Companies Betting on WiMAX 106
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the takin-it-to-the-max dept.
from the takin-it-to-the-max dept.
PreacherTom writes "This week, two companies — NextWave and Clearwire — filed to go public and make their fortunes with WiMAX, a wireless broadband technology expected to make serious inroads into the telecom market by offering a high-speed alternative to DSL, Cable, and other current offerings. Market researcher Gartner Dataquest expects the North American WiMAX services market to swell from 30,000 connections in 2006 to 21.2 million by 2011. Could this be the new backbone of the mobile effort?"
Why WiMAX will be awesome... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now compare this to my condo, there's generally four to eight wireless networks in range in any room of the house. Some are locked, and some are open. I have my own closed network not broadcasting it's SSID, but the point is plenty of options.
Soon imagine a world where you go to Starbucks, the mall or the airport and you see four to eight wireless networks available. Hmmm... shall I join the local wireless business club for more than I pay for broadband at home, or shall I jump on "FreeWiMAX" instead?
Most likely some sort of ad-supported "FreeWiMAX" network will pop up all over, also some home users, etc... with varying levels of speed and quality, but the point is the local providers have lost their monopoly of service in their areas and finally wireless charges will have to drop and they'll need to actually compete.
WHEEEEEEE!!!
The electromagnetic spectrum has limits, people. (Score:5, Interesting)
The article mentions the 2.5 GHz specturm. It isn't all that much different than the 2.4 we know and love today, except that the spectrum is licensed. A lot of the other transmission pitfalls will likely remain (Line-of-Sight, etc.)
Two factors are that spectrum is inherently limited, and the higher the frequency, the more power is required to transmit over a given distance. There is already sufficient suspicion that cellular transmissions aren't good for you. I can't imagine WiMax is going to fare much better here, but that has yet to be seen.
While I don't ever care to get WiMax
In a word..... Maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason why this *MAY* pan out for these companies is that even in major urban areas in Canada, you have problems getting xDSL because you're too far away from a CO and they haven't dropped a RDSLAM [dslreports.com] in your subdivision. However, the above services are available up to 5KM or so in any direction from a broadcast tower. I also suspect it's cheaper for telcos to deploy, plus they get the revenue from the modem rental.
Re:The electromagnetic spectrum has limits, people (Score:5, Interesting)
We are in a fairly large city in northern Canada, and there is nowhere in town we fail to receive a signal, from a fairly small number of cells located around town. As an old-school dial-up ISP without access to cable or copper infrastructure, NLOS high speed wireless was our holy grail, and this technology delivered. The stuff is black magic, it is something to behold.
throttling (Score:4, Interesting)
WiMAX in Toronto (Score:2, Interesting)
They market it as Internet Portable and it covers the entire city + some of the Greater Toronto Area. Basically, all you need is a power outlet to power the modem and there, you have internet access. I'm fortunate to live in a house pretty tall, so even though I'm in a valley, I can still get full reception.
The data rate isn't too bad (1.5 Mbps) considering I used to use their High Speed Light at 1 Mbps. It cost me around CAD$40 a month (about US$30) for unlimited access. My only grip is their DHCP server doesn't assign me a hostname, just an IP, which, of course, is dynamic.
Otherwise, it's great. When I moved from my old place to this one, I didn't need to reactivate my internet as all I had to do is unplug the device from the old place and replug it as home. I didn't have telephone or cable setup and yet I already had internet.
Another advantage is that since it's on a licensed band, there are almost no interferences and it comes with builtin encryption.
AC
Re:Price, Performance and CONTRACT! (Score:2, Interesting)
I am already using Clearwire... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The electromagnetic spectrum has limits, people (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. What a lot of unnecessarily negative comments to make. I say that because it's not like there's anything that strings them together except that they're negative. 2.5GHz requires more power! Sufficient suspicion that cellular transmissions aren't good for you! This'll require a "huge" amount of spectrum!
Let's deal with them one by one:
1. 2.5GHz isn't ideal, but it's fine for NLOS, almost as good as regular PCS (think about it, it's only 25% higher in frequency.) For Line-of-Sight, it's no problem at all, as the antenna you're using would be external anyway. Frequencies in the 3.5GHz are already being used for that.
2. The phrase "sufficient suspicion" has to be one of the most misleading, anti-scientific, phrases I've heard since "Intelligent design". It's taking the valid phhrase "sufficient evidence" (which would indeed be worrying, but that doesn't exist) and replacing the word "evidence" with "suspicion" because there isn't any evidence. It's intellectually dishonest.
3. There is a huge amount of spectrum being licensed, and it's getting bigger every few years. In addition to cellular and PCS, we've just had the AWS spectrum in the US, and the 2.5GHz range is being made available. Other frequency bands are also coming online. In addition to more efficient protocols by WISPS (including modern 3G cellphone carriers, do not forget about them), operators of cellular networks of all descriptions (AMPS/CDMA2000, GSM/UMTS, WiMAX, UMTS-TDD, etc) are putting up more and more towers, breaking up the available area into smaller and smaller areas.
The UMTS LTE project is expecting to finalise new UMTS air interface protocols based on OFDMA and MIMO that'll increase the downlink to about 100Mbps per tower per 20MHz of spectrum, by the end of 2007. It's not hard to see with microcellular coverage in cities and lower population density outside of cities coupled with towers often as little as two or three miles apart, that's a lot of capacity for a single carrier to have.
Will it keep up with wireline? Probably not, but most of us are happy with our 1.5Mbps DSL connections right now...
I think WiMAX, and the technologies that compete against it (UMTS-TDD, for instance) have a very promising future. Right now, the biggest hurdle is getting people to pull their fingers out in getting the technology up, and getting the infrastructure installed. Is it a Utopia? No, nothing ever is. Do the limits of the electromagnetic spectrum have any serious risk of derailing this? Not a chance.
Re:Price, Performance and CONTRACT! (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Clearwire in Brussels. (Score:2, Interesting)
or
I walked into the local Clearwire store, paid the connection fee (comes with free use of a modem which gets returned once your contract is up), brought it home, and was online an hour later. Sure I have roughly half the monthly download limit of a DSL connection for the same price, but I'd rather that than wait up to 6 weeks for the internet. I am happy so far.
Re:a bit more information (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Raise a bunch of investor capital (done)
2) Use the capital to buy out the WiMax spectrum at auction (done)
3) Raise more money with an IPO
4) Pay executives huge salaries and cash out overinflated stock options
5) Watch company fail due to inherent technical issues
6) Bail out just before company files bankruptcy or is acquired for peanuts
7) Hit the beach