To explain the delay in the 2nd "Mobile Michiels" blog post, in the last 2 weeks we've moved from San Francisco to Seattle, my new home for the next forseeable future. Our apartment search begins the topic of this post, discussing how wireless communication actually has a very unappreciated side-effect.
We've officially signed the lease on a wonderful apartment that has stunning balcony views of North Seattle's wonderful Greenlake park, the Cascades, and Mount Rainer...and a clumsy telephone pole square in the middle of it all.
While this is such a minor blemish for our lucky apartment find, it reminded me of photos I took two months ago in India. As I mentioned in my last post, India is struggling with a crushing population and lack of infrastructure. A frequent reminder of this to westerners is the state of the infrastructure for electricity and ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Urban areas show tangled daedalian wires hung haphazardly across walls, trees, poles, and gaps between buildings. Maybe it's not seen as a visual problem to some folks, but there's no doubt that backfilling cables into overpopulated cities or distant rural areas is a challenge to governments & telecom companies.
No doubt this is a recipe for unpredictable outages and safety issues. Our host Chris summarized it best when he recalled asking a power technician why his power was out for days. The technician replied "Why, it is mango season in the Philippines!" How Philippine mango harvests affect the power supply in Mumbai, India is a mystery that I'd love to hear someone explain. My personal hypothesis is that the monkey engineering mafia in Shimla has something to do with it...
Jumping further back in time, I recalled all the discussion of 4G technologies (like WiMax/LTE) at CTIA 2008. Besides the obvious speed advantages, networking executives and carriers touted the ability for these networks to roll out quicker, cheaper, and covering larger areas with less towers. The general sense was that while 3G may be the buzzword for Apple (finally), most of the developing world plans to leapfrog 3G upgrade costs completely and replace their networks with 4G towers. For years China has made a large a push for it's 4G standard to leapfrog many 3G efforts. It seems like there is still some question as to what the future of 4G networking will be, so some of this is purely speculation and positioning. In the U.S. meanwhile, Dan Hesse (Sprint CEO) touted their 4G investment as a key competitive advantage. I for one welcome our 4G overlords, not for the speedy data, but for the possibility of less visual blight and reliance on jerry-rigged infrastructure. If less 4G towers are required to cover the same amount of space as a bunch of 2G towers or landline cables blocking my lake view, all the better, right?
Of course, now that I'm a true Seattle resident, I've got to close with the environmental impact of this. While the visual reduction of wired clutter seems like a positive step, I may change my mind if the implementation trades visual clutter for environmental impact. There's indications that carriers are choosing to power newer towers with solar power, decreasing the indirect demands for power on our planet (and costs to run their network). But does the end-to-end power consumption decline, or just allow them to cover more ground for less money? I'd also like to get a clear conscience and definitive answer that the microwaves that these technologies rely on are not causing health issues or impacting animal populations. Especially the Shimla monkeys, they've got enough problems on their own without worrying about tumors or tin foil hats.
Anyways, if any lonely souls out there are reading post #2, lemme know what you think about wires, towers, and monkeys. Yours truly, Wireless in Seattle.
