Is The Wireless Internet Not Ready For Prime Time?

RabidMonkey asks: "As an employee at a high speed wireless ISP which has gone into receivership (Maxlink communications Inc), I've begun to wonder: Is there actually a big enough market for Wireless Internet access? After reading that Look Communications is cutting 300 of its staff and looking for a buyer, I'm a little skeptical. I'm wondering if there are any other big wireless service providers that are doing well out there, and if they are, what are they doing differently? What are the different technologies in use? Why do these ventures seem to be failing?" With the majority of users still connecting to the internet via phone lines and cable modems and DSL finally catching on, is it too soon to expect wireless systems to be successful in anything more than niche markets?

"I think that the technology and the need are there for this, but why does it fail? I know that our rates are very competitive, installation is the industry standard (free) and our customer service is good. And the same goes for Look. Two companies with good technology that failed. Is it just not the right time?"

Comments

Wireless will remain a niche, but a growing one.

[Doc Hopper]

I have been using a Lucent WaveLAN 802.11 adapter hooked up to a 1 watt amplifier and 24db antenna to hook up to the Internet through my local ISP for the last year.
The good:
1. Wireless is easy to install. If you are close enough to your nearest access point, just pop in a pcmcia card with a pigtail, install drivers, and you're done.
2. Wireless is extremely reliable. The link itself basically never goes down. The only times I've had a bad signal to noise ratio are when I screwed up my internal wiring to my antenna and during very high winds.
3. Wireless is very fast. At up to 11Mb/sec, it's one of the fastest access methods available in the price range.
4. Wireless is cheap for the ISP. Initial setup cost for your ISP is lower than some comparable technologies (DSL particularly). They can hook up 30 customers to each access point using the same frequency-hopping spectrum, and add cheap additional hardware for each new group of 30 customers.
5. Wireless is cross-platform. Many drivers are free software.

The bad:
1. Wireless can be very complicated to troubleshoot. It's easy for the customer to screw up their link; when something flakes out, it is often tough to tell whether it is you or your provider.
2. Wireless is very expensive for the consumer. While setup costs for people very close to an access node is relatively small (less than $250 for the card and pigtail), costs range up to $1000 for people further away.
3. Wireless can be very slow. 802.11 is designed to slow the link as the signal to noise ratio drops. You may connect as slowly as 64Kb/sec.
4. Wireless can be tough to install. Setting up my link involved several hours of attic and drill time.
5. Wireless competes in common frequency ranges, and has the usual problems with radio transmissions. As the so-called "medical band" (2.4GHz) becomes more cluttered, you're going to notice higher packet loss and latency, conflicts with cordless phones, etc. Also, hills, trees, and bridges can all interfere with your line-of-sight to your ISP's antenna.
6. Wireless has trouble scaling over distance. Your ISP will need a repeater every mile or three in order to broaden their service. DSL and cable have other, similar costs, such as upgrading local loops.

My take? I believe wireless is a great technology, and will continue to enjoy a strong and growing *large* niche market. I know I love mine : )

Matt Barnson

Reasons why Wireless Internet is troublesome

[Thax]

The first thing that needs to be clarified for this article is that it is talking about non-WAP, non airport wireless. What it is talking about is direct competition wireless to DSL and cable, something in the order of anywhere from 256k/s to over 11 mbps/sec for laptop/desktop/corporate lan. After looking into this, there were a couple reasons we found that were not favorable. 1) Line of sight. Most of the high speed wireless internet equipment on the market today uses the ISM unlicensed 2.4 Ghz range and spread spectrum. The biggest drawback to using such a high frequency is that it is pretty much line of sight. If you can't see the transmitter, you're likely to not be able to get service. Water is also another factor, trees in the way? The water in them obscures the signal. Snow on the dish? Plan on an outage. These two points come after many hours of reading mailing lists and from word of mouth of another ISP in the area that is now doing wireless and experiencing daily outages measured in hours. 2) Location We are in the midwest. Its flat out here and to get any height on a antenna you have to erect and maintain huge expensive towers. There have been several wireless sucess stories, most of them coming from mountainous areas where the ISP places the transmitter on a mountain and serves people in the valley. This work very well. However in the midwest, without a lot of height, you find that there are shadows in any major metropolitan area (regions where the signal just will not reach due to obstruction) Those are the reasons why we decided against a wireless implementation at this time. Hopefully solutions will present themselves in the future that address these issues.