Steve Perlman is back, and this time with a wireless technology that will remove the problem of mobile devices sharing bandwidth from a cell tower.
It was about three years ago when the relentless inventor and entrepreneur promised a wireless technology solution. He shared a prototype called DIDO, a technology designed to do away with network congestion in wireless setup by giving each tablet or smartphone their own fast connection, relieving them of having to share the bandwidth from a cell tower. The details of the technology were difficult to comprehend, and many critics dismissed the claim.
Personal cell technology
Now, Perlman is working to prove the non-believers wrong through the debut of pCell, or personal cell technology, the commercialized version of his innovation. He bills his wireless technology as the successor of LTE, the high-speed wireless technology of today. In his laboratory demonstrations, Perlman displayed iPhones, TVs and Surface tablets streaming huge files - Netflix's House of Cards, for example, in its 4k UltraHD version - through his wireless networking device.
The demo proved two things: first, that high-speed wireless works, and second, that it works with devices that support LTE.
Congestion relief
Companies like Verizon and AT&T rely on cell towers, which emit a signal that is shared by any person within range. The signals can overlap at the border of their range, like circles nudging against each other. Such arrangements must be done artfully, however, since interference is created when the circles get too close.
This is a problem for places like Chicago, San Francisco and New York, where millions of people in the same cell are pulling down data or placing calls on their devices at the same time, causing things to all but grind to a halt. What's more, this congestion is only predicted to get worse as people keep buying smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices to download larger media files.
A new era
The personal cell system by Steve Perlman is completely void of any issue of bandwidth sharing. He and his team developed a smart transmission system wherein their networking equipment searches a device such as a smartphone, and with complex mathematical operations, creates a unique signal just for that device - hence the term "personal cell."
The pCell transmitters can be placed anywhere and there is no need to worry about signals bleeding into each other. No wonder Perlman is heralding the technology as the largest capacity increase in the wireless tech history - a wireless equivalent of fiber optic cable.
