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by Jon Box.
Original Post: eWeek's John Quain Reviews SPOT And Its Network
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On a JAN16 eWeek article, SPOTty Coverage, John Quain gives his feeble opinion on the SPOT technology. Although mainly negative about SPOT's value, he does give some interesting background on how it works.
What makes SPOT possible are two tiny National Semiconductor chips inside the watches. One chip is the radio; the other is the application chip. To run it all, Microsoft got its software down to under 100 KB.
The other side of the equation is the wireless network. To create it, Microsoft leased unused FM subcarrier channels from individual radio stations across the country. Then they went out to each transmission tower to install generators and an uplink. The uplink from Microsoft's servers can be satellite, ISDN, or frame relay, depending on the transmission tower's facilities.
MSN then organizes the information on servers dedicated to each of the local radio stations. That way, when you arrive in LA, you get local weather information and smaze alerts. The servers also route instant messages and calendar information. In most markets there's also built-in redundancy with more than one radio station broadcasting the same information...
He does end the article in a positive tone - by quoting Bill Mitchell, Microsoft's vice president of the mobile platforms division in Windows: "Yeah, but wait until version 3.0—it'll be awesome."
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