solution.

DiDo will still require all those other elements that combine to create
the Internet, backhaul, spectrum, peering agreements, col-location
facilities, Data Centres and all of these need to be linked by Fibre
[for the moment].

Dido is not today an NBN buster... However, I am sure it will be nicely
packaged and may well be a Foxtel/Channel 7/T-Box competitor for
wirelessly delivered video content to consumer devices in the future. 

Dido's shortcomings are similar to Skype's failure to work on WiFi
mobile handsets in the same fashion as via DSL or Fibre delivered CPE
versions and Skype will need to be rewritten to work in this space,
therefore the only use for Dido would appear to be content delivery
(i.e.: Movies, TV and Music). 

The clue is in the necessity for everything to be distributed through
their "Dido Processing Centres".
And further, his paper states: "The potential of DIDO is to have
unlimited numbers of simultaneous users, all streaming high-definition
video, utilising the same spectrum that a single user would use with
conventional wireless technology, with no degradation in performance, no
dead zones, no interference between users and no reduction in data rate
as more users are added." 

Other geeks would call this 27 MHz based MIMO powered P2P multi-casting
free-IPTV. 
In other words, the more users that are accessing the network, the
faster the content arrives...

What Mr. Turnbull has managed to do is to raise effective questions
about the cost of the NBN last mile delivery model.
However, without a currently available, suitable competitively priced
alternative, I believe that we need to keep rolling out the NBN until
the day arrives that ubiquitous MiMo devices are available in all our
handsets. http://mobile-experts.net/images/cover%20art%20mimo.jpg (for a
visual <Grin>).

Mr. Turnbull would be well advised to consider the parallel between the
invention of Wireless telecommunications in the late 19th century and
the rollout of copper phone lines regardless.

There is usually a teeny weeny lag between invention and commercial
realisation. Sometimes, 100 years
.

US Patent 129,971 for a "wireless telegraph" in July 1872 

Followed by consumer adoption, powered by:

Telecom Analogue Mobile Network rollout 1986 - Darwin
Telecom GSM network rollout in 1993- Sydney
 
On that basis, (and allowing for an acceleration of Moore's law - Pn =
Po ´ 1.3n)  the NBN will have to provide the consumer an interim
Internet access "bridge" for at least 32 years.


Tom