Doug Moeller - Autonet Mobile CTO

Autonet Mobile and LTE

At this years CES we performed some really cool demonstrations of our product running over the LTE network. And it was fast!! Even with the congested networks of Las Vegas during CES we were getting speeds greater then 15Mbps! But, the obvious next question is when are we going to stat selling that and unfortunately I don't have a really good answer for that. The problem is that while the LTE network was fast, the handoff between LTE and the regular 3G networks does not work well enough. If you never left LTE coverage you'd be very happy, but the reality is that LTE doesn't have good enough coverage yet for that to be the case for hardly anybody. Cars are going to be moving between 4G and 3G networks a lot and that handoff has to be perfect. We've got that handled on the IP side with our TRU technology, but there is an issue with the Radio chip that makes it not work so well on the RF side. The Radio chip vendor has a fix for this and is going to have new chips available for testing in a couple of months. We'll then get it integrated with our product and get all the FCC and carrier certifications taken care of, so I would expect that we'll have a product ready third quarter this year. I wish we could do it sooner, but you wouldn't be happy with the performance. I know other folks have released LTE products, but you'll note that no one has released one designed for in motion connectivity yet. We'll be the first and we'll be the best. :-)

Posted at 04:50PM Jan 25, 2012 by dmoeller in Doug Moeller  | 

Protect IP Act /SOPA

Something very important is being voted on in the U.S. House and Senate that will affect all users of the Internet. The PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are bills aimed at protecting Intellectual Property.

Under SOPA's provisions, service providers like Autonet Mobile would be required to monitor and police our users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites 'dedicated to infringing activities', SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the 'US. authorized version').

As law, PROTECT IP would empower government law enforcement to:

Seize domains of sites involved in the distribution of illegally obtained copyrighted material.
Compel ISPs to block access to seized domains (such as from cached servers).
Compel credit card companies to block access to infringing sites.
Prevent advertising companies from selling or carrying ads for infringing sites.
Require search engines like Bing and Google to block access to infringing sites.

This would require us to become the police force for copyright infringement and we'd be the subject of countless lawsuits from the usual suspects. As written this law is bad for the copyight holders, the public and the ISP's. The only one's who will win are the lawyers.

You can read more about it here.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/explosion-opposition-internet-blacklist-bill

If you want to read the full text of the act you can download it here.

http://leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/BillText-PROTECTIPAct.pdf

Posted at 06:39PM Nov 16, 2011 by dmoeller in Doug Moeller  | 

It's been a rough month for tech

First Steve Jobs, then Bob Galvin and now Dennis Ritchie. In very different ways, all three of these men made a huge impact on technology and how we use it. Our world is very different because of them and we owe them thanks. Thank you.

#include
main()
{
printf("goodbye, world\n");
}

Posted at 05:37PM Oct 15, 2011 by dmoeller in Doug Moeller  | 

Why does our coverage map stink?

One of the more frustrating parts about our service is that we cannot provide our customers with a detailed coverage map. We do have a coverage up at http://www.autonetmobile.com/service/coverage-map.php , but I think you'll agree that it lacks some detail. Internally, we have the ability to type in a specific address and see precise detail for a very specific location, but our customers don't have that ability themselves. The problem is licensing of the software that provides that detail. The company that provides that detail does it for the big wireless carriers and they charge a fortune for access to that data. You can't blame them too much since there is such a limited market for the data. Think about it, they collect all that data and they only have less then 10 potential customers for it, so they almost have to charge a mint for it. Don't fret though. Things are changing and it looks like we're going to have searchable and zoomable coverage maps up later this year. Till then, feel free to call our customer service center and we'll do the search for you.

Posted at 05:16PM Oct 15, 2011 by dmoeller in Doug Moeller  |