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Pakistan Plans Mobile WiMax Network Rollout

Posted by Zonk on Sun May 28, 2006 12:53 PM
from the getting-the-country-online dept.
Wireless Networking Networking Hardware Technology
OneInEveryCrowd writes "Pakistan is apparently ready to move ahead of the USA in the deployment of a mobile wireless network." From the article: "The deployment is a milestone in the spread of WiMax, a superfast wireless technology that has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second. The 802.16-2004 standard, which is used in fixed WiMax networks, is being skipped in favor of a large-scale introduction of 802.16e, which was only recently agreed upon by the WiMax Forum. 'We made the decision 18 months ago to jump over (802.16-2004) and go straight to 802.16e,' Paul Sergeant, Motorola's marketing director for Motowi4, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday. 'We've been working on it for a while, which is how we're able to ship so soon after agreement.'"
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  • Osama Bin Laden can finally now upgrade to higher quality video for his latest release.
    • No, I can exclusively reveal that from now on using the increased bandwith Bin Ladens rantings and ravings will be broadcast Bollywood style. Marketing advisors close to Bin Laden feel his message is too much doom and gloom and would achieve broader appeal if it was presented with some more singing and dancing.

  • The NSA is happy (Score:3, Funny)

    by Harmonious Botch (921977) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:03PM (#15421075) Homepage Journal
    30 miles? Now they don't even need a presence on the ground, unless the antennas are very directional.

  • Ahead of the US? (Score:4, Informative)

    by damian cosmas (853143) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:05PM (#15421083)
    Hopefully this new wireless technology will help them crack the 50% literacy [odci.gov] milestone. I'm sure the 4% of the population with internet access [odci.gov] will really appreaciate it, though.
    • Its only for the rich, like most technology that Bill Gates always spounts hot air about technology revolutionising people's lives like them. No, its for the rich mostly. They even have to share mobile phones between communities in some areas, granted its at least better than nothing but its not enough.

    • Re:Ahead of the US? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wenchmagnet (745079) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:23PM (#15421153)
      There are many challenges Pakistan faces, but this is progress... cheap wireless broadband access for the masses is GREAT! Whatever your preconcieved notions about Pakistan, the literacy rate in the urban areas is quite high and a LOT of people will benefit from this.

      It also helps in getting the literacy rate up as more people take an interest in becoming literate. You might not believe it but many rural communities can limp along quite well without any need for widespread literacy - this will change that by showing them a bigger wider world that is out there for them to explore once they start to read!

      Broadband internet access means access to a multitude of different views which means its a counter against fundamentalism and brainwashing.

      As a Pakistani, I am very excited about this!
    • Hopefully this new wireless technology will help them crack the 50% literacy milestone.

      Well, I'm functionally illiterate and I'm perfectly capable of using the internet (atleast, I think I'm functionally illitereate. Yesterday f.x. I visited this cool site [myspace.com] and couldn't understand a word of what people wrote in their user profiles.. even so, I could still enjoy the pictures and vidoes of fat chicks showing body parts I really didn't want to see! yay me!).

      I'm sure the 4% of the population with internet ac


    • Let me rephrase beyond "Informative" tag in two words what the parent said: "Pakistan is a developing country". Duh!

      Scenario: /.er reads the only positive article in the history of Slashdot about subject country, digs out two negative facts about subject country, gets 5 mod points Informative from a moderator who counts number of references and % signs iin the post to base the moderation upon.

      The big mistake of the original poster was to compare to US. God forbids to do it ever!

      It is funny how citizens (res
    • Very useful this connection will be since Pakistan implements a 700ms latency to all Internet connections so Paktel maintains a telecom monopoly. Thats the reason why you dont find gamers from Pakistan online.

      Not to mention many things in IT have been promised since 1997, none properly implemented, if at all. As a Pakistani I'm HIGHLY skeptical.

      • Very useful this connection will be since Pakistan implements a 700ms latency to all Internet connections so Paktel maintains a telecom monopoly.

        700ms latency? I don't know where you get your news. Try pinging lg.nexlinx.net.pk; that's a machine on the ISP side of my DSL ISP.

  • Just so I understand: (Score:5, Funny)

    by DysenteryInTheRanks (902824) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:06PM (#15421088) Homepage
    I want to make sure I understand this correctly: Osama bin Laden is about to get faster broadband Internet on his laptop in some mud hut in Pakistan than I could possibly buy at home in the U.S.?

    p0wn3d, man. Fucking p0wn3d.

  • -1 redundant... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Duncan3 (10537) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:07PM (#15421093) Homepage
    "ready to move ahead of the USA"

    We get it already, 30% of high school kids drop out, our President has an IQ of 60, and smart kids are beaten in the streets, what the hell do you expect?

    • ... our President has an IQ of 60 ...
      The article linked http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bliq-bush.ht m [about.com] claims Lovenstein Institute research (which is not to say that said research or the reference isn't biased) estimates Jr's IQ to be 91. For comparison O'Reagan's IQ was estimated to be 105 and FDR was 147.

    • Re:-1 redundant... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:44PM (#15421218)
      We get it already, 30% of high school kids drop out, our President has an IQ of 60, and smart kids are beaten in the streets, what the hell do you expect?

      War with Iran by the end of the year. Was this the right answer?

      (what do I win btw?)
    • I think this has much more to do with the fact that 2nd and 3rd world countries never had telephone infrastructure to begin with, so it would make sense that they just skip it and go right to wireless technologies. And as long as you're going to a wireless technology, might as well make it the cutting edge one.
      • I think this has much more to do with the fact that 2nd and 3rd world countries never had telephone infrastructure to begin with

        "Second World" countries would be those allied with the USSR during the Cold War.

        "Third World" countries historically was everyone that wasn't allied with either the US or the USSR during the Cold War, but has, in the media, come to mean "undeveloped country."
      • A friend who worked in Pakistan said that they had numerous problems with telephone and data line outages. Some of the more enterprising local residents would steal the cable right off the poles.
  • Really the technology for this was available to do this in cities with the 802.11b spec if the last mile net connections were actually neutral (which they are supposed to be in most cities).

    G seemed like a good spec, obviously it wasn't fast enough to run a corperate or even a power users connection off but if they could have hit the theoretical maximum it would have been fine, these new specs won't allow small deployments which can service many users so they aren't a huge improvement over local wireless

  • Not just for the Internet (Score:3, Informative)

    by cam762 (948285) on Sunday May 28 2006, @01:46PM (#15421226)
    WiMAX 802.16e isn't used just for Internet connectivity, but also competes against cellular technologies (GSM/UMTS and CDMA2000) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax#Similar_technol ogies [wikipedia.org]

    While 802.16e is mainly a mobile technology, it also supports "Fixed" access and mesh networking, which means that signals can be relayed from one access point to another instead of needing to hardwire every connection.

    This should help implementation and penetration of the region by reducing the overall amount of infrastructure required.

  • Alcatel is teaming up with the Government of India to set up a WiMax development center [techworld.com] in the South Indian city of Chennai and the products developed there will be marketed worldwide. It appears that parts of Asia prefer to rollout wireless data networks as opposed to wireline ones, probably due to the fact that it is easier to deploy wireless networks. With Europe going ahead with the adoption of UMTS and HSDPA, it looks like wireless data networks are going to become pretty ubiquitous in many parts of

  • AT&T did its bit to puncture the WiMAX hype today, while providing an update on three of its trial WiMAX deployments. Behzed Nadji, AT&T's Chief Architect, debunked stories about 70 Mbit/s throughput over distances of 70 miles for WiMAX. "There's little reality to that," he said. A range of 3 to 5 miles and 2 Mbit/s was closer to reality. In fact, one of AT&T's three deployments rarely saw throughput rise above 500 kbit/s, he said. Source [theregister.co.uk]

    I can already provide point-to-multipoint 360 coverage

  • All five Pakistani internet users are joyous.
  • There are a bunch of low-cost no-name recruiting agencies searching around for engineers to go to Pakistan for a WiMax project the last month or two. It doesn't hold too well for the project that they are trying to pay Paki prices, but expect to find experienced first world engineers.

    I had a twisted conversation with one of them two weeks ago. They want all the usual impossibilities, such as 5-10 years of WiMax experience, 15-30 years industry experience but only 18-25 years old, have to be able to program
  • The government is expanding internet access in an attempt to maintain Pakistan's top rank amongst nations that search Google for "sex".

    http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex&ctab=1&sa=N [google.com]
    • Wireless rollout has been pretty bad in USA and even basic services like cellular phone are not available in many ruralareas. A comparison like this could finally get some attention from the "leadership".

      Of course the opposite could also happen: the Administration could equally spin this up that wireless networking == antiChrist == terrorism.

    • It's the distance, man. WAY too many places in the US have no broadband at all with cable/wires/fiber and wifi is too short a range and trees and hills just muck it up.. WiMax is about the only way I'll get broadband, even then it will be iffy, and there are millions and millions more people in the same boat. the US is not just the top major urban areas afrter all and even a lot of suburban areas have little to no choice in broadband. If some companies get wimax out there, they WILL sell it. All these peopl
    • 30 mi. is the maximum radius, nothing prevents the use of smaller cells in build up areas.

    • For a coverage range of 30 miles (You)

      has a range of up to 30 miles (TFA)

      Reality: There are PTP applications that can hit 30 miles. Users will never be on a point to point link as it would take one AP per subscriber. For mobile applications, you are looking at a range of about two miles with six access points creating a 360 degree cluster. Assuming we get half of the theoretical 75 megabits per second, we have ~35 Mb/s per AP and 225 Mb/s per cluster.

      Sometimes my cable connection could get slow in my hou

        • They are publicly stoned to death

          Are they? For what crime? For just existing? That is an outright lie.

          forced to wear armbands (like the Jewish people during the Nazi Ausrotten in Poland)

          No, their passports list them as Hindu, just like Christians' passports list them as Christian and Muslims' passports identify them as Muslim. They are not forced to wear any identifying clothing, nor are other religious minorities.

          Hindu women often get gang-raped and molten metal poured into their eyes and ears

            • Yes, and no. I have provided proof in previous posts of human rights abuses of which Hindus are victims in Pakistan. Sorry, your propaganda only works on liberal westerners, not on me.

              And not one of the links substantiated any of the claims you made. Sorry, but no. Try again. Surely such abuses can't be that hard to find documented, if they actually occurred!

              Hindus are regarded as "Kaffirs" and "Dhimmis" in Pakistan. Pakistani muslims regard all non-muslims as animals and deserving only death. Pakis

            • Interesting examples of victorious nations. Israel is known for being a bit of a paranoid society and deals with frequent bombings. I met an Australian who was working in Israel. His contract prohibited him from going to large public gathering places like clubs and restaurants because he was too valuable to lose in a bombing.

              The paranoia is growing by leaps and bounds in the US.

              Maybe there isn't a better approach, but the "two wrongs" one isn't working so well.
                • I don't blame them at all. The point of my post is that if you make a habit of using violence against your enemies they tend to respond in kind. Israel has a very good reason for taking security so seriously. So does the United States. My point was, perhaps they shouldn't be used as an example of "violence can solve your problems" since it does not seem to have worked well in those cases. Were there other options? I don't know. My point is simply neither country is a good example of achieving victory
                    • In general it is impossible to defeat committed guerillas if there is a significant population that supports them. Ask the British. Or the Israelis for that matter. The more you kill, the more there are.

                      Force has it's place but it's not the right answer for every mess you need to clean up. My argument is that neither the Israelis nor Americans have been successful since they are not able to live the way they would prefer. The Israelis may not have any better options but the Americans probably do. Or d

            • Changing the wikipedia article won't change the truth, only that Islamic terrorists are good at lies and propaganda...

              You've lied about everything you've said about the treatment of Hindus. Either back it up, or accept that your post was just what you accuse others of: lies and propaganda. Every single thing: the bit about the armbands, the molten metal, the hijab thing.

              Ball's in your court.

            • hey, your xenophobia and deep rooted bias is showing!

              Godhra was not a "legitimate" reaction at all. How can you consider the brutal rape and murder of approximately 3000 innocent people "legitimate"? Your sense of right and wrong are completely messed up, pal. (NOTE: If you want to dispute the 3000 number, please go ahead, but the best reports filed by the NGOs independently indicate that number)

              Also, haven't you been read the investigative reports on the train incident? - there is nothing to indicate that
    • Considering the size difference between the two countries alone, the fact that these countries are leaving the U.S. in the dust in terms of wireless internet service is no surprise.

      And if you want to nitpick, Pakistan has a much more hostile terrain, a lack of already existing infrastructure and by doing this they kill two (or three) birds with one stone. (A cheap easy voice-over-IP telephone infrastructure, cheap easy wireless national internet service and arguably a relatively cheap investment in the lon

      • Unfortunately, Britain's industry snoozed all through the ultra-Conservative Thatcher years and now has very little industry to speak of. Steel - all gone. Coal - all gone. Engineering - damn near all gone, even the mighty BAe Systems only has a tiny site on the Clyde these days. Computers - well, in Scotland we have a fairly healthy games industry in Dundee I suppose.

        It all went wrong on the Conservative's watch. The US might do well to learn from that.

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