McCaw's Wireless ISP Begins Trial Run This Summer

prostoalex writes "Wireless legend and billionaire Craig McCaw is moving into broadband wireless business with his new company. ClearWire will launch the service this summer in Jacksonville, FL and St Cloud, MN. The offerings will include 512 kbps, 786 kbps and 1.5 Mbps plans. Pricing is not revealed yet, but Business Week cites industry insiders claiming it's going to be in $40-50 range. ClearWire will rely on WiMAX (802.16) technology."

Lag

For services like Vonage, thy name is lag.

Great way to meet wireless peers?

I guess I'm missing a problem here, but for every transmitter this guy has there will be (hopefully) more than one person that will be subscribed to it.

If more than one person can access the transmitter, then those multiple clients could just as easily talk to each other, should they take the time to work out a private wireless network for everyone to work on.

If the company had a forum where users could post their area codes, it would be a great way to meet and then privately organise a self-contained network.

Re:Great way to meet wireless peers?

802.16 is a highly asymmetric protocol. To SSs (SS = Subcriber Station) cannot talk together directly. They communicate with a BS (Base Station).

There is a mesh version in the standard, but it is incomplete and insecure.

Think, people :)

There is a huge, and I mean HUGE, demand (as of yet, vastly unrealized) for wireless broadband anywhere you walk, at a reasonable price. I work for a realty MLS, and there are a good number of listing agents (500+ at this MLS, I would say, out of 17,000ish total) that use their PDA's to access the listing database online via wireless at places like Starbucks & Barnes & Noble, because it saves a ton of driving time. This is but one example....personally, I'd love to go to the beach and play online games with a great view in front of me :)

McCaw reads Cringely?

Well if I didn't know better, I'd think that Mr. McCaw got his idea from a Robert X. Cringely [slashdot.org] column. Or maybe it's just Business Week's choice of calling it a disruptive technology.

Too bad he didn't get all the details right. As far as I can tell, it certainly would be disruptive to my wallet. At 40-50 dollars/month this is obviously not aimed at your average consumer. I do a lot of commuting by ferry and would love to be able to spend some of that time online, but I'm not about to double my monthly ISP expenses to do so.

So this appears to be aimed primarily at business users... but that makes me wonder why the choice of Jacksonville and St Cloud as test cities? Is there some high-tech corridors in these cities that I don't know about?

I'd love wireless access everywhere, but it seems like Cringely has the more feasible solution.

Re:McCaw reads Cringely?

cable broadband these days costs about $44.95 (in austin, for the full 3 mbps service)... so $40-50 is a really good price for a brand new service.

Hmmm, Nice Article.

Hey! I like that Wimax article thats linked to. It's kind of familiar. Oh, that's it. I wrote it. Duh.

3G for breakfast

considering that the price for buying 3G bandwidth financially crippled [infosyncworld.com] many Telco's, wifi with VOIP [fcc.gov]could be a good way to deliver on the promise of high bandwidth phone technologies.

Why work so hard at layer 2?

I still haven't figured out why people think L2 switching for wireless is so sexy, especially for fixed wireless installs such as this new McCaw deal.

kid in 32 Oak Road and kid in 35 Oak Road are going to tie up a lot more network resources sharing DivX movies than they would with a mesh-routed layer 3 network, 'cause in WiMax the IP stuff isn't getting routed until it hits the backhaul point.

WiMax

subscriber 1 --(802.16)--> cell site --(802.16)--> cell site --(DMR)--> POP (now do the routing) --(DMR)--> cell site --(802.16)--> cell site --(802.16)--> subscriber 2

WiFi Mesh

subscriber 1 --(802.11)--> subscriber 2

Granted this is the case on WiMax gear I've researched. I wish it'd die a quick, painless death, but I'm afraid it's going to be more like ATM - a great idea, but not worth the costs.

Re:Why work so hard at layer 2?

The 802.16 standard standard stack terminates at one of
A) An ATM convergence sublayer
B) An IP Packet convergence sublayer
C) An 802.3 Packet convergence sublayer
D) An 802.1Q CS - Ignore, this one is braindead

So there is no compulsion to spit L2 user traffic out of the BS.

I have seen a variety of implementations, from the IP routing being right in the base station, next to the radio, through to L2 traffic being routed over a closed IP network back to an aggregation point elsewhere in the network and varieties that lay somewhere in between.

SS1 -- 802.16 BS -- SS2 is feasible and real.

There is nothing in 802.16 that demands you work hard at L2. Although some people clearly think there is a reason to try, hence 802.1AB provider bridging.

This is NOT WiMax

Once again the media get it wrong. ClearWire is NOT using WiMax. There is no WiMax gear available which uses the U.S. spectrum, and there won't be such gear for another (probably) another 18 months.

What McCaw is doing is using the equipment from NexNet (which he also purchased) to make everything work. NexNet builds MMDS (Multichannel Multipoint Distribution System) equipment. Transitioning that equipment to WiMax may not be too difficult, but, again, there is no WiMax equipment currently on the market in the U.S.

Interesting Concept

This seems to be one of those pilot ideas that won't exactly pan out. While the WiMax Point to Multipoint (P2MP) system is conceptually interesting, the question that remains is whether or not it can be successful on a large scale. It is my personal opinion that this first venture will likely not be successful, but only because it is so new and innovative. Look for more of these large-scale wifi networks to spring up all over the place in the near future.

Mobile-Fi vs. WiMax citywide POP's

http://www.nextelbroadband.com/ [nextelbroadband.com] is using Mobile-Fi (IEEE 802.20). This technology is superior to WiMax in many ways. First of all, Mobile-Fi actually provides mobility today, while 802.16e will probably never provide realisitic mobility. And Mobile-Fi is very low-latency when compared to WiMax, WiFi, and 3G/3.5G/4G networks.

The primary benefit of WiMax is in the architecture. It lends itself to be very flexible. The person who mentioned it as a replacement for LMDS/MMDS and other wireless technologies is correct. The people making comparisons to ATM and Iridium are mostly incorrect.

If WiMax components become cheap, mass-marketed, and ubiquitous -- that is a good thing for everyone. Since Intel, Alcatel, and Siemens are behind the WiMax movement, there stands a good chance of this. Nokia got out of the WiMax alliance, so maybe they know something that the others do not (and maybe it's Mobile-Fi or 4G).

The WiMax POP architecture is where the true power is. Being able to mix/match licensed and unlicensed spectrum via antennas, while using the same "Access Point" electronic components for cost reasons makes complete sense. A WISP could easily build a survivable backhaul wireless network across a city, while providing the best-effort CPE/customer networks a few miles here and there on the same device.

In New Zealand..

Wireless internet plans such as this are already in place. I'm not sure what technology they use, but they do have most of Auckland covered (entire CBD, most residential).

It is in the $40-$50 USD range (About $70 NZ, $120 for 2mbit - Pretty good when you consider 256kbit ADSL costs you about $70 per month)

WIreless?

McCaw's WIreless ISP Begins Trial Run This Summer
Wireless Networking | Posted by timothy on Saturday June 05, @08:23PM

Ask Slashdot: Is Caps Lock Dead?
Hardware | Posted by timothy on Saturday June 05, @07:21PM

Caps lock is dead...no- wait, someone accidently left it stuck on when writing their headline! No, that was just the shift key, damn...

(If this makes no sense at all the editors have probably fixed the extra capital letter there)

(If this makes sense but I should have RFTA because it's actually called McCaw's WIreless ISP, then that's a stupid name and should be derided accordingly)

One step at a time.,,

Here's an article stating Intel had planned to intruduce WiMAX 802.16d chips right around this time:
http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5144887.html? tag=nl

I really don't think people understand the as yet unknown implications of a MAN wireless network you can connect to ANYTIME, ANYWHERE (in a given area). In addition to the technolgies P2P capabilties, I think we really have no idea how this technology will change things 10 years down the road. It's just like cellular phones, once the technolgy matures and is standardized and available anywhere, we're going to start seeing the real benifits of it. We're going to start to see everything we own apart of the internet.

Ever heard of rioplex?

Rioplex wireless broadband [rioplexwireless.com] (which I'm assuming is basically the same thing) is already available where I live. They also claim to have the largest coverage in the US. I know people who have it, because it would cost them thousands of dollars to get a cable line to their house, even if they live 100 yards from a cable connection. Yeah, it might be more expensive than cable, but with this type of thing, you can get a PCMCIA card with the modem, and use it everywhere there's coverage. I think it's a step in the right direction, but like most new technologies, it's going to cost a premium.

Not really wireless

Customer premise equipment consists of a book-sized indoor transceiver unit that consumers merely plug into power outlets and the Ethernet jacks of their LANs or PCs.

So basically the receiver is stationary and tied to at least one wire - the power line. If you already have cable at home, there is little point to this service. If you don't, then of course it's cool. But it should be still called "reduced wiring" rather than wireless.

Now, give me a notebook card that can connect to this service anywhere in a metropolitan area, and we are talking about something really useful.

WiMAX's Killer App.

I think people are missing the relative importance of WiMax. Using their private spectrum and numerous tower locations the cell companies will cut the cord with the landline circuits. This will end one of the biggest problematic causes of dropped calls and poor voice quality in the industry. Also the cell networks will become super redundant as they will be configured as one mesh network. And with the advent of phones such as one in development by Motorola that uses WiFi to expand it's range in areas of poor reception coverage will improve by leaps and bounds since it's much more efficient to expand a in building WiFi netwrok than installing a microcell into the building.

I live in St Cloud, MN

We're a small town of 68,000. We already have one wireless ISP, 2 cable companys, 2 phone companys offering dsl, and a university which gives free internet to students. Compitition is great! I currently pay about $40 a month for 1.5 mbps cable. With a second WISP in town I'll be in Heavn. w00t

too expensive

If we really want to roll out universal broadband coverage, we need it to be sub-15$/month. Think about it: 40$/month is almost 500$/year. Is your standard low income family even going to consider it when they can get dial-up for maybe 10$/month?

Oh well, I'm sure someone will figure out how to provide really cheap broadband/wireless service sooner or later. Taking the monopolistic local copper providers out of the loop will certainly improve things. I'm guessing we will see "economy/low margin" wireless broadband service at 5$-10$/month in maybe 5 or 6 years since competition in the wireless broadband service provider market seems to finally be heating up. Maybe a commercial provider like netzero will even do it for free by encapsulating wireless service in ads.

This is not new news.

JSV/Comesurfthe.net has been doing this (802.x wireless internet delivery to comm and resi customers) for years. What's news about it?

go figure

This dude showed up one day here in St. Cloud (as i live here, and happen to work for radio stations with towers) asking me how tall my towers were, how much per ft, etc. This dude wanted the top of my 1000' tower in the middle of nowhere so he could hop from a water tower in blaine minnesota, to avon where the tower lives, then hop to my other 500ft tower in st cloud.... Well, do the math and a simple topo map will tell you this dude has NO clue. hopping 5.8Ghz over 90 miles is just... well dumb, and won't work. Wonder if he's just gonna get a satellite data connection at the tower sites. St. Cloud is not exactly an Internet connection point for anything.

If only it weren't another albatross

I worked for XO Communications (Nextlink), another Craig McCaw company, during the LMDS push. That is the push that broke the company. They tried to implement LMDS before the equipment was ready and without a complete understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the technology.

I don't think WiMAX will be much different. Much like BPL it is touted as the solution to providing wireless in rural areas. In each case the infrastructure required to implement a Base/Subscriber architecture using fixed infrastructure cannot produce profitable operation within the served area of each fixed base station. The simple mathematics of subscriber density versus cost of infrastructure doesn't work.

The only implementation that makes economic sense for rural areas are multi-carrier (multiband) mesh implementations. It is only by making every node a router that such a network can succeed in the world of economics.

When the Internet was originally built the concept was of symetrical bandwidth. Each new node extended the Internet by another step. For serving rural areas the same logic prevails. We have a historical model of how to build a network. Now lets figure out how to do it right instead of another albatross of Base/Subscriber, or rather more accurately -- Producer/Consumer.

Way Ahead of Him..

These Guys [epiinternet.com] in East Palestine, Ohio (of all places) are way ahead of him. thier using Motorola Canopy gear as i recollect.

Since i'm in thier coverage area (as is my mother) i had them come and check us out. the results were pretty interesting. They installed something that looked like the reciever part of a Dish Network dish (that rounded-square thing on the front), which they then pointed line-of-sight at the tower.

This wasn't flawless as stuff in the way can easily block it; i imagine a house would totally block it, and the system they were using at the time was having trouble with trees. I was also suprised to discover they were "hopping" the signal all over the place - big long 15 mile jumps from tower to tower.

The throughput at mothers (i coudln't get it due to the trees) is around 50k/s most of the time, spiking way up to around 100k or higher at slack times. There isn't any appreciable lag that i can tell, and it seems a steady throughput.

I have my doubts as to how well it'll scale, though; i'm not sure it could really handle serious traffic. As well, the area i live in (replete with hills and valleys) isn't very good for this sort of technology - cellphones won't even work in some areas, let alone this.

The cost is a smidge over 40$ a month if i'm remembering right, with around 80$ for installation. Considering there are literally no other highbandwidth options in a good part of the serving area, this is actually not unreasonable. I can't see it working in an area with cable/dsl though.

Portland has both 802.16 and 802.11b WISPs, today

Verilan [verilan.com] is offering 802.11b and 802.16, side by side, in Portland for wireless connectivity to those without DSL or cable modems. Price is still a little spendy, but give them volume and they can drop to match McCaw's prices, I'll bet.

$40/mo for VOIP plus broadband?

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1607131,00.as p

"Service is to be offered at 512K bps, 786K bps or 1.5M bps, and will bundle local and long-distance VOIP service alongside broadband Internet data access."

$40/mo for VOIP plus broadband?

Sell your ILEC stock today!

Re:WiMax the next iridium?

WiMax is to 802.16 as the Wifi Alliance is to 802.11. It determines interoperability criteria for 802.16 systems.

802.16 is an effort to standardize an existing market in MMDS and LMDS systems. There are many manufacturers that have been making and selling this stuff for a long time. What is new is that there is a standardized MMDS/LMDS protocol coming out of the IEEE.

WiMax can serve eiher big carriers, small carriers or private users. The standard is flexible in this respect. It can work in licensed or unlicensed spectrum. It can be fixed or mobile. It can be point to point or point to multipoint.

This looks nothing in the slightest like Iridium.

Re:just curious...

and they're all obviously faked... AC's never sound like that...

Re: cheap broadband+P2P=The Neoliberalism Killer?

well your post certainly isn't a troll, though whether it's ontopic or not is a bit more debatable. It seems to me this is more due a shortcoming of the moderation system than anything else. If there was only a -1 Stupid option we wouldn't have this problem.

Once again, leftist posts are modded down!

The parent post I am replying to was modded as flamebait, but it is not! You judge; here it is:

Municipal Wi-Fi network is the way to go.
Municipal Wi-Fi network is the way to go. (Score:0, Flamebait)
by zymano (581466) on Saturday June 05, @08:49PM (#9347513)
Not private companies that want to use OUR airwaves to GOUGE people that don't have a choice.

Have any of you ever wondered why the government has not been more active in fiber to the curb or support a public Wi-fi network? It's because the present president is owned by $pecial $$ interest (oil companies included,haliburton) .

The government is the only entity that can get costs down for LARGE projects such as this and keep prices down.

Kerry campaign people need to get more knowledgable on wireless broadband and include it with their fiber to the curb plans.

Broadband by government is the only way we will ever get the 100 megabit lines to our homes and businesses.

It sickens me to see private companies doing what the government should be doing . But the government can't since Bush is firmly against any government projects unless it is to make himself and cronies $$$$$.

Re:Munical Wi-Fi network is the way to go.

Perhaps if you didn't YELL occasionally like you have TOURETTE'S syndrome, you would be more credible, or at least easier to read.

You must read slashdot way too much. Internet access does not win elections.

Here's the part that gets me modded down: You, zymano, are a genuine idiot. That's not an invitation to mod me down, just a prediction.
/political opinion

Re:Munical Wi-Fi network is the way to go.

It's because the present president is owned by $pecial $$ interest

You make a good example of why irrational hatred makes one irrational. The President has nothing to do with municipal networks, municipalities do. So bitch to your municipalities instead. Duh!

You might have an argument if Bush had vetoed a TVA-style bill that would have provided such an initiative, but it didn't happen.

In other words, your kitten getting run over by a car isn't Bush's fault.

Re:Munical Wi-Fi network is the way to go.

"Productive work"...you mean like investing?

Re:cheap broadband + P2P = The Neoliberalism Kille

'neoliberalism' and 'neoconservativism' are closer than you realize. 'neoliberalism' has nothing to do with a renaissance of the political left. it's a particular economic doctrine, not necessarily a political one.