Here's an interesting one. Just days after Cisco
admitted that it was killing its own internal development of
WiMAX kit, the networking mainstay has sunk an undisclosed amount of cheddar into a company that holds WiMAX in the highest regard: Grid Net. Said outfit has close ties to GE, Intel, Motorola and Clearwire, all of which have also voiced support (and
invested real dollars) for the next-generation wireless protocol in years past. Last we heard, Cisco was doing its best to remain "radio-agnostic," and while some may view this as flip-flopping, we view it as brilliant; it's costly to develop internally, but buying stake in a company that's already well versed in a given technology allows Cisco to keep WiMAX at arm's reach without incurring the risk associated with building within. Beyond all that, we think that Cisco's just trying to get in early on the energy management biz, particularly after the US government
announced that it would be funding the distribution of loads of in-home energy monitors in the coming years. According to Grid Net, it intends to "use the proceeds from this investment to promote its real-time, all-IP, secure, reliable, extensible, end-to-end Smart Grid network infrastructure solutions," though specifics beyond that were few and far between. Verizon
mentioned that it would soon be using its LTE network for all sorts of unorthodox things -- we suppose WiMAX backers are planning to allow the same.
posted March 26th 2010 9:10PM
I just saw a demo about a month ago with a cisco powered building management system. It was amazing. Like if you key fobbed into a building it would power the lights to your floor and turn on your VOIP phone. It was some pretty impressive stuff.
@djt
Cisco is always at the top of their game.
That said, it makes me curious as to what this means. Could WiMax have more support than we think? The future holds some interesting developments; I hope that more is to come from this.
@r34p3r you could use it to turn stuff on and off remotely possible even power some small device like a single watt led bulb long enough to ...
@University of Pi
Did your comment somehow become jumbled, or did you just forget to finish typing?
@r34p3r That would be really interesting if we saw WiMax becoming more widespread. Last time I've really researched it however, there were some severe distance limitations.
@djt
Wasn't there something about Wal*Mart wanting a WiMax station on top of every one of their stores, to provide customers with free WiFi?
Imagine if they did that... the range the network would cover
@r34p3r Well WiMax runs on a different spectrum than WiFi. But it would be nice to see. Even better though, how about Starbucks!
We'd have 90% of the world covered then!
Until they can prove without a doubt that I won't potentially have issues with hackers messing with my power, I don't want any of this crap in my house.
TECH SUPPORT: Cisco home support, Terence speaking, how can I help you?
CALLER: Yes my windows won't shut down.
TECH SUPPORT: Which windows and in what room, sir?
CALLER: The master bedroom. My wife, she climbed ou...
TECH SUPPORT: It's ok, sir. I see the trip alarm monitor. Are you infront of your tablet?
CALLER: Yes.
TECH SUPPORT: Ok, double-click on the "My Home" icon.
CALLER: Yes.
TECH SUPPORT: Now select manual override.
CALLER: Is that in the properties tab?
TECH SUPPORT: Yes thats right. You must be "administrator" to do this.
CALLER: Ok done.
TECH SUPPORT: Ok now you can go to the window and try and shut the window manually.
CALLER: [comes back!] hey! it worked! Thanks Cisco support! Home automation is awesome!
TECH SUPPORT: You're blindly welcome, caller. My name is Terence, and Home Automation Tablet Environment (H.A.T.E) was my idea.
@buoy: Looks like that comment has a poor return on investment.
it failed good and hard. its trying to bash home automation vs, erm... energy monitoring. i'm wounded...
hehe ..ur funny
Hope they don't triple your power bill like PG&E did in Kern County.
They installed some of these "Smart Meters"(Well, PG&E's version) and people with power bills of $200 or so started to get $1000+ ones after.
@SirFenwick there is still a number of outstanding issues to be sorted out there. We need to work out *why* the bills jumped. Was there an associated increase in energy consumption, or was it due to a change in billing type that rewarded shifts to off-peak consumption and more transparently passed on costs associated with delivery of electricity during peak periods.
Less rumourmill rumblings and more accurate reporting will definitely be of help here.
This is going to sound weird, but I admit to being a Cisco hater. Or should I be a Geek Squad hater for leading me to buy a Cisco product?
@HardToBelieve If you've never used real Cisco products unlike the Cisco/Linksys stuff you probably can't comment on this. Cisco pretty much powers the entire internet and they do it pretty well. What you buy for your house is pretty much an entirely different company with Cisco branding.
@ Article "Verizon mentioned that it would soon be using its LTE network for all sorts of unorthodox things". Good for them, everybody should be doing it - given the finite amount of usable spectrum, all wireless networks should be @ 100% capacity all the time. And don't get me started on dark fiber. The best way to achieve this right now is via dynamic spectrum allocation by way of real-time spectrum brokering. If you have x amount of spectrum serving y voice and data via traditional cellular service, x - y = what you should be renting. It makes sense to maximize benefit from both business and social perspectives, particularly when you dropped $10 billion on 75 MHz of spectrum.