10. May 2011 by admin.

Hey Alan,
I found this in case anyone ever asks you again. The lady told me I could purchase a prepaid SIM card for unlimited data use for up to one month at a time. The two-month option is no longer applicable. If she is right it is a pretty affordable solution.
The link here is for the page on the website that explains the plan.

http://www2.btcbahamas.com/features/blackberry_pp3/index.php

–
Bill Hudek

—

Alan Spicer - marinetelecom.net and wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net
 

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | 1 Comment »

30. March 2011 by admin.

http://www.cable360.net/ct/45347.html

March 1, 2011
Solving The Slowdown: Ways To Reduce Wireless Network Latency
Until recently, engineers have treated network latency and human-factor latency as two separate phenomena. From an engineering perspective, they have two very different causes, which on the surface may not seem related.
By George Lawton

As underlying wireless network speeds increase, latency — a measure of the limits of back and forth communications — is playing a bigger role in the user experience than is channel capacity. This has implications not just for engineering and for increasing throughput but also for profits.

Major Web companies are discovering that differences in Web page-load time of less than a second can affect usage and revenues. For example, when Google gave users the option of increasing search results from 10 to 30, the load time increased 400 milliseconds (ms) to 900 ms. This half-second delay resulted in a 25-percent drop-off in first-result page searches. Bing found that a two-second slowdown reduced revenues per user by 4.3 percent.

(more at the link above…)

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

30. March 2011 by admin.

http://www.cable360.net/ct/45701.html

March 29, 2011
Sprint Will Fight AT&T’s Acquisition of T-Mobile
Sprint Nextel today said it is opposed to AT&T’s proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA. According to Sprint, “The wireless industry has sparked unprecedented levels of competition, innovation, job creation and investment for the American economy, all of which could be undone by this transaction. AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers. If approved, the proposed acquisition would create a combined company that would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue and would entrench AT&T’s and Verizon’s duopoly control over the wireless market.”

Vonya McCann, Sprint’s SVP/Government Affairs, added, “Sprint urges the United States government to block this anti-competitive acquisition. This transaction will harm consumers and harm competition at a time when this country can least afford it. As the first national carrier to roll out 4G services and handsets and the carrier that brought simple unlimited pricing to the marketplace, Sprint stands ready to compete in a truly dynamic marketplace. So on behalf of our customers, our industry and our country, Sprint will fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly.”

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

30. March 2011 by admin.

There has been a shortage of the Ericsson W35 Cellular Voice and Data - Cellular Terminal (Tranceiver / Router / Analog Telephone to Cellular Telephone Router) from around December 2010 to March 2011.

The Ericsson W35 is back available again. We can have one to you anywhere in the US and Canada within 2-3 business days. The shipping is FREE. These units are very popular in the marine market in particular for power (motor) and sail yachts. These units can take an external antenna for extended range on the water. These units can take standard RJ-11 telephone input from standard telephone equipment and PBX systems onboard marine vessels. These units have a built-in 4 port switch and router functionality as well as a wireless access point providing wireless connectivity to handheld, portable, and Mac / Windows Laptops … as well as other 802.11 compatible WiFi devices. In other words these units create a network - if you didn’t already have one … or can be plugged into an existing onboard computer network onboard a boat.

These units can run on 10 - 28 vDC as well as the supplied AC to DC power supply … there is a DC connection cable available, so this makes them flexible on boats as far as the power connection as well.

These units operate on GSM / UMTS / HSPA Cellular Networks and are Quad Band for U.S., Caribbean, and European / Asian locations … which allows use on marine vessels as they travel the world. GSM / UMTS / HSPA uses Sim Cards which allows you to change providers easily as you travel. This means that they are an UNLOCKED cellular device (not locked to one carrier as some handheld devices are.) They can provide WiFi connectivity to those handheld devices that have WiFi capability allowing Internet and voice applications such as Skype, Vonage, and other voice over Internet / Voice over IP usage.

Please see additional information on this blog … as well as (from there) links to our W35 information and sales page.

Dealer inquiries are welcomed.

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom provides local support for these units, we don’t just sell them - we also install them. We know how they work … we can tell you how to install and use them.

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

Email: communications @ marinetelecom.net

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | 1 Comment »

10. February 2011 by admin.

Question …
Hi Alan,

I just found your video on connecting the W35
directly thru DC.  I found it because I was thinking that I could just cut off
the AC adapter and wire it directly to a DC plug (with some inline fuses like
you have).  I just was wondering if you could confirm this and if you could let
me know which pins (pins 1 - 4) you used for the black and red wires.

Thank you in advance for your help.

* Answer …

I know which wires it is – because I still have the adaptor I made. I took
the supposedly bad AC to DC adaptor. Cut the plug end of and stripped the wires
down. I tested both with a meter and with a W35 and it seems to work. The wire
#1 and #3 shorted seemed to be important.

From the left – with the white stripe to the right

1 – shorted to 3

2 – positive

3 – shorted to 1

4 (white striped) –
negative

* The numbering I just gave you was arbitrary … but I chose to hold the
four conductor cable in my hand with the white striped wire to the right and
counting from the left. The first black wire being #1, 2nd one #2, etc.
…

* I hereby disclaim any and all responsibility for you using this
information. Use is at your own risk. If you torch your W35 or your dog no
longer loves you afterwards…. I am not responsible.

—
Alan
Spicer

DBA Alan Spicer Telcom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
Computer
Services, Wired/Wireless Networking,
Cell/Sat/Landline Communications,
General Consulting…
Marine, Business, Small Office and Home Office (SOHO)

* Cost Savings and Integration of Multiple Internet Technologies
on
board Sail and Motor Yachts * Documentation, Operating
Instructions, and
Support after the Sale *

* http://www.marinetelecom.net/
*
http://www.internetforyachts.net/
* http://www.wifiyacht.net/
*
954-683-3426

http://www.marinetelecom.net/Ericsson_W35/

Livewire: Access
Controller (Service Selector):

http://www.marinetelecom.net/Livewire_Service_Selector/

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

18. January 2011 by admin.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/216669/iphone_vs_iphone_which_network_can_satisfy_your_need_for_speed.html

The results seem to indicate that AT&T is the faster network but that Verizon is more reliable. There were also some other interesting points brought up both in the article and in the comments posted by readers.

Alan Spicer liked one comment and added his own comments to that.

Posted Today, 03:29 PM
hazydave, on 14 January 2011 - 05:34 PM, said:

WHEN you can get a good 3G connection, AT&T has an inherently faster protocol. HSPA can run up to double the speed of EvDO, and minimally, the peaks are set for 3.6Mb/s down, versus 3.1Mb/s down on Verizon.

On the other hand, while AT&T has good 3G support in urban areas, less than 25% of AT&T’s cells (as of some report last year) are 3G at all. Every Verizon cell is 3G. So once you leave the big city, there’s another story entirely. A big part of this is the CDMA2000 technology… neither Verizon nor Sprint needed either all-new equipment or new spectrum to support EvDO 3G. AT&T and T-Mobile needed twice the usual spectrum (better still 4x) to support HSPA. T-Mobile didn’t even have this spectrum until 2006 (they bought newly opened spectrum at 1700MHz and 2100MHz).

Another non-city issue is frequency. Higher frequencies drop off faster in free air, and faster still through buildings and foliage. One reason Verizon and AT&T have better coverage in rural areas is this: they each have one of the two available slots at 850MHz, the old AMPS frequencies. Nearly everyone else, along with Verizon and AT&T, run at 1900MHz (this is in the USA, but it’s similar in Europe). But AT&T needs both 850MHz and 1900MHz at the same time for 3G, so they have 3G range problems compared to Verizon, once you’re out of the city.

This is somewhat fixed for 4G (real 4G, LTE in particular… HSPA+ is still a 3G technology, on the same frequencies as HSPA). Verizon and AT&T both have a good deal of spectrum in the 700MHz band, so they’ll outperform the others, once they get the suburbs and rural areas wired (the both claim “end of 2013″). Sprint has even more spectrum, but it’s at 2500MHz, which has serious problems though foliage. They’ll need more towers than AT&T or Verizon. T-Mobile has some LTE aspirations, but has not fully announced these yet, particularly, who’s spectrum they’re going to use.

Alan Spicer said:

@hazydave - That was the best post I have seen on this article and on many article comment posts. Instead of posting a he-said she-said finger-pointing barrage … you posted technical facts backing things up. In ham radio frequencies are often described by what wavelength “meters” band they are.

Examples 160 meters = 1.8 Mhz, 80 meters = 3.5 Mhz, 40 meters = 7 Mhz, all the way down to many of you have heard of 2 meters = 144 Mhz (we’re now in Very High or VHF), but not many have heard of 70 centimeters (Now in Ultra High or UHF). 33 Centimeters Amateur Radio Band is about half of that and now on the playing field for cellular communications ranges. It’s 902 Mhz.

I know from ham radio use that VHF went a lot further outdoors but didn’t penetrate buildings very well. UHF seemed to penetrate buildings better but didn’t have as much range as VHF. And it gets worse the higher you go up in frequencies. Hand cellular devices seem to have some of the same problems that hand held amateur radio transceivers have … because of being small devices with small antennas and having no guaranteed line-of-sight to the “tower”.

In amateur radio - “repeaters” are used to retransmit the signal to increase coverage. They also often use linking systems with multiple towers and base stations … almost “cellular” like in concept and purpose. But not as many towers as most cellular systems have.

1900 Mhz - (300 / F Mhz = ~ meters) = 0.1578947368421053 Meters. Or 15.7894 Centimeters. 15.7894 centimeters multiplied by 0.3937008 = 6.2 inches. Two interesting things about that. #1 to be a full wave antenna at 1900 Mhz your antenna has to be about 1/2 foot tall. It is NOT. #2 You see the size ~ 6.2 inches and can imagine the obstacles near that size that can absorb that radio wave. Things in your car, things in your house, things in your office. Those frequencies are not SUPPOSED to go that far. (Why WiFi is in 2.4Ghz? They don’t want it to go too far.) In fact the cellular provider likely has a down tilt on the antennas to keep them from interfering with the adjacent towers, etc.

This was just mean to show some information about radio waves and relate it to cellular frequencies. It was not meant to make a definitive answer as to any cellular carriers range or speed. Just some food for thought. Your hand, your arm, your body, could very easily block a cellular band signal.

73 de KA4UDX,

Alan Spicer

—
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

29. November 2010 by admin.

Hopefully everyone had a good Thanksgiving and some got the whole Thanksgiving Weekend off. Some might have went Black Friday shopping.

Well now it’s Cyber Monday. (yah… they make these holidays up as they go along…) and time for an Ericsson W35 Sale.

Ericsson W35 - Rear View

* For 3 days starting on Cyber Monday - 11/29/2010 until Midnight 12/01/2010 - Ericsson W35 for everyone only $470.00.

http://www.marinetelecom.net/Ericsson_W35/ - shows the price as $520.00. Minus $50.00 from that is $470.00. And FREE SHIPPING to US/CAN addresses.

Note: If you need the External Antenna Radio Pigtail (MCX to N-Female) that will add an additional $15.00 to your final price.

* The Ericsson W35 (complete) Marine Pack is also available ON SALE … shows $860.00 on http://www.marinetelecom.net/Ericsson_W35/ for the same three days $860 minus $100 = $760.00. There will be shipping on the marine packs - so call for a quote on the shipping.

Ericsson W35 Marine Pack

Ericsson W35 Unit

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net

communications @ marinetelecom.net

+1 954-683-3426

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

28. November 2010 by admin.

* Alan Spicer’s Note First: Well … let the best company win. Someone has to be FIRST. I think Verizon has “hit” first before in cellular 3G’ish things. All other chalks will follow … as they said in that movie Blackhawk Down. (Check for survivors and secure the area. All other chalks will follow. Over. 2-5, do you read me, over?) Hopefully “you can hear me know?” the systems will work good. What I really hope for is that this is a bit of a convergence of technologies … cellular companies all getting on LTE a next-generation of GSM and UMTS. It would really be nice to have end-user equipment be cross compatible with multiple cellular companies … therefore allowing competition and a chance for savings for the people! That might be difficult though with different radio frequency spectrum allocations that were obtained by the cellular companies. And no doubt they would still like to have you on a locked device … a “locked phone” to one company. One ring to bind them all I guess.

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

* Hopefully the LTE service is as good and as snazzy as the commercials…

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/22/verizon-please-dont-over-promise-on-lte/

Verizon, Please Don’t Over-Promise on LTE
By Jeff Belk Nov. 22, 2010, 3:30pm PDT

Watching Sunday Night Football last night, I was as surprised as anyone to see the Verizon Wireless “teaser” ads for the December launch of its initial LTE markets. I lived (painfully) through the launch of the initial 2G services in the mid-‘90s, and the launch of the initial 3G services of the early ’00s as the SVP of global marketing for Qualcomm �, which provides the chips in the handsets for Verizon’s CDMA network. I’ve been involved with the planned LTE roll outs since 2008, and was eagerly awaiting the marketing and consumer communication to see what the wireless industry would promise with Long Term Evolution 4G networks.

With that as a context for November 2010, it was great to finally see a consumer pitch for LTE. So I went to Verizon’s home page, and clicked on “Learn More.” That’s when my when-will-the-industry-ever-learn alarm bells started flashing. The “What can I do with it?” section reads in part: “Stream your favorite director’s cut without annoying buffering. Or better yet, download and view full-length HD quality movies…Watch live TV in mobile high definition right on your laptop.”

Oh, Verizon, why? Why set yourself up for over-promising? Being able to launch LTE in 38 markets and cover 110 million people by the end of 2010 is an amazing technical achievement, and took a mind-boggling effort. In one swoop, Verizon’s LTE Network will match and maybe even surpass Clearwire’s WiMAX network, and Clearwire has been building its network for years. And Verizon, you’re using a technology, LTE, which has global scope, is great for mobility from day one, and has an ongoing roadmap to LTE-Advanced, whereas the Clearwire folks, for all their protestations, could be dead meat unless they switch to the TDD version of LTE to compete.

(more at the link…)

* Jeff Belk seems to really know what he is talking about and he wrote the following in comments (there are more at the link) but he also wrote a document that he refers to. I’ll attach it here.

Jeffrey Belk
Monday, November 22 2010
Justin:

In the interest of keeping the piece short, I did not detail my background, but I started working in wireless in 1993, and was involved in the rollouts of lots of networks in my time in Qualcomm, including the initial Sprint PCS Nettwork (I actually was running the proposal team for the first PCS handset Sprint ended up purchasing). Qualcomm purchased Flarion in 2005 to augment Qualcomm’s 4G developments in both LTE and the next stage, LTE Advanced.

You (and others) might want to Google my name and WHYMAX, which is a piece I wrote (it is very long, and yes, I did write it) during the WiMax / 3G holy wars. My sections explaining wireless, wireless standards, and what it takes to make a product could be “search and replace” for some of the issues LTE (or wimax) has faced and will be facing as the rollout continues and the technology scales volumes.

Good news is time, money, and smart people end up making this stuff work…the things we take for granted an bitch about issue that exist would have been seen as total Science Fiction in the Mid-90′s…

Jeff Belk (his “WHYMAX” article here: WhyMax by Jeff Belk)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/211760/verizon_readies_lte_what_to_expect.html

Verizon Readies LTE: What to Expect
By Brad Reed, NetworkWorld Nov 27, 2010 8:35 am

Now that Verizon has started cranking up its hype machine for its LTE commercial launch next month, it’s fair to wonder just what types of devices will run on the network.

Initially it seems that Verizon’s LTE customers will be limited to USB dongles for their laptops. However they won’t have to wait very long for LTE-based smartphones to come out as some industry watchers expect them to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and to become commercially available shortly after. 4G technologies such as LTE and WiMAX represent the next stage in the evolution of wireless data technologies and generally deliver average download rates of 3Mbps or higher.

Verizon, Bluegrass Cellular bringing LTE to rural Kentucky

“They’ve moved up the timetable for LTE smartphones and now I’m hearing sometime in February 2011,” says ABI Research analyst Phil Solis. “There will be a bunch of devices out in the first half of next year and there will be a focus on tablets.”

(more at the link…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Architecture_Evolution

http://www.3gpp.org/LTE.html

—
Alan Spicer
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFIYacht.net
http://www.marinetelecom.net - http://www.wifiyacht.net
communications @ marinetelecom.net
+1 954-683-3426

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

23. November 2010 by admin.

* They might be re-hashing the same story again in a different spot on PC World. But they are at it again on the issue of:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/211292/4g_turning_into_meaningless_moniker.html

* One mans junk is another mans treasure … maybe one companies dissatisfied customers are another companies treasure? Anyway I wrote the following comment on the PC World article:

AlanSpicer says:
Mon Nov 22 14:41:02 PST 2010

T-Mobile must not have as many customers as AT&T in most of their areas … because IF the technology is the same … and AT&T is delivering less than 5Mb/s to Smart Phones and 12 Mb/s to Laptop Dongles (And T-Mobile says that they are?) (and other HSPA+ devices - and yes there are other devices) - then they must all booked up on their towers.

If T-Mobile gets similarly all booked up on their towers and in their areas - then they too will slow down in average delivered speeds. Either that or T-Mobile knows some trick that AT&T doesn’t. Or AT&T is capping the speed per device trying to keep their capacity.

Anyway T-Mobile is trying to change the game (rules) so if the consumers believe them - then everyone else will have to change the game (rules) as well (as someone else already hinted to.)

Another thing that could use a fair shake of competition is the 5Gb per month hard limits … if T-Mobile were to give unlimited to everyone - then maybe everyone else would have to as well? There are multiple angles to look at the “problems” - two are per second download and upload rates and per month hard limits or not. There are also the problems that the carriers are looking at with their capacity - both on the Front End (RAN) Radio Access Network and on the Back End (Internet Backbone bandwidth.)

Everything will end being Taco Bell anyway after the franchise wars I don’t remember which movie that is a quote from

* These technologies … are things called “standards”. Maybe we should dispense with the 3G, 4G mantra. Maybe we should all have a little more truth in lending … we should give out the real specifications of what something can do - both on paper and in real world situations. Out there where the rubber (shoes and tires) meets the road and where the “wheels” (propellers) of boats meet the water. But then again that would be like getting to tier 2 technical support right away … or talking with the engineers that actually built the thing (Apollo 13 movie reference) and know how it really works. But then what would happen to the marketing folks? And what would the masses do without the wool being pulled over their eyes? Where would they go for guidance?

The Hunt for Red October …

Jeffrey Pelt: Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?

Ambassador Lysenko: You make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt.

—

Alan Spicer

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net

http://www.marinetelecom.net - http://www.wifiyacht.net

communications @ marinetelecom.net

+1 954-683-3426

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »

20. November 2010 by admin.

The Ericsson W35 has been chosen by several Internet Providers, for example in Canada, The Rogers Rocket Hub and the Bell Turbo Hub, are  the very same Ericsson W35 that is sold here. Sometimes they are modified slightly … but the basics are exactly the same. The functionality is the same. I embedded some of these videos that I found on YouTube.com on the Ericsson_W35 Information and Sales Page here on Marinetelecom.net because they highlighted some interesting features of the units.

These can be viewed on: http://www.marinetelecom.net/Ericsson_W35/

Thanks for stopping by! Please call me with any questions.

—
Alan Spicer
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFiYacht.net
http://www.marinetelecom.net - http://www.wifiyacht.net
communications @ marinetelecom.net
+1 954-683-3426

Posted in Cellular Voice and Internet | No Comments »