[Tloewald]

Assuming pCell works as advertised it's a huge deal.

It allows you to cover a city in cells for insanely cheaper than current cell technology and provide far, far better reception and bandwidth to far larger numbers of customers AND it works with existing LTE gear while also affording simpler, cheaper, and lighter-weight new gear and reducing power consumption across the board. What's not to like?

I don't think anyone who has heard about pCell thinks it isn't a huge deal, if it works.

One example of a major potential problem: how well does it track erratically moving objects (e.g. most cell phones?), in built-up areas with lots of signal reflection?

[ajcarpy2005]

The answer would largely depend on how large the focus area is or how fast the signal quality degrades the further from the epicenter of the focal point that the receiver is.

Maybe the system could apply road map info to fast-moving cell phones which it can assume are in traffic. And this could help it predict possible future locations of your device.

For much of the day the majority of devices in a given "cell" will be semi-immobile at a desk or slowly moving when someone's walking.

[pyre]

What happens when someone turns on their phone on a plane? ;-P

[ajcarpy2005]

I think an on-board "repeater" would be the best solution. Of course, a high-powered directional antenna would translate to less hopping between towers but also increased costs to the carriers. Something like Google's Loon project might have more coverage and work well with aircraft.

[3rd3]

> in built-up areas with lots of signal reflection?

If there are multiple plausible positions due to multipath, it probably wouldn’t hurt to create multiple cells for one device.