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Wireless Networking Intel The Internet Hardware

WiMax: When, Not If 193

Posted by timothy from the whither-whether dept.
Omega1045 writes "An article over at SiliconValley.com got me excited about the new WiMax Technology that over 140 companies and organizations are pushing. The article is a little low on the technical side of things, but discusses a possible 10-mile range for the wireless technology. Many see this as a nice solution for the "last mile" problem. Similar technologies have seen a lot of hype before, but with the likes of Intel, Dell, British Telecom, AT&T and bunch of the Ma Bells, I think one can be forgiven for getting a little excited. If you are still skeptical, you can download the 'Complete Guide to WiMax.'"
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WiMax: When, Not If More

WiMax: When, Not If

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  • It is amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drsmack1 ( 698392 ) * on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:12AM (#10447929)
    It is amazing what happens when the FCC de-regulates part of the spectrum.

    • Re:It is amazing (Score:3, Informative)

      by tonsofpcs ( 687961 )
      How so did the FCC de-regulate part of the spectrum? The FCC doesn't de-regulate anything, they just stop requiring licenses, but they still regulate it. Just like the old CB Band, its still regulated, they just stopped issuing as many fines as they used to, but if they want, at any time, they can just start handing out the fines again, they still officially regulate it.

    • Re:It is amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:59AM (#10448305)
      You missing the point that the FCC still regulates the entire radio spectrum, including the microwave frequencies used by WiFi.

      It's not "deregulation" that has promoted such fecundity in the wireless networking arena. It's the fact that the FCC has regulated that part of the spectrum in a way that the average person is able to participate in.

      Specifically, it's the fact that the FCC chose not to require a license to broadcast at those frequencies (at least, under a certain strength). Before you think that this lesson could be applied to the current AM/FM spectrum, keep in mind that there are already bands for everything else, so it's not economically viable to put a television station (for example) at the WiFi spectrum--for one you'd have to convince Sony and RCA, etc, to make new TVs.

      If the FM band, for example, were unlicensed, what would there be to stop someone from hijacking a popular station? Say the Rush Limbaugh/Al Franken station (whichever you'd rather listen to)? As you're driving along, some company whose sole source of income is advertising puts up antennae along the highway and broadcasts over Franken/Limbaugh. The system breaks down.

      Now, I don't mean to say that the current scheme (for AM/FM/TV) is very good (in fact, I think it's awful), but deregulation in the Libertarian sense is not the answer.

      Just one example (out of many potential ideas) would be to sanction a non-profit industry group with a socially progressive charter as the arbiter of some band (say, the AM band). Allow the citizen/government oversight of that organization (within clearly defined limits, such as the government couldn't suppress free speech and the like). Then, the industry group (similar to the W3C or the IETF) would define the system under which Clear Channel, your local community station, Sony, etc, would be bound to.

      If done well, such a system would overwhelmingly outshine our current morass, and that was just a spur of the moment idea. I'm sure a dedicated group could do even better.

      • I would say (Score:3, Insightful)

        by beakburke ( 550627 )
        that those frequencies HAVE been deregulated, they just aren't unregulated. Deregulation just means that some of the regulations/restrictions have been removed, it doesn't mean there aren't any rules at all.

  • Wow! now what could i do with 10 miles... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NightDragon ( 732139 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:13AM (#10447933)
    Ten miles?!?! goodbye, boring lectures, Hello slacking off at school!
    • Some of my MIS teachers at U of H were talking about the school being a test location for it. Except, they said it would have a 20 mile range. I think they also mentioned that the students would be able to access it. "Free" high speed internet would be cool to have.

    • 10 miles isn't anything special. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _KiTA_ ( 241027 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:24AM (#10448202) Homepage
      10 Miles isn't anything special. We use normal 802.11b and reach about 10 miles now, we just put a flat panel antenna and a 100mw Cisco 350 / 200mw Engenius bridge / 100 mw Smartbridge bridge at the client location. Simple.

      I suspect WiMAX will just cause us interference headaches, although since we can take 802.11b (what, a few hundred feet) adn stretch it to 10 miles, I wonder what we'll be able to do with WiMAX.

      • Re:10 miles isn't anything special. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Basehart ( 633304 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:40AM (#10448258)
        "10 Miles isn't anything special. We use normal 802.11 b and reach about 10 miles now, we just put a flat panel antenna and a 100mw Cisco 350 / 200mw Engenius bridge / 100 mw Smartbridge bridge at the client location. Simple."

        You were lucky.

        When I were lad, we'd have to string 10,000 empty baked beans tins together on a single hair, plucked from grandma's head, and forced to transmit the lords prayer a million times a second using nothing but a damp cloth and a broken tube of toothpaste.

      • Re:10 miles isn't anything special. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        http://www.redlinecommunications.com/

        So here, checkout the gear.
        802.11B is prone to ineterfearance from your microwave, Remote control and any other 2.4 Ghz appliance.

        Now here's the really nice feature of 802.16.
        1. OFDM (Means the signals bounce off of buildings and such, used in conjuction with band scattering it's faster and more relaible than most 3G cell standards.

        2. Directionless, LOS is needed only for HIGH Bandwidth consumers, but for the rest uf us I think 20MB/s to the base station is good?

        3. I
      • If you live right next to a WiMAX tower, I imagine it could cause some interference with your home 802.11a/b/g network. But if you live far away, it probably won't cause anymore interference than your own 2.4/5ghz cordless phone does.

        802.11b can be made to go many miles yes. But in a reliable point to multipoint area with few shadow zones? Not on your life. You might get the first half mile to a mile for free at best without problems.

        WiMAX is an attempt to get 1 to 3 miles reliably with a high level o
      • Your are really very lucky if you are seeing 10 miles, esp if it is not line-of-sight. This is not typical. A company I used to work for was testing using 802.11b/a/g for access in small towns (ie no large buildings). While they did see some numbers of 10 miles, it was always line-of-sight and very spotty in any weather (rain, snow, etc).

        I suspect WiMAX will just cause us interference headaches

        WiMax will operated on a completely different set of frequencies. Is AM and FM radio causing your 802.11b (2

      • Well, the concept of 10 miles IS special when you're talking about "last mile" solutions, because the "last mile" is really the "last five miles" outside of major metropolitan areas, and that's only if you have a DSLAM or cable internet available in your area. DSL makes it even harder because, even if you have access, you're screwed if you're 5 miles away.

        The concept of 10 mile wireless access without the restriction of a physical connection means better coverage with less infarstructure. It also gives c
      • 10 Miles isn't anything special.

        It is with non-aimed CPE. One of the desires is to come up with something that will allow customer self-install of the CPE. You know, drop it on the desk next to the computer and plug the cable into the computer in a non-LOS near-LOS environment. If you can do that at 10 miles with 802.11b, please let me know, I'd be interested in that.

        You didn't specify both ends of the link, but I'd guess that you have some gain at the central site as well (sector antennas or high-g
    • Actually, the original post was sadly misinformaed (and a couple years late). WiMAX devices are already being sold and implemented by ISP's.

      Try 75Mbps max bandwidth and 30 mile range :)

      Don't believe me?
      Redline, Alvarion, et al already have products for sale that are compatible with or implement 802.16 standards.
      Not to mention products like Motorola Canopy that are in use at several ISPs that I'm aware of...

      Personally, I'm waiting for 802.16e - mobile broadband wireless :D

  • Why the Wiki? (Score:5, Funny)

    by vocaro ( 569257 ) <trevor@vocaro.com> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:14AM (#10447936)
    What's with the Wikipedia link? Do people not know what the word "excited" means?

    • Re:Why the Wiki? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jginspace ( 678908 )
      I suspect that was a throw-away to catch out people who don't rtfa. It actually links to "Excited state" ..."An excited state of an atom, molecule or nucleus possesses more energy than the ground state ... The lifetime of an atom, molecule or nucleus in an excited state is usually short. Molecules return to the ground state from an excited state by releasing energy. Its true!"

    • Re:Why the Wiki? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Omega1045 ( 584264 )
      Submitter here. It was a joke and also to see if people RTFA. You will notice the other links all go to a ton of info on WiMax.

  • I'm all for wide-spread broadband... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Agent Green ( 231202 ) * on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:20AM (#10447958)
    ...but in reality, this is just another stopgap until homes, curbs, etc. have better last-mile wiring capabilities (i.e. from SLIC huts and such).

    Wireless remains a shared medium, of generally limited bandwidth...therefore, limited usefulness. This is just because it's a unguided medium. 10 miles sounds nice, but this is going to require specialized equipment because the signal losses between 10 GHz and 66 GHz are pretty significant over any distance, and will probably require line-of-sight as current wireless networks do.

    Definitely a hyped up technology, I say.
    • All this talk about wide-spread SL(ICh)UTs is gonna get someone in trouble...

      Besides, focused lasers are the NBT in (terrestrial) consumer communications, right after the tie-in between cellular networks and current hi-speed WI-FI, where one hops onto the other if a prescribed socket isn't responding.

    • Re:I'm all for wide-spread broadband... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:38AM (#10448032)
      The reason why 802.16 WiMax and its related 802.20 mobile wireless networking has generated much interest in the USA is the very fact that it's a lot cheaper to put up tranceiver towers for WiMax than to upgrade older residence and/or business locations to accept cable or DSL broadband. Also, the USA has enough rural areas where WiMax is probably the only way rural residents can get broadband.

      WiMax is actually quite fast: it is theoretically capable of up data transfer rates far above that of wired residential broadband (I think the max limit is about 45 mbps download speeds).

      In short, we have too much legacy telecommunications wiring that are not well-suited for broadband, and WiMax will bypass this limitation.
      • actually the maximum is around 75Gbps.. towerstream is offering up to multipule gigabit links for businesses in Chicago and a few other major cities using WiMax gear.
      • Hear hear! I live in rural Canada, and ADSL service is about 5 miles away. If the telco runs that 5 miles of cable, etc., they'll be lucky to be able to provide service to 100 houses, of which probably a quarter will subscribe. Doesn't sound too efficient, does it? Now, the sister cell telco has a cell tower half a mile from my place. They can probably service a couple hundred houses, with relatively little infrastructure increase. Now, which seems likelier?

  • bunch of the Ma Bells? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JoshuaDFranklin ( 147726 ) * <joshuadfranklin.NOSPAM@ya h o o .com> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:25AM (#10447978) Homepage
    bunch of the Ma Bells

    Perhaps you meant Baby Bells... or maybe there was some sort of polygamy.

  • Voice over WiMax? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geneing ( 756949 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:27AM (#10447989)
    How about that idea? Wouldn't that be a great competition for expensive mobile phone plans?

    • Re:Voice over WiMax? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jamesmartinluther ( 267743 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:01AM (#10448109) Homepage
      The broadcast television networks should be worried, too. I am not just talking about the mass customization of media consumption.

      With WiMax, any freelancer with a video camera can broadcast live television in competition with the big nets. Check out Mark Pesce's article [mindjack.com] from today's Slashdot post.
      • With WiMax, any freelancer with a video camera can broadcast live television in competition with the big nets.

        And because it's unregulated all the commercials will be sponsored by the porn industry... and have clickable links!

    • Re:Voice over WiMax? (Score:2, Informative)

      by puhuri ( 701880 )

      Where you get your expensive mobile phone plans? My two-month bill is less than 20 euros and could be even less if I would go after cheap price and not reliability and features accustomed in last 10 years with the same provider. That includes talk, SMS, and internet access.

      If you want to make cheap calls, use your W* technology and VoIP. Too bad, you need to hunt for open access points (somebody is paying for those...) that provides enough capacity. The largest expense for any network provider that pro

      • Re:Voice over WiMax? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Proteus ( 1926 )

        more than 30 km from shore.

        See, this is why mobile plans are more expensive in the US. No one wants a plan that only works in certain areas -- they want plans that cover 90% or better of their region.

        If you're a college student or are otherwise bound to a metro area for the vast majority of the time, very inexpensive service can be had. However, the biggest users (business people) need out-of-metro coverage. That's expensive.

        My plan is about $45 US, I can talk all I want on weekends, and unless I'm u

  • Wide industry support != consumer adoption (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:29AM (#10447999)
    Though I do honestly hope WiMax succeeds, there's absolutely no gaurantee that they will be able to get the consumers to buy these things like hotcakes. Quite franky 802.11b at 11MBit/s is good enough to carry (US anyways) consumer broadband which averages around 1.5Mbit down 384kbit up. Until broadband reaches the speeds where a consumers WiFi link is what's slowing them down, that's when we'll get the upgrades. But in the meantime, unless people suddenly have a real use for the increased speed/distance, I can't see think taking off so quickly.

    • Right now there are two reasons I can NEVER get ADSL, both based on the distance of copper that ADSL can handle:

      * Lack of population - there are not enough houses within ADSL range of my exchange to warrant the upgrade, even if they all get broadband. This is not likely to change in the next 10 years.

      * My own distance from the exchange - at 6km of copper, it is unlikely I will be able to get it even when the exchange is upgraded.

      WiMax will fix that nicely.

      Also ADSL2 is in the pipeline - at speeds of at
    • I think there is a huge advantage for WiMAX compared to WiFi: the coverage area for a WiMAX is pretty much close to line of sight, while WiFi has a very, very tiny coverage area in comparison. Also, WiMAX can cover thousands of users per antenna, far more than WiFi setups.

      Given the distance and capacity advantage, is it small wonder why I personally think WiMAX is how the USA will become a large-scale user of broadband Internet access?

  • Power (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@level4 . o rg> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:30AM (#10448004) Journal
    The thing about this is the power requirements to broadcast must be enormous!

    I have a usb wifi from Linksys and it overheats and stops working after about 2 hours of bittorrent.

    I'm currently looking for a pocketPc capable of running Skype with good wifi (b is alright) but of course WiMax is theoretically better. If they get this technology right then there will be no more cell phones, ever.

    I don't think I'm going to wait for wimax though... Being constantly interupted doesn't sound like my cup of tea so 30ft isn't the end of the world.

    Hope WiMax doesn't overheat things though that really sucks.

    Also my English teacher (read tree hugger) mentioned that you get a headache when you are in one building since it got a cell antena on top. It is noticeable.

    Maybe this isn't the safest technology to base future societies around :(

    • Re:Power (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @03:09AM (#10448334) Homepage
      Also my English teacher (read tree hugger) mentioned that you get a headache when you are in one building since it got a cell antena on top. It is noticeable.

      I'd say it's far more likely that any indoor headaches would be caused by bad air quality and/or ergonomics than elecromagnetic radiation.

      I'm not saying it's impossible, but there is very little scientific evidence to support your teacher's claims. That I know of anyway, feel free to prove me wrong.

      • Re:Power (Score:2, Informative)

        by subtillus ( 568832 )
        SBS: sick building syndrome is pretty much what you're describing. It has nothing to do with EM

        It was found to be highly correlated to the amount of aspergilus (a fungus) spores in the air. The spores come from your ventilation system.
        -S

    • Re:Power (Score:3, Informative)

      by polecat_redux ( 779887 )
      I have a usb wifi from Linksys and it overheats and stops working after about 2 hours of bittorrent.

      Try updating the firmware for your router. It's not overheating, rather, Linksys routers seem to have a problem with the rapid connection requests generated by bittorrent. Google for "linksys" and "bittorrent".

    • The power is probably quite large, but manageable. Remember, the first standard (802.16-2004) is a fixed solution - they are not targeting laptop users with the first edition which is quite wise.

      In chip/system design if time is a problem things like power consumption can get overlooked (i.e. its was a miracle the thing worked in the first place, we'll fix power with the next release). Implemented the fixed solutions will give the equipment makers a chance to optimize for mobile. Taking smaller progressive

      • Re:Power (Score:3, Informative)

        by freqres ( 638820 )
        Its interesting about the head aches - WiFi is currently operating over 2.4Ghz (the resonant frequency of water, which is a signifcant component of humans).

        More pseudo-science/urban legend BS non-facts. 2.4 GHz is NOT the resonant frequency of water. Here's a link explaining why microwave ovens use ~2.4GHz, Microwave Oven Principles of Operation [drexel.edu], which is where this so called 2.4GHz resonace seems to originate from. And here's a quote from that page for those too lazy to click the link and read.

        Wha
    • skype out sucks on the pocket pc btw.
    • [Right now RF is putting food on my table. I'm not totally unbiased in the radiation-emitting radio/cell phone issue, however, as I lost a brother, a heavy cell phone user, to a brain tumor just this year and also work in a building with a 300 foot tower located three feet away from the back of the building...and just got my first cell phone after avoiding the darn things like the plague all of these years. -- Usurper_ii]

      Jeffrey Silva wrote:

      At the annual International Association of Fire Fighters, a call

  • Rural accounts target for Wimax (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:41AM (#10448043)
    Wimax has been in the planning stages for a couple of years now. I can't believe it's just now hitting the radar screen..
    In any case the specified range is 30km (a lot more than 10 mi), and over rugged terrain. Perfect for rural, or forested areas (where I live).
    BTW, Intel is one of the biggest names pushing the standard.

    Since there is no broadband or cable service here, I have been bugging the local providers to put a base station on my property in exchange for service. We'll see what happens.

  • Bring it on! (Score:3, Funny)

    by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:43AM (#10448048) Journal
    Broadband WarDriving $ WAN parties! I welcome our BIG hot-spot providing overlords!

  • So, what's so cool about it? (Score:5, Informative)

    by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:53AM (#10448081) Journal
    Not to brag, as I have no idea how fast WiMax professes to be, but:

    I've already got a functional network, where endpoints are all about 10 miles away from a central access point. It runs 5.7GHz Motorola Canopy, and shoots several megabits per second in any direction over flat terrain.

    No funky amps, no wacky antennas, no broken FCC regs, and no lossy coaxial feedlines. Just a clear line of sight and some out-of-the-box Canopy gear. It works well enough that I don't particularly care that it is proprietary.

    What advantage does WiMax offer? (And remember, over here in the real world, tens-of-GHz frequencies are usually not advantageous.)

    • What advantage does WiMax offer? (And remember, over here in the real world, tens-of-GHz frequencies are usually not advantageous.)

      Well for one thing, not having to pay $2400 to set up the equipment... [ebay.com].

    • Re:So, what's so cool about it? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by usurper_ii ( 306966 ) <eyes0nly@NOSpAM.quest4.org> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @08:08AM (#10449138) Homepage
      The key words in your post are: over flat terrain.

      I work for a wireless ISP using Canopy equipment. It works excellent when you have line of sight. A company in a good location, say West Texas, could make some money. But if you happen to be in say, East Texas, where there are tons of hills and trees, it is horrible.

      Canopy is and was ahead of its time. But before this stuff really takes off, the Line of Sight issue is going to have to be done away with.

      Usurper_ii

      • Re:So, what's so cool about it? (Score:4, Informative)

        by andrews ( 12425 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @10:04AM (#10449982)
        And WiMAX won't change the LOS issues. LOS is a function of the frequency used, not the encoding or standard.

        Microwaves are LOS. Yes, different materials are transparent to RF at different frequencies, but the bottom line is that if you're above about 900 MHz you have to have (radio) LOS or you don't have a connection beyond a few tens of feet at part 15 power levels.

        To really provide true non-LOS service, you have to be down in the UHF or lower frequencies. Yet another reason to push TV into digital and free up all that inefficiently used analog TV spectrum.
        • And WiMAX won't change the LOS issues. LOS is a function of the frequency used, not the encoding or standard.

          Signal penetration is a function of the frequency. However, they are managing to engineer better communication over a set frequency within that restriction. OFMD will allow better reproduction of bounced/reflected signals. Polarization (including some of the multi-polarized antennas) will have different characteristics. Also, there are some things that could be applied to 802.11 standards that

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:56AM (#10448093)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Laptops and WiMax (Score:4, Interesting)

    by geneing ( 756949 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @01:59AM (#10448100)
    Won't we need a pretty big radio transmitter to transmit to an access point that is 10 miles away? Wouldn't it drain laptop battery in no time?

    • Re:Laptops and WiMax (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RichardK ( 459623 )
      I don't think a laptop is meant to interface directly to a remote access point in 802.16. From what I've gathered about reading this prior to this article, WiMAX was meant to be a point to point mesh of access points that connects LANs. In this case, your laptop would connect to the LAN and the LAN would broadcast via a local access point to one or more remote access points (the Metro Area Network).
      FYI, 802.16a is supposed to be capable of transfer up to 30 miles, which would definately make direct interf
    • Won't we need a pretty big radio transmitter to transmit to an access point that is 10 miles away? Wouldn't it drain laptop battery in no time?

      The transmitters for the spectrum used are limited. You'd have no more drain for 10 miles WiMAX than 10 feet 208.11b. I've had 802.11b connections with a laptop at over 10 miles, with an external antenna sticking out of my normal 802.11b 32 mW card. No more drain at 10 miles than if I was next to it (whether the antenna was plugged in or unplugged). WiMAX would

  • Think about the big picture! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:00AM (#10448106)
    When I first heard of the concept of a wireless internet connection, I thought it would be cool to set up a network between my friends. Unfortunately, HAM packet radio required a license, and 802.11 doesn't have enough range. But this finally does.

    So you're thinking, "what's the point?" The point is that it would be completely free of government and commercial control. Kind of like Freenet, but with better performance.

    But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that with the right hardware and enough people, it could spread beyond my circle of friends and eventually replace the wired internet! It would be what the internet should have been -- completely decentralized and in control of the people.

    Now, I realize that WiMax at 10 miles and not that much bandwith won't be completely adequate, but at least it's a start.

  • 10 Miles?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by prabha ( 538549 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:16AM (#10448171)
    Wardriving is history now.
    Imagine the potentials of hacking in to systems by just sitting inside your room - welcome to Airdriving.


    On the other hand, this standard will be very useful for new countries(eg: India) trying to play big in the broadband scenario, since it needs very less infrastucture(no need to laying cable's).
    The WLAN cards will become cheaper once the taiwanese starts to clone.
    • Airdriving??

      You just described NotDriving. In most smaller towns, a 10 mile radius would give access to virtually every hotspot. Just sit in your apartment in the middle of town. You don't need any locomotion anymore!

      I see even fatter computer geeks coming...
    • This is more suited to low population densities. You're sharing bandwidth between the users for a certain zone, so the more users, the less bandwidth. OTOH, when you run line, you can mitigate this problem, and scale easier.

      The two are really complementary. It allows service providers to provide internet service to people in low or high population density areas at costs that may well be comparable (expensive line, but a new customer every 100 feet vs. expensive transceiver with new customers for 10 mile
  • This may not sound like wonderful news to those countries with a comprehensive telecommunications infrastructure, such as the USA, Asia and parts of Europe, but for countries with smaller infrastructures, it's great news.

    South Africa, where I live, has a 'first world' infrastructure for the majority of uses, but for broadband internet, we simply don't cut it yet. Broadband is priced at a premium, with your average 512k ADSL connection 3 times the cost of developed countries and capped at 3gig a month.

    Recently, we saw the introduction of Sentech Mywireless, using technology from IPWireless - the UMTS Standard. They had some major teething problems initially, but seem to be stabalising thier operations after loosing a lot of customers due to poor service implementation (read: underestimated the demand)

    Later this year, a competitor, iBurst, who are already conducting tests, will roll out thier service with an official opening in the first quarter of 2005 - they currently run the Lotto network in South Africa. They'll be using IntelliCell technology from ArrayComm.

    And finally, our wonderfull national telecom company (Telkom), who still hold the monopoly despite deregulation, will be introducing WiMax technology to South Africa in 2005 in partnership with Intel.

    For a country starved of broadband options for years, wireless technology has become "the holy grail" of broadband for South Africans.

  • 10 miles? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @02:44AM (#10448268) Homepage Journal
    Let see, thats 16.09344 kilometers. I'll never remember that. Strike one up for the imperial system.

  • Geeks can make money from this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moanads ( 613115 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @03:18AM (#10448361)
    As many people are sure to point out, there's the possibility of using WiMAX for VoIP but that's too blas'e. What would be interesting is providing a mobile like user experience using VoIP+WiMAX, thereby challenging the commercial wireless carriers (read guys with big $$). But before we get to that we need to note that for VoIP (sent over any wireless medium) to rival a cellular voice offering, a user really has to be mobile and should be able to carry a small piece of equipment a la a mobile phone to be able to access the network. With VoIP, using say Wi-Fi, the user is expected to lug around at least a laptop and if she doesn't have one, she's got to be tied to the PC at home. If a truly mobile, VoIP service could be provided over something like WiMAX which uses free spectrum, just imagine the savings that could be made by whoever's providing the service.

    Coming back to WiMAX, there is better scope to channel VoIP traffic (along with user mobility) over WiMAX than over WiFi for several reasons, bandwidth being only one of them. For any kind of wireless telephony to be taken seriously, the handoff problem needs to be solved in a clean way. The commercial cellular offerings have no issues in handling handoffs and in providing true mobile service over large geographical areas. With Wi-Fi's range being much shorter than that of WiMAX, providing wireless telephony with handoffs over Wi-Fi for even a medium sized city will mean that the entire region be covered by hundreds (if not thousands) of access points. This complicates both the RF network planning as well as managing of the core network (the backend) which actually handles and routes the calls/handoffs. With WiMAX's larger range, the complexity of these problems gets reduced.

    So how does geek community make money out of this ?

    1. Try to make a portable WiMAX device which can handle VoIP on the lines of a mobile phone. This is not as difficult as it sounds. The VoIP protocols have been ported to embedded devices before. All this device would need are a WiMAX chip, VoIP protocols, some DSP to handle digitized voice and a minimal user intrface (at least to start with).

    2. Get the core network to handle multiple WiMAX access points, do handoffs, route calls etc. This is also not too difficult. There's free software for things distributed call handling, fault management etc, some of it even from telecom companies like Ericsson.

    3. Get taken seriously. This is probably going to be the biggest challenge (Sigh !) and I don't know how the average geek can do that :-)

    4. This is the step we all love - Profit !!!

    Using WiMAX to run Skype etc over it isn't that great. If someone could go to the next level and use the range + bandwidth of WiMAX to actually provide a cellular like mobile service, then there's scope for making a lot of money.

    Sorry for the long post.
    • I like the idea that canuck had a few articles back. You have a very large amount of Tivo / broadcat hosted content that you serve up to the subscribers for a monthly fee.

      This will resolve the problem of having to buy so much bandwidth from the local bells.

      Steven V
  • Someone needs to start tracking how often boingboing and engadget.com links get picked up by Slashdot...

  • It Will Change the Fight for Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @07:13AM (#10448969) Homepage Journal
    In cities, WiMax will enable cellular and wireless companies bypass Telco's through urban mesh networks. And with it's 40Km range it's possible to begin reaching out to the last mile crowd in a way that has not been possible until now.

    IMO the first cellular company that can roll out large scale mesh networks in tower dense urban areas letting them not pay several thousand dollars a month per tower will have a huge economic advantage over their competitors.
    • Actually, implementing WiMAX may not be as hard as some people think.

      See all those cellular phone antenna arrays all over the USA? WiMAX antenna setups could piggyback on these antenna arrays and that will effectively reach the vast majority of the US population, including all the major metropolitan areas. Why do I think the first company that will roll out WiMAX nationally will be Verizon Wireless?
  • I'm still not convinced all these rf waves bouncing around aren't dangerous. I bought an airport card for my powerbook months ago but have yet to install it, I guess all those stories about living near radio towers got to me.

  • It's already here (Score:2, Informative)

    by Alkonaut ( 604183 )
    Funny, I just read an article in the local newspaper about it being tested here in full scale.

    The article is in swedish but basically it says the system has been running for about 3 weeks now in 3 small villages which are too small and too remote to get the fiber which is used in the other villages around here.

    http://norran.se/sektion_c.php?id=402667&avdelning _1=102&avdelning_2=0#/ [norran.se]

    The project is a cooperation between the local power company, intel and others.

  • Why doesn't anyone tell the truth about wireless? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GuyFawkes ( 729054 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @09:55AM (#10449882) Homepage Journal

    For example, just last night on the machine I am typing this on, a dell latitude c840 connected via 802.11b, I thought "I'll copy over the 3 svcd images for man on fire, and watch it later in bed"

    start the process abd ooh, 72 minutes to go...

    FUCK

    plug the RJ45 in and it is done in a couple of minutes.

    So the truth?
    Wireless is OK for web browsing, email, and maybe copying the odd few megabytes, but everything else on the LAN, including the fileserver which is the whole point of a LAN for many people, is limited to cable modem speeds AT BEST.

    This was with only ONE active wireless client using my local AP.

    You can't increase the bandwidth (significantly) without increasing the frequency significantly, and you lose loads of range when you do that, so you need to up the power significantly, and that is the achilles heel. POWER.

    My missus just bought a new mobile phone, as a proportion of volume it is mainly battery, the only significant power consumer inside is the transmit circuit, it will last days on standby, but a couple of hours of talk time and zap.

    Laptops proportionally speaking (this includes PDA's etc) must have a much smaller battery, and they also have a bunch of power hungry internal devices (screen, hard disk, cpu, etc) of which the wireless card is just one.

    There just ISN'T the spare electrical power to run a fast wireless transmitter to spare, not for any useful period of time.

    The ONLY way to get the power to spare is to run it off the mains, then you don't have a portable device, then you might as well just pick up the RJ45, it is one hell of a lot more secure and orders of magnitude faster.
    (gigabit 802.11 anyone?)

    And yet all I see and hear is wireless being touted as the emperors new clothes, you gotta have this or your life will be meaningless, it will make everything so easy for you, blah blah blah.

    You know the ONLY real application for wireless in the real world that actually causes it to be used?

    I'm typing this on a laptop with ONE cable, the mains power cable, running in to it, as it happens it is a "pull it and it will fall out" not a "pull it and either the cable plug or socket will break" type connection, that and the fact that 2 wires will always tangle themselves no matter what you do, makes it worth using.

    UNTIL I want to transfer a gig or two across the network, then I pick up the RJ45.

    My contention is this, the more "professional" you are (as opposed to an amateur who uses a PC for home use only, for maybe a couple of hours a day) then the MORE likely you are to want to transfer lots of files, the less use wireless becomes.

    I use my laptop at home, as I am now, and "at work" when it functions as a portable personalised computer and mobile hard disk storage system, where I will use it for everything from temporary file backup of clients computer while I do X to clients computer, through network diagnostic tool, to repository of wads of useful files (eg XPsp2 et al) that I might want, to the other benefits of a mobile personal workstation, the "oh, while you're here, I don't suppose you could take a look at" to which the answer is yes because I have my tools in the form of my laptop, to the bottom line which is while you are sat there waiting for some time depemndent process to complete, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can just go online and check your email and poke slashdot.

    In those scenarios listed above, you the only use I have for a network card?

    To see if they have a wireless network up.

    For actually DOING anything it is too slow by orders of magnitude and too insecure by entire paradigms.

    my 2c anyway.

    • 802.11g (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AGTiny ( 104967 )
      It's time to upgrade to 11g. You should get up to 20mbit of real-world performance with 11g compared to the 3-5 from 11b.
  • There is a very simple way to tell if this technology will succede ....

    If I can make the thing in my grage, or maybe even FAB it from a third party, out of commodity parts without signing a bunch of cross licensing agreements, and without halving to worry about a bunch of patents and lawsuits - then it will take off. Otherwise it is BS.

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