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White Paper: The MAX and related products Introduction: The Cell communications system is overcrowded and dropouts are frequent and annoying. They often occur when a strong signal pushes a marginal one off the air and where coverage is weak in general. It is going to get worse. Dissatisfaction and frustration is compounded because customers are paying more and more for cell phones and cell phone applications, but customer expectations are not being met by available service. The Problem: How to improve cell phone reception, reduce dropouts and make connectivity/services more reliable using the existing cell phone network infrastructure. In practical terms, cell phone users and personal digital assistant users often cannot reliably connect to the local cell tower, or connect with minimal reception resulting in dropped calls and slow data delivery. The Solution: Capturing more cellular radio signals at the cellphone, focusing the signal to the local cellphone, and increasing download and upload speeds. The Max: The Max and its family of related products provide superior utilization of the existing cellular signals broadcast by the cell network, and the signal sent by the cell to the cellular network. The Max enables calls to and from places where communications were spotty or difficult and provides clearer and better voice and data reception. The Max provides greater and much needed reliability and service to the customer. Discussion of the Problem: In a series of recent articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post and numerous blogs, it was reported that "Customers Angered as iPhones Overload AT&T" (New York Times, September 2, 2009) "The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T's cellular network strains to meet the demand." As more sophisticated phones and applications are developed, cell phone owners using other carriers are in for the same type of system stress. As the Washington Post reported on September 3, 2009, "...we're seeing a radical shift in how people are using their (wireless) phones. There is no parallel for the demand." According to Cisco Systems, "Globally, mobile data traffic is expected to double every year through 2013...We're just starting to scratch the surface of these issues that AT&T is facing." Adding to the problem is the shift by many households away from landline wired phones to cell phone wireless services. As reported by the NYTimes.com, the Chief Executive Officer of Verizon sees the future as being wireless. The report states that "All traditional phone companies are suffering because many customers are canceling their landlines in order to use phone service from their cable companies or simply to rely on their cell phones." On December 17, 2008, Reuters reported that "Nearly 18 percent of households in the United States have no traditional telephone and rely on wireless services only, which is up several percentage points from a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday." The report goes on to say that this trend is spread across the major wireless providers. Discussion of the Solution: Improved reception and transmission of radio signals: The solution requires making the cell phone networks much larger and more available or more simply, a better antenna. Even the best cell phone signal amplifiers need to receive the signal in order to work. The cell network broadcasts the necessary information for the user to make and receive calls and to receive requested data. Antennas in cell phones are quite small and result in the problem of poor performance in weak signal areas. The small antenna is generally the result of a lack of space within the device itself and the desire to make cell phones as small and portable as possible. The Max provides the "better antenna" solution. The Max, at 2.7" by 4.7" inches effectively triples the strength of the cell phone signal received by the cell phone. Its design focuses the signal and directs the signal to all wireless devices within 3 feet. This results is a (tested) 300% improvement in signal strength as well as better data reception. In using the Max, tests show the radio signal not only increases in amplitude but also increases in width, allowing more data to be received through the connection. The result is fewer dropped calls, the ability to call from and to where you couldn't call before, better voice quality and faster data downloads. The Max performance scales upwards with size: the bigger the Max the better. Consequently, supporting the trend away from landlines for telephone service (the wired world), the Max in a slightly larger configuration can support improved telephone and data service in an apartment or several rooms. Placed at a window, the larger Max communicates with the regular Max units placed throughout the residence or office. This provides the reliability of service that many wireless residences and offices require to shift away from land lines. In a very important way, the Max supports the wireless networks as they continue to offer more and more appealing applications to end users. Even though the iPhone has been called the Hummer of wireless connections, that problem is addressed by the Max, making full use of the existing cellular radio signals to support more and more applications. |