Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband

Atryn writes "Nextel Communications appears to be entering the world of wireless wide-area broadband technology. A new site showed up today describing their market level trial of Flash OFDM technology. Using a PCMCIA Type II modem card in your laptop or a tethered modem, you can have speeds of 1.5 Mbps (bursting to 3 Mbps) downstream and 375 Kbps (bursting to 750 Kbps) upstream as described here. They also appear to be seeking seeking trial participants, who, when selected, will get the technology free of charge! Of course, you need to be in North Carolina."

Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop

[t0qer (230538)]

How often do I see the salespeople and Exec crying because they're laptops hard drive fell apart after being dropped because the careless twits were swinging their shiny new $2k+ around now that they were "freed from wires"

Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.

Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?

Re:Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop

[mikehilly (653401)]

"Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?"

Verizon currently has a similar technology that is in the testing phase in DC and San Diego. The monthly cost for it is $79.99 for unlimited bandwidth usage. I figure that Nextel will have to price it somewhat competitively. Eventually, the price will come down (hopefully) to around $50 or $60 and I might think about replacing my Road Runner with one of the High Speed Wan plans.

Re:Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop

[Atryn (528846)]

Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.

Bellsouth has hundreds of thousands of fixed leased circuit lines out there running 9.6 kbps. These are often used in SCADA systems, etc. Each of these lines typically costs $150-$250 per month. If this can be done today at $50 /month, doesn't that alone "justify wireless' cost"? Mostly the market is simp

Low latency

[Space cowboy (13680)]

Also important is the low latency of the service. I've tried one of the high-latency ones (satellite based), and it's really not worth it - good for downloading large files, and for web-browsing, but useless for interactive use.

No-one ever seems to mention the latency though, just the bandwidth...

Simon

Re:Low latency

[by Anonymous Coward]

Latency refers to the time it takes for data to travel between sender and receiver, and is very important in real-time applications. Nextel Wireless Broadband's latency, or average delay, is 100ms or below.

http://www.nextelbroadband.com/lrn_about_what_is _w ireless.html

Re:Low latency

[liquidweb (154468)]

Posted link is broken.

http://www.nextelbroadband.com/lrn_about_what_is_w ireless.html [nextelbroadband.com]

Is the correct link which does indeed state:

Nextel Wireless Broadband's latency, or average delay, is 100ms or below.

Low Latency was a design objective

[threeturn (622824)]

In fact low latency was a specific design objective of the Flarion solution that Nextel are using for this trial. The latency is much better than conventional 2G and 3G cellular systems so should avoid a lot of the problems with TCP performance which happens on must cellular data. As the original poster said the consequences of latency are often overlooked.

WiMax anyone

[Lord Prox (521892)]

I may be off base here but I think these guys are not that bright and mabey should read /. more often. WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these celluar data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems. Blowing the $$$ on this type of system now is just a waste.

Should we tell em or sit back and watch the flameout (packing hot dogs and marshmellows read:sell short)

Re:WiMax anyone

[El Torico (732160)]

Do you think that the people who are in charge of rolling this out are aware of WiMax? Were they 6 months ago? This effort has probably been in the works for about 6 months (that's a SWAG based on what I can remember about the abandoned data wireless rollout at UUNet/WCOM in 2000).

I really hope they are training the Tier 1 and 2 support staff on this before they roll it out (which is something that tends to be overlooked).

Re:WiMax anyone

[Saiboogu (643207)]

I'm in the first teier of support at Nextel -- We haven't heard a word of this until about 24 hours ago. A dedicated group was trained to support the trial, and if this rolls out full scale, that group would just be expanded (following the pattern of past trials for specialized services, and the current method of supporting data services). Nextel likes to compartmentalize everything as much as possible.

Re:WiMax anyone

[Lord Prox (521892)]

Do you think that the people who are in charge of rolling this out are aware of WiMax? Were they 6 months ago? This effort has probably been in the works for about 6 months (that's a SWAG based on what I can remember about the abandoned data wireless rollout at UUNet/WCOM in 2000).

Well I dunno about Nextel but I have been folling it for well over a year. One would think that a big corp would look at things like this before jumping into something like this. What with the engineers and anaylists and the

Re:WiMax anyone

[piper1124 (749347)]

Well I can also tell you a little something about how a business works. You can't rollout a service that doesn't exist yet. Last time I checked (and I am in the wireless business) there is no one making WiMAX gear and I doubt carrier grade HW will even be available within the next year or more. WiMax will only catch on if a big carrier deploys it as who else will carry the cost of the rollout? Starbucks? I doubt it. Besides I also believe that it does say this is a trial not a plan to roll this out nation

WiMax only supports FIXED endpoints.

[threeturn (622824)]

WiMax isn't competing with Nextel's solution. To quote WiMax's own information page [wimaxforum.org] WiMax supports " fixed broadband wireless access systems"

The Nextel system supports fixed and mobile users. Radio systems that support mobile users have to be designed differently from those that only support fixed users. Mobility adds radio issues such as variable fading and doppler shift as well as the need to handover between different transmitters at the edge of cells. Fixed radio systems can't to any of this.

WiMax is competing with DSL and cable for broadband to stationary objects.

Re:WiMax anyone

[stripes (3681)]

WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these cellular data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems.

Maybe, but there are some differences. WiMax "head ends" are not intended to become cheap, so it will take them longer to get cheap then 802.11 did. 802.11 also crushed all of the other wireless stuff in the same frequency band, but some of the 900Mhz ones remain in use because 900Mhz will go through more trees and stuff then 2.4Ghz.

Flash memory to access new service

[Booyakka Joe (216483)]

Apparently you can use a special pcmcia card Or flash memory. I wonder if my 8Mb CF will work, or if I'll have to take my 64Mb out of my camera.

3G seems dead!

[yehim1 (462046)]

It seems now that if city-wide wireless broadband can be achieved, it would mean much of a doom to 3G technologies, such as UMTS and CDMA-2000.

Sure, 3G is beginning to be implemented in some countries; Japan, HK, UK, and Australia, etc; but with these wireless broadband services becomes easily available and cheap, consumers would naturally choose the latter.

It would mean doom to my job as well, as I am acting support to some equipment used by a 3G operator in HK; 3G is unbelievably complex and expensive to implement just for two objectives: faster packet data, and enough bandwidth for a video call (Circuit-switched data). Now, the only obstacle I see in this wireless broadband technology to totally killing 3G is circuit-switched reliability.

3G has a much wider circuit-switched domain compared to GSM, and this is important for applications that require low latency and delay: video calls.

In any system, latency can be reduced by introducing QoS into the system by prioritizing packets according to their prescribed quality level. Another sure way of reducing latency is to dump enough bandwidth into it.

When bandwidth becomes widely available just like what's available in land transmissions (perhaps reach ATM-class quality and speed?), 3G technology will be down the drain.

If current trends continue, this is happening fast!

Don't worry, dude. 3G does this already.

[Magnus Pym (237274)]

1xEV-DO, which is part of the CDMA-2000 family, has already been deployed on a large scale in Korea and Japan. If reports are to be believed, it is a smashing success. Verizon wireless is offering it in 2 cities right now in the US, and will roll it out nationally by the end of this year.

1xEV-DO, is a mature, commercially proven technology that is supported by dozens of Vendors. Several dozen phones/PDAs etc are available [3gtoday.com] from several manufacturers.

I have friends who are using this in San Diego. Depending

Re:Don't worry, dude. 3G does this already.

[Magnus Pym (237274)]

I'll take your word for it. Have not tried either myself for gaming, though I have browsed the web with EV-DO.

Magnus.

sounds like a cool idea

[rock_climbing_guy (630276)]

I'd like to see this in action. It would be great if they could use this technology to reach customers that other broadband companies won't touch. If not, just having them for price competition should be nice. Then again, there is the portability feature.

I wonder if they'll try to squeeze money out of us by charging us for "romaing?" Also, I'm sure that privacy advocates will be concerned about the ability of Nextel or any other provider to track their customers and that information will inevitably be shared with the FBI, et al.

Re:sounds like a cool idea

[taniwha (70410)]

I was hanging out with some people over xmas who were using these (or similar) cards - travelling up the California Central Valley they were able to stay connected all the way from San Diego ro SF .... untill the pcmcia card overheated .... cooled down it was ok - so bring the ice for those long road trips

Seems the stuff they are using basicly just uses spare ATM cells in the qams that are used for broadcasting cell phone data (they work a lot like a docsis modem) except that the basic response to signal

Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party?

[ChaosMt (84630)]

I know a guy working through his MBA, sitting in class hooked up to the net wireless through through Verizon Wireless [verizonwireless.com]. He's getting a minumum of 144kbps both ways most of the time. Considering that most of the US and world is connected vi dial up, that a bit improvement. He says it works well in most areas, but it has trouble if you're moving, such as while on the train. He said he does get the burst speeds in many situations, but the average speed is quite acceptable (and he's used to a oc-3). Cingular [cingular.com] has this too, as well as, Sprint [sprintpcs.com] and At&t wireless [attwireless.com]. The nextel specs cliam to be high, as the other web sites I cites also make their claims, and they all charge premium prices for this service. Given Nextel's pricing, this will also be at a premium rate.

I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.

Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party?

[vxvxvxvx (745287)]

When I was on Sprint's vision internet service hooked to my laptop, the speeds were much less than I had hoped for. Initially I could pull in around 70kbps down (and something like 20 up, nothing exciting up anyway.) Then I realized I was using a test that mainly consisted of loading images (which on sprint were put through pretty drastic compression giving artificially high scores on tests that used them.) My actual rates were closer to 30kbps, though there was a period of about a month I couldn't get abov

Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party?

[NETHED (258016)]

I have SprintPCS Vison service and to test it one day, I hooked up my laptop in my car, and started driving. I had a two hour drive, so before I left I turned on a ShoutCast streaming station. For the duration of the 2 hour drive in which I traversed 137miles, the radio did not skip once. This was a 128kbps stream. My buffer setting was at 64K, and I was using winamp. On the other hand, I've noticed that to have my connection retain its speedyness, I need to keep a ping window running in the background

Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party?

[Jack Porter (310054)]

I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.

How about reading the link in the article. Flash OFDM [mobileinfo.com] is specifically designed for wireless broadband as opposed to 2.5G and 3G data solutions available from the telcos you mentioned.

Yes, but they are not the only one.

[Magnus Pym (237274)]

1xEV-DO, that Verizon has commercially available in 2 cities and plans to have available nationwide by the end of the year, is definitely not a 2-G or 2.5G technology. It is a CDMA-based technology that provides 2.4Mbps/153Kbps peak upstream and downstream, and 300-500Kbps/40-80Kbps upstream.
Round-trip ping-times are reputed to be about 100-130 ms.

EVDO has been rolled out massively in Korea in 2002 and Japan in 2003. It has more than 1.6million subs in Korea alone.

Nextel is really late to the party. I

Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party?

[flashofdm (749420)]

Magnus - Flash OFDM is significantly better than EV-DO. It has lower latency, higher spectral efficieny, and does not suffer from the near-far problem. It handles doppler effects well and as a result woeks really well in cars. Imagine having a broadband connection that you can use at home, take it with you when you are in the car, use it when you are at the airport or anywhere else for that matter.

Big deal

[color of static (16129)]

That seems about the same stats as the EVDO card I've been using from verizon for months now. Basically it is a 3G CDMA-2000 add on that offers bursts to 2Mbps down. I reliably get 600Kbps down and 150 Kbps up. Then when your not in the DC or San Diego footprint you get 144 Kbps bursts up and down.

I thought 3G was dead (who needs any of these things in a phone, really), but EVDO (EVolution Data Only) convinced me this is what it is really for. When I'm stopped in traffic I can access the net. When I'm waiting for the girls to finnish shopping, I can access the net. And on, you get the idea. Hell, I'm even doing some video conferences over this card.

Re:Big deal

[Library Spoff (582122)]

>>who needs any of these things in a phone, really

me, I do. 3p to send and recieve emails versus 10p for an sms. Ok I could buy txt bundles but i'm happier with email. Also I don't own - or intend to own a laptop. My phone can be my phone/pda in a small form factor.

I upgraded my phone to a SonyEricsson z600 for 30. Ok it ain't 3g it's gprs but thats ALL i want to carry about - ok apart from maybe the bluetooth headset/mp3 player combo... It's proper Bo I tell thee.

security - wormy words

[josecanuc (91)]

Check out their "Features" list under the Personal category at http://www.nextelbroadband.com/pu_features.html [nextelbroadband.com]

Security:
Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM) is as secure as DSL or Cable. In addition, it is a broadband access network based on a proprietary signal processing technology operated over licensed spectrum. Designed across multiple layers, the broadband system prevents unauthorized entities from gaining network access. Depending upon your needs, additional security layers can also be enabled through VPN clients for secure corporate access or SSL for secure Internet transactions. With Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM), you can unwire the Internet and connect to all of your favorite VPN/SSL-secured applications - with confidence.

I find it amusing. They say that is it secure because it's proprietary technology on a licenced radio service so no one can "gain unauthorized network access". I have several radios and scanners that can certainly receive frequencies that this operates on, if not transmit as well. One does not have to "gain unauthorized network access" just to listen.

The closing sentence basically says "enjoy our service but take your own precautions about secure access."

I'm not saying it's insecure (what is secure, truly!?). I do take a dislike to the reassurance of security with the disclaimer that any security should be provided by yourself buried in the rhetoric.

Re:security - wormy words

[duffbeer703 (177751)]

Nextel is worried more about you transmitting on the licensed spectrum that they paid billions for.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that cable providers issue the same sort of "yeah, it's secure but security is your problem" statements.

Re:security - wormy words

[Atryn (528846)]

I find it amusing. They say that is it secure because it's proprietary technology on a licenced radio service so no one can "gain unauthorized network access". I have several radios and scanners that can certainly receive frequencies that this operates on, if not transmit as well. One does not have to "gain unauthorized network access" just to listen.

You seem to have missed the section of the sentence that says "proprietary signal processing technology". The signal is compressed, scrambled, split into t

Re:security - wormy words

[josecanuc (91)]

I didn't miss it. The point was that if the signal is out there, it can be decoded. Just about any technology on signal processing is first written about in research papers before it gets implemented commercially.

If you're an IEEE Signal Processing Society member, check out the proceedings of the ICASSP conferences. Lots of information on OFDM transmission techniques.

And as another poster mentioned, with projects like GNUradio around, it's a matter of writing a decoder to the raw data acquired. I am not s

Windows only!

[Mur! (19589)]

I'm in the trial area and started filling out the form to be a tester, until it got to the system requirements, which were basically Windows XP/2000. I think ME might have been listed. They specifically said they don't support Macintosh or other OSes at this time.

I have to wonder if there's some Windows-only software that they're using for the connection, or if they just don't want the hassle of trying to deal with connection issues from other OSes. Does anyone have similar technology running under Linux?

Re:Windows only!

[EricWright (16803)]

I, too, am in the RTP area, and saw the same thing. Luckily, we have a very heterogeneous home network... one iBook, one XP laptop and one linux server. I completed the survey, intending to use it with the XP laptop if selected. I noticed that the form factors are pcmcia, external USB and, presumably, internal (PCI?) NIC.

Nothing from a hardware standpoint prohibits using with another system, but since mac laptops don't have pcmcia cards, and I really want to test this out away from home, the XP laptop is really the only sensible choice.

Based on what I know about hardware rollouts, they just figure that a) most people use windows, b) they need to support users, and c) it's easiest to train techs to support one system, so they pick the most prevalent one. Now, if the full service is rolled out with lack of support for non-MS operating systems, I'd be somewhat more upset...

Re:Windows only!

[Tarwn (458323)]

This requirement is probably for a piece of client software to track usage or something like that. When I first signed up with RoadRunner (I haven't checked lately so it may have changed) one of the requirements was Windows 95/98/etc/etc, they didn't offically support anything else. What I later realized was that the only reason they required windows was so they could try and force you to install their little software app that would call home on a regular basis and was a real pain in the butt to kill (you c

Re:Windows only!

[djeaux (620938)]

I think you're probably correct. It's been a while, but when I first signed on with Bellsouth's DSL, they had a Windows requirement. It turned out it was their PPPOE "dialer" client, which summarily clobbered Windows requiring a reinstall. Then I discovered that, by using a router/switch on the modem, I had no need for the PPPOE client anyway. <SIGH>

Nextel may just have the Windows client for logging onto the network ready now, hence the limitation.

Drivers

[Wesley Felter (138342)]

You need some kind of hardware to access the network, and hardware needs drivers.

Capacity

[div_2n (525075)]

I would love to know the capacity on this technology. There are times that regular cell phones don't work because tower capacity is already maxed out.

Just like any 802.11a,b,g access point has a limit to the number of clients that can reasonably be supported, their spectrum is limited as well.

What good would it do to have broadband that you can't use all the time especially at peak times? Sounds a lot like glorified dial-up to me.

"unlimited usage"?

[G4from128k (686170)]

I do wonder if Nextel's "unlimited usage" is really intended for heavy traffic. I'd bet more that few users will get nastygrams such as those discussed previously [slashdot.org]. Between listening to internet radio, downloading files, talking on a VoIP connection, and web surfing Flash sites, some users will be able to suck down full bandwidth for most of the hours of the day.

Can someone tell me

[andy1307 (656570)]

Can someone tell me why you would need all this extra bandwidth on your laptop? Surfing the internet? For what? porn? reading /.? I don't think business users, the most likely market for a Nextel service, would be interested in downloading movies...or at least paying a lot of money for the ability to download movies on their laptops.

Re:Can someone tell me

[lucifuge31337 (529072)]

Can someone tell me why you would need all this extra bandwidth on your laptop?

I'm currently using a T-Mobile Sierra Wireless solution, with which I'm lucky to get 56k down. While it works for my purposes (getting mail, updating tickets in RT, and sometimes SSHing into routers/checking my NMS) I'd really be able to use more bandwidth and better latency (for SSH especially). I find that the couple of hours I spend on the train 2 or three times a week is now actually PRODUCTIVE, as opposed to a complete

Re:Can someone tell me

[WhiteWolf666 (145211)]

Hear Hear!

I've got the T-Mobile Sierra Wireless aircard too.

Sure its slow. But I use it a lot.

It's like a flaky dialup----you just need to have some patience.

I figure that by the time someone has a good, national (or even Chicagoland) wireless broadband service, my T-mobile contract will expire (I'm on a 1 year).

And the price is unbeatable. $29.99 for unlimited on your Sierra Wireless Aircard, and $19.99 if you piggy-back it on a phone (I've got it both on my Aircard, and on my Nokia 3650, which is a b

It will be way too expensive, of course

[mwood (25379)]

Let me know when I can have it for $29.95/mo with unlimited usage, and I'll stop yawning.

No coverage

[chiph (523845)]

I put in my zip codes (yes - I live & work in Raleigh), and the form said they didn't have coverage in those areas. My guess is that they're starting off in Chapel Hill and will do North Raleigh and the downtown area sometime later.

That's too bad -- my 3G SprintPCS phone works, but I only get 115kbps out of it, so even checking Hotmail is slow.

Chip H.

interferes with public radio?

[havaloc (50551)]

Is Nextel using their SMR spectrum that interferes with public safety radio to run this trial?

Re:interferes with public radio?

[Atryn (528846)]

Is Nextel using their SMR spectrum that interferes with public safety radio to run this trial?

Whoa, what a loaded question. Ignoring the loaded part, no, this solution is not deployed in the 800 or 900 MHz band.

Regarding the loaded part, visit here [consensusplan.org] for more information.

Amusing statement about security

[Eric Smith (4379)]

From the specifications:

Nextel Wireless Broadband(TM) is as secure as DSL or Cable.

A clever way to turn no security whatsoever into a feature.

I shouldn't be too hard on them; they do follow that stetement by suggesting the use of SSL and VPN.

Re:This could be a WiFi killer if it's cheap enoug

[bluGill (862)]

Why don't you preemptivly solve the problem: work with all the toher access providers. Agree on a common authentification scheme so that no matter where I am my machine always works. At first I might pay large roaming costs, but once you have the identification in place you are set to make roaming cheaper. (Remember you are competing against cell providers, if you are faster and in more places you can charge a little more but not a lot. This is a buisness decision).

But start with the wasy part: a acce

Re:Too bad Nextel sucks!

[SnapperHead (178050)]

I have been with Nextel for 2 years now, and I love there service. Sure, the line drops once in a while, but nothing more then t-mobile, verizon, etc.

I switched to Nextel for unlimited incoming calls, unlimited nights and weekends for $80 a month. I ended up spending much more though, so I just upgraded my plan to the $199 plan which is unlimited incoming and outgoing, 24/7. There is *no* provider that can beat this. I also use the Nextel as a backup line in case my cable modem goes down. I use it when

Re:NDA for them, Full Disclosure for You

[Atryn (528846)]

What do y'all (as we say here in NC ;-) think of these terms? Unusual? Reasonable?

I suppose it depends what you plan to do with it. Do you have anything to hide?

The terms are completely reasonable considering this is a market-trial and they are providing devices and services to you at no charge. I wouldn't expect this to be the terms of their final EULA once commercially available.