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Forget about Wi-Fi VoIP, Vonage going WiMax 167

Posted by timothy from the who's-speaking-please dept.
kamikaze-Tech writes "Being reported on the Vonage VoIP Forum in an article entitled Vonage, Wimax Provider Team Up it appears Vonage is partnering with TowerStream to allow you to make calls up to 30 miles away via WiMax. WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second, which is more than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially. WiMax serves as a partial successor to the popular Wi-Fi wireless protocol, which works over far shorter distances, measured in feet rather than miles."
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Forget about Wi-Fi VoIP, Vonage going WiMax More

Forget about Wi-Fi VoIP, Vonage going WiMax

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  • $600 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @05:49PM (#13235729)
    TowerStream typically charges about $600 a month for a 1.5mbps connection
    Isn't this a bit on the expensive side?
    • That'd be about a T1's rate for about a T1's price. Now, in light of other broadband offerings, it's wayyy pricey, but considering that they're allowing mobile service and can cover areas that the Telcos and Comcast have no apparent desire to support...

      • Re:No... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 )

        That'd be about a T1's rate for about a T1's price.

        And most likely without a T1s quality of service.

      • That's a pretty spendy T-1. I know the company I work for offers them starting at $200.

        ~S

      • Re:No... (Score:2, Informative)

        by suitepotato ( 863945 )
        That'd be about a T1's rate for about a T1's price. Now, in light of other broadband offerings, it's wayyy pricey, but considering that they're allowing mobile service and can cover areas that the Telcos and Comcast have no apparent desire to support...

        A T1 typically has a four hour commit to repair time; that is, the provider has four hours to begin making repairs to the connection. That's each T1 separately. If the WiMax tower equipment goes down, will they begin repairs within four hours? it might take
    • Not for a full T1 (1.5 mb/s down and up).
    • Not if your business lacks the necessary fiber to buy a traditional T1.

      When I was selling T1s not long ago, there were a number of people "out in the sticks" that would have had to pay the phone company between $3000-8000 to trench and lay fiber for the privledge of buying a T1.

      And even then, you're still looking at anywhere from $200-600/mo depending on a number of other factors.

      $600/mo for 1.5mbps is a great deal if you're one of the unfortunate businesses.
    • Yeah, that's very expensive. At home I have 15Mbps/1Mbps ADSL [adsl.free.fr] for €29.90 a month. Tiscali [tiscali.fr] sells "guaranteed bandwidth" SDSL 1.5Mbps for less than €250. That includes a 4h guaranteed repair time in case something goes wrong; I'm not sure how a T1 would be any better than that.

  • This is News? (Score:5, Informative)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @05:50PM (#13235736) Homepage Journal
    TFA doesn't specify exactly how this is to operate. With Vonage's SoftPhone (or Skype, or other services), the VOIP application is entirely CPU based without the need for external boxen, so that means as long as you have some sort of broadband access coming into your PC, you're good to go. I have Vonage SoftPhone and it works via Cable, DSL, WiFI, etc.

    At current prices (TowerStream charges $600 a month for a 1.5Mbps connection), I don't see how this becomes a challenge to DSL, WiFi, etc. It doesn't even challenge cellphones (EVDO for the laptop and a high level of "anytime" minutes on a separate phone are cheaper than TowerStream's WiMax and have a greater range). It just sounds like TowerStream is bundling it as an added value feature of its existing service.

    TFA is chock-full of inaccurate marketing hyperbole, like claiming that 75Mbps is more than 20x faster than "the fastest wired broadband available commercially." Really? Comcast is at 4Mbps and heading up. I've got 6Mbps through Speakeasy. This chart [com.com] shows multiple cable companies offering 8Mbps with 20 on the way (and that's not counting Verizon's FIOS).

    Laughably, News.com just uses the hyperbole in their "news" story a couple of days after publishing that chart. I sent an e-mail to the "reporter" and asked him if he was using the "Parroting A Press Release Without Checking My Facts" mathematical theorem to come to the conclusion that 75 is more than 20 times faster than 8.

    Anyhoo, unless there's something I'm missing, this is non-news. It's just an ISP that is bundling Vonage. BFHD.

    • I was going to comment on that, too. Although I was looking at the fact that Japan is reported to have 20-25 mbs broadband connections. (I shudder deliciously to imagine what their fiber speeds are like)
      • Although I was looking at the fact that Japan is reported to have 20-25 mbs broadband connections.

        Australia has ADSL2+ now, which goes up to 24Mbps
      • ADSL/Fiber in Japan can run pretty quick. The fiber they are running now is 50Megs up and 100 megs down.

        Take a look at this, they are running TV over fiber now. I guess if you have the speed....

        <URL:http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/promotion/hikari/>

    • without the need for external boxen

      Do you realize that "boxen" is a made-up plural first as a joke by comedian Brian Regan to make fun of his grasp of english grammar as a child, and that it is never used but as a (now overused) feeble joke amongst Unix and clustering professionals?

      Do you realize then, as a result, that your using "boxen" instead of "boxes" makes you look either like (1) you blindly follow a meme to computer-educated folks, and (2) an ill-educated person to everybody else?

      I don't mean to be

      • I dunno, I've gotten semi-used to seeing it now, enough that I don't really think about it or slow down when I read it. Who knows? If everybody keeps using it, maybe it will someday become a legitimate plural for "box" and Brian Regan can feel all warm and gooey inside for adding a word to the English language!

        everybody seems to use it without even knowing where it comes from

        Isn't this true about almost every word that everybody uses?

        I'm not trying to be a grammar pacifist or anything, but languag

        • Brian was saying that he was stupid as a kid, and gave examples where the teacher called on him to give the plural of ox. He gave oxes, then she called on the smart kid, who gave oxen. She then asked him what the plural for box was. It was funny when he told it.
      • I don't mean to be rude, or be a grammar Nazi, but that word really gets on my nerves, because everybody seems to use it without even knowing where it comes from, and how it makes those who use it come across...

        Okay, the Nazis killed millions of people and were one of the greatest forces for evil on this planet in the last century. Do you know how it makes you look to use the word "Nazi" to describe attempting to enforce a minor peevishness?

        When we compare minor martinets to Hitler, and call those who

      • (3) I thought it made him sound german.

      • I don't mean to be rude, or be a grammar Nazi, but that word really gets on my nerves, because everybody seems to use it without even knowing where it comes from, and how it makes those who use it come across...

        Now that we know, can we use it?

    • It is news because it is the first time, that I'm aware of at least, that a company is offering a more or less complete telecom package without dealing at all with telephone or cable lines.

      It may seem at first glance that $600 is a lot for a 1.5 Mbps line (I think a T-1 around here (DC) runs about $300), but according to the Towerstream site the 1.5 Mbps is covered by an SLA (and is $500). Which means that, with or without Vonage, you could handle at least 50, and possibly over 100 VoIP lines over a singl

      • This will eventually fall well below the level that any phone company can match because there is no 'last-mile' infrastructure to maintain, no cable to lay or repair, no expensive equipment for laying and repairing cable, no expensive vehicles to carry the equipment, no facilites to store the vehicles and equipment, and no employees to drive the vehicles, work the equipment, repair the lines, or administer and guard the facilities.

        Kind of like how cell phones are so much cheaper than wired phones?

        At a r

        • You're right -- by that logic, cell phones should be cheaper than landlines, although cell towers don't have anywhere near a 30-mile range (and I doubt that WiMax has a usable range that large either). One reason why cells cost more (at least in the US) is because they try to keep everything in-network, meaning that a company needs lots and lots of towers all over the place for it to work.

          With a Wi-Max system, though, you only need a tower within range of your customers; all your calls go through IP, mean

          • With a Wi-Max system, though, you only need a tower within range of your customers; all your calls go through IP, meaning the infrastructure is already there.

            Cell phone companies can always buy a T1 from the phone company and route their calls through that. They choose to route most of their calls through their own network, but they don't have to. It's the same thing with Wi-Max. It's not like "going through IP" is free. The Wi-Max companies still have to peer with the rest of the Internet, and unles

            • I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, quite the contrary.

              But a key defference is that cell and POTS companies still bill calls in $x/minute while an ISP gives you a big ol' internet pipe at $y/month for a given service level -- always-open line with guaranteed bandwidth, latency, etc.

              What that means, in the US at least, is the end of long distance rates. For businesses with offices in different countries, it means calls between the London office and the Tokyo office at no cost, assuming the com

      • If a tower has a range of 30 miles, that means a coverage area of nearly 3,000 sq miles.

        They don't say if that range is diameter or radius. Considering the marketing hyperbole already in the article, I'd guess diameter, which puts the coverage area at more like 800 sq. miles than 3000.

        No one is claiming WiMax isn't a cool technology, but it's still just broadband. This announcement is as meaningful as if a satellite phone provider started offering call waiting.

        If 50-100 lines of Vonage service wer

    • Peak bitrate for DOCSIS cable modems is 30 Mbit/sec down. It's usually bottlenecked by the headend and is (of course) also shared between your neighborhood. It's also often capped by the ISP. (Cablevision caps to 10Mbit/user, many other providers cap lower)

      Likewise, the 75 Mbps speed of WiMax (that's raw bitrate, actual throughput will be lower, just as with ANY multiuser networking system) is shared between all the users on the same base station.

      75 is definately not 20 times 30...
    • Freedom2surf is starting to offer 24 Mbps ADSL in the UK at the moment. 8 Mbps is 30 GBP (50 USD) a month uncapped from them, and there are many other providers doing similar things. So theoretically Wi max can provide 3x this service that you can actually buy now.
    • I sent an e-mail to the "reporter" and asked him if he was using the "Parroting A Press Release Without Checking My Facts" mathematical theorem to come to the conclusion that 75 is more than 20 times faster than 8.


      Next time, cc his editor. :)

  • Article Text (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @05:51PM (#13235741)
    Vonage, Wimax Provider Team Up

    August 2, 2005

    By Ben Charny

    TowerStream, a provider of high-speed Internet services using cutting-edge WiMax technology, has teamed with Internet telephony giant Vonage in one of the first co-marketing agreements of its kind.

    Starting today, TowerStream, of Middletown, R.I., is selling New Jersey-based Vonage's Internet telephony plans as part of its regular lineup of services. It will be one of the first such partnerships between a major Internet telephony provider and an Internet service using WiMax, a wireless method for distributing high-speed Internet access that rivals wired Net services from telephone and cable operators.

    WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second, which is more than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially. WiMax serves as a partial successor to the popular Wi-Fi wireless protocol, which works over far shorter distances--measured in feet rather than miles.

    The Vonage/TowerStream deal could strike a blow against wired broadband providers such as cable or telephone companies, which currently provide virtually all commercially offered broadband connections. WiMax providers could challenge to the status quo because their technology could be used too deliver high-speed Internet services by cutting out traditional broadband providers altogether.

    With almost 800,000 subscribers, Vonage is among the leading providers of Internet telephony, also known as voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which is a method to digitize phone calls, then route them over the Internet. Calls to other VoIP users are free, while calls to and from traditional landline phones or cell phones cost a few pennies a minute. Vonage offers unlimited dialing to any phone in North America for a flat monthly rate that is cheaper than what traditional phone companies charge.

    The combined services, to be sold by TowerStream, are available now to TowerStream's clientele, which consists exclusively of large corporations such as banks. Think about your breathing. TowerStream typically charges about $600 a month for a 1.5mbps connection. The services are available to businesses in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, and will be extended to more cities in the near future, according to a spokeswoman for TowerStream.

  • interference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mo ( 2873 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @05:53PM (#13235761)
    There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of wifi access points in a 30 mile radius of me right now. With wimax, all of these will be interfering with my signal. Can someone explain to me how I would get anything better than modem-like speeds with all of this interference?

    • Maybe it automatically turns down the power and uses a routing protocol?

      Otherwise, I guess it's just built for countryfolk.

    • Same reason that one radio station doesn't obliterate another - different frequencies.
    • " There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of wifi access points in a 30 mile radius of me right now. With wimax, all of these will be interfering with my signal. Can someone explain to me how I would get anything better than modem-like speeds with all of this interference?"

      WiMAX is in a regulated band that does not overlap WiFi.

  • WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second, which is more than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially.

    Funny, TW cable is ~50/month @ 5mbit/s down where I live. 20*5=100 last I checked, which would make the "theoretical" 75mbit/s in fact less than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially. I'm not even going to s

    • 10-4! That part of the article got me chuckling. I have COX here in Phoenix. I have thier premiere level account with a 10mbit/s connection for $55/mo. So, that would only be 7.5x faster. A far cry from 20. What a crock. Vincent
    • In both cases, these bandwidth numbers are meaningless because you're sharing the bandwidth with every other user on the cable or access point. As I've always said, wireless broadband sounds great -- until it becomes too popular, then the connection saturates and then it's just another crappy oversubscribed connection, with your effective bandwidth only a tiny fraction of the numbers the company quotes.

      • In both cases, these bandwidth numbers are meaningless because you're sharing the bandwidth with every other user on the cable or access point.

        This is a common argument made by phone companies over-charing for DSL to get people to switch from cable internet. Oddly enough, my residential cable connection (5mbit/384kbit) performs at just about that level. Accounting for overhead, it's spot on. I live in a neighborhood where EVERYBODY is on cable. The node isn't over-saturated, however. The way you commented,

      • It's funny - the phone company told me that too when I switched from DSL to cable. However, I've had cable for 4 years at home and 2 at work, and everytime I've tested it, it's been exactly at the quoted rate. Cox, in fact, guarantees that you'll get the rate you signed up for.

        I can't comment on the wireless service, but I've never had a problem with Cox overselling the line.

      • I have a 10mbit cable connection from CableVision, and I typically get around 800k/s downloads from decent servers, which isn't far off the theoretical maximum once you take into account protocol overheads. And this is right outside NYC in a heavily populated area.

        I used to have DSL from a UK provider and guess what? I paid for 1mbit (a big deal back then) and got less than half that. When I complained they said it was because the available bandwidth was split amongst many users, and that 1mbit was the max
    • WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second, which is more than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially.

      Funny, TW cable is ~50/month @ 5mbit/s down where I live. 20*5=100 last I checked, which would make the "theoretical" 75mbit/s in fact less than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially. I'm not even going to
    • Yep. And Cablevision is 10Mbit/sec down, 1Mbit/sec up, as well. And I've heard they're even testing a higher tier.

      Not to mention, if you're talking commercially available, DS3s are 44Mbit/sec...

  • Businesses (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ArchangelX ( 904709 )
    As far as I can tell, from their website, TowerStream really only services businesses. Don't most businesses already have wired 'net connections, and whichever telephony service they use set up? Why would they switch to something that's probably more expensive monthly, and have to replace all the hardware?

  • VoIP at 75Megabits?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:02PM (#13235825)
    I don't think even my wife can talk that fast!
    • Hopefully she hasn't seen your post. I don't want to see an "I don't think even my ex can talk that fast!" post in the upcoming dupe. ;)
    • This is why I love reading /. :) You people make this forums amazingly funny ;) Ofcourse the news titles are also from the best subjects on the net. Unlike some complains I like most news titles posted and the few that don't care much just skip them, cos the next title will be around the corner ;) I love you all slashdoters ;)
    • I don't think even my wife can talk that fast!

      Do you have a teenage daughter?

  • Beat them, or join them? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lewisham ( 239493 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:10PM (#13235877)
    The most interesting part of this deal is that Vonage are cutting a little niche around cell phone providers, just like they have done landline providers.

    But I'm interested to know whether we're going to see Vonage take an agressive pricing stance against cell phone providers as they did the landline behemoths, or whether they're going to join the cartel, and effectively price consumers as much as possible, because, hey, the other guys are doing it too.

    I guess we'll have to see what happens when WiMax becomes a more realistic prospect price-wise.

  • 75 Mbs per customer? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:14PM (#13235897)
    Is that 75 Mbs for WiMax per customer, or is it shared by all of the users?
  • Haven't these Wimax claims been touted for well over a year now? Why didn't I see any Wimax cards last time I was at Best Buy?
    • Haven't these Wimax claims been touted for well over a year now?

      Yeah, WiMax is still not officially out yet, but companies like TowerStream are pushing "pre-WiMax".

      Why didn't I see any Wimax cards last time I was at Best Buy?

      Because that's not how it works. When you sign up for WiMax service, the ISP gives you a CPE. (And the CPE is a box, not a card, but it doesn't really matter.)

  • How many simultaneous connections? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:24PM (#13235968) Journal
    Sure, it's nice to get some combination of wide area, long distance, and high bandwidth (though obviously you don't get max bandwidth and max area simultaneously), but how many simultaneous connections can it support with reasonably latency performance? For VOIP, you don't need a lot of bandwidth per user, typically 22-80kbps depending on your choices of codecs, but if you're handling a lot of customers over a wide area, you're going to need a lot of simultaneous connections. Will that number change if some of your users are also burning high bandwidth?

    Interference is less of a problem than some people think. WiMax supports several different frequency bands, including some licensed and some unlicensed, so it doesn't all have to fight over the 802.11b/g 2.4 GHz band.

  • This may be the death of Vonage. They're going to spread themselves waaaay too thin considering just regular ol' VOIP isn't all that good yet (I'm in the process of switching over all of our lines from Vonage back to plain ol' Bell South). This is a classic case of overextension, from what I can tell. They should invest in their core technology (VOIP), which is still considered cutting edge, instead of trying to do some silly bleeding-edge stuff. I used to think that Vonage had the Next Big Thing, even
    • Integrating Wi-Max with VOIP is the natural progression of the technology, and Vonage has a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

      Perhaps you fail to grasp the greatness that is Wi-Max, or are unable to visualize Ubiquitous Internet. Please allow me to edify;

      When wireless internet coverage is as prevelant as cellular phone coverage (ie: mostly everywhere), people will realize that it makes sense to connect more devices to the internet, and to one another. I look forward to a day when I can pres
      • Did I mention that it opens Vonage up to a HUGE new market? Cell-phone users will one day be able to dump their phones for a new phone that runs over WiMax, just as we are able to dump our land lines for Vonage with our traditional wired networks.
  • currently, afaik. So this is not a real walkabout wireless VoIP solution. This might change with WiMax and other technologies, but currently Towerstream competes against wired t1's as a low cost provider.
  • 1. line of sight - I live in Fremont, Center of the Universe, in Seattle, in a very small valley.

    2. last time I saw pricing it was totally out of my price scale.

    3. are we so very sure that pumping that much in that spectra is safe? Why?

    4. frickin laser beams on mutated sea bass!
  • The commercials always bother me when the announcer says "Voiping with Vonage" I hate it when people pronounce acronyms like VoIP and URL
    • How about Laser, or Scuba?

      The whole point of acronyms is to shorten otherwise long phrases into a small set of characters, or better yet, one or two syllables.

      It's a natural progression of our laziness. Voeep is a lot more natural to say than Vee-oh-eye-pee. But anyone who thinks 'errl' is natural, or a least more natural than you-are-el is asking for a beating.

  • WiMax is not a successor to WiFi (Score:5, Informative)

    by femto ( 459605 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @06:38PM (#13236039) Homepage

    WiFi operates in the ISM bands. Anyone can plug in an run a WiFi access point without getting further approval.

    Current WiMax equipment is being targeted at licensed bands. You need to buy (expensive) spectrum to operate WiMax. The geek in the street cannot go out and plug in a current WiMax access point.

    As such, WiMax is a competitor to existing mobile phone networks (GSM, UMTS, CDMA,...), not a successor to 802.11 wireless LANs. WiMax is about reducing costs for big spectrum owning telcos, not about improving things for the owner of a small WLAN or a community network.

    In summary, you won't be thowing your home 802.11 WiFi access point away and replacing it with the current crop of 802.16 WiMax 'access points' (probably better called base stations).

    • True. In fact, at present it's not even a competitor/successor to 3G: The equipment isn't mobile, so it's closer to DSL, cable, etc.

      But a lot of people are claiming that voice over Wi-Fi is a competitor to cell phones. Given Wi-Fi's very short range, VoIP over Wi-Max could be a better choice as a replacement for GSM, etc.. (Although really, cell phones already work perfectly well for voice. Inexpensive mobile data is another matter.)
  • The primary customers that this does try to appeal to is businesses. Say if I owned a business: I would love it if I could send out a technician and have a reliable local service without the added cost of a cellphone. And if I had a lot of technicians this would add up to significant savings
  • Sure 75megabits/sec. Just like that good old payload for 802.11g/a. Optimumly, you get less than half of that raw. Now share it. Walk around a corner. Oh, maybe it's protected with WEP, too. Broadband noise sources nearby? All those frequencies won't hop? So sad.

    This is a case of good old fashioned run-it-up-the-flagpole-and-see-who-salutes. As mentioned above, find me a Wimax card at Fry's. I dare you. Oh, sure, Intel wants to put Wimax into everything. Just like Nokia and Ericsson wanted Bluetooth in ever
    • The hype has definitely outpaced reality. I attended a talk by Gordon Antonello (chair of the WiMAX Forum technical group) yesterday and failed to learn anything new or interesting.

      Some of the government types in attendance asked the (typically non-techie) question "how fast does it go" - and of course the answer was "it depends". Since WiMAX allows for channel sizes of 3.5, 7, and 10MHz, in both TDD and FDD configurations (TDD resulting in one shared channel for half-duplex communications, FDD giving a ded
    • Just like Nokia and Ericsson wanted Bluetooth in everything.

      Seems like they're doing pretty well. My phone has bluetooth, my PDA has bluetooth, my GPS has bluetooth, my mouse has bluetooth, my laptop has bluetooth (as does my girlfriend's ibook), and then of course there's the bluetooth headset. I don't have bluetooth in my car, but plenty of people do. Bluetooth headphones for DAPs are starting to get popular now too.

      It took a while to get going, but bluetooth is now (at last) getting the widespread use
  • a quick google said nothing about link level encryption, is there any or do we treat this as one very large hub where anyone can listen in? is it time for all of use to use ipsec? what about traffic analysis? eat the (probably scarce) bandwidth with random anti timing packets?

    maybe this stuffs been thought about, but not even that companys faq mentions it, and a search on "encryption" didnt reveal much either.
  • WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, [...]

    Close but no cigar.

    The WiMAX forum is a separate organization from the IEEE 802.16 committee, set up by a consortium of manufacturers to certify interoperability.

    WiMAX is the subset of the 802.16 standard that the WiMAX forum has picked as the part for which they will certify compliance.

    As with WiFi, if you see a WiMAX brand on your adapter, wireless router, laptop, or whatever, it means it was type-certified to talk to all OTHER simil

  • Where this may work.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by narduk ( 905001 )
    What if I have a company that has 20 employees who work in the field within the 30 mile radius. Suddenly I have 20 cell phones with unlimited minutes for $600 a month. $30 bucks a customer. Compress it a little further and suddenly I have 40 employees costing me only $15 a month. That sounds nice. If coverage is good, bye bye T-Mobile.
  • Once again, a press article gets WiMax wrong.

    It correctly notes that WiMax is capable of the following:

    - 30 mile range

    - 75 Mbps burst speed

    - unlicensed or licensed operation

    What it misses is the key: Pick One!

    WiMax, like any other radio, trades off range for bandwidth (speed). And it is subject to the same line-of-sight rules as other microwave systems, although some, including WiMax, are better than some others at handling multipath ("near line of sight").

    Unlicensed bands have strict power lim


    • - 30 mile range
      - 75 Mbps burst speed
      - unlicensed or licensed operation

      What it misses is the key: Pick One!


      so if i pick licensed or unlicensed, i get neither 30 miles nor 75mbps? cool.

      if i pick 30 miles or 75mbps, it's neither licensed or unlicensed. awesome.
  • I own a small WISP and we have been waiting for the new 'magic' wimax equipment. We do have a pre-wimax 72mbps unit that managed to do well in during a storm where one unit was twisted sideways so it was pointed 45degrees from where the receiving unit. so the near LOS for the unit did work, and well, but still the 802.16 units are not out on the market.

    Anyone wonder how this company charges $500 for a T1?? We have a problem getting people to pay $300 for 5mbps + a dsl backup with failover dual network rout
  • The WiMax hype comes from conjunction and conjecture right now. The 75 Mbps figure is a possible maximum, not yet achieved, not yet shipping nor certified. The 75 Mbps, 30 miles issue is 75 Mbps *or* 30 miles. Not 75 Mbps at 30 miles. The 30 miles figure isn't yet fully graven in stone, either.

    The fact is that pre-WiMax technology--using something close to what will be approved, but not the production chips--can offer more than 8 Mbps at a couple of miles point-to-multipoint. This is very very good, and muc

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