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Intel Pushes 802.16a Wireless MAN Standard

Posted by michael on from the data-for-everyone dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The 802.16a standard, approved in January of this year, is a wireless metropolitan area network technology that will connect 802.11 hot spots to the Internet and provide a wireless extension to cable and DSL for last mile broadband access. It provides up to 50-kilometers of range and allows users to get broadband connectivity without needing a direct line of sight with the base station. The wireless broadband technology also provides shared data rates up to 70-Mbit/s."

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Martin Cooper on WiFi by robslimo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To clarify,

    And every one of them has got to have backhaul

    WiMAX isn't expected to be what you use to hit the 'hotspots' with your notebook. It is expected to feed the hotspots... it *is* the backhaul. Naturally it must have it's own, land-based backhaul, but that's no sweat for guys who'll be rolling this out.

    The idea of 'free' zones will largely pass when the people with the money to make wireless internet work finally get the tech and the business model worked out. Yes, I said *business*. Sure, there will be people, organizations and towns who'll foot the bill for small hotspots, but to make it work, to make it ubiquitous such that you *expect* it to work, will be require a commercial model. 802.16a is the first major technological step toward this model's feasibility.

  2. Re:By the time this arrives... by vought · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ...the CDMA carriers (SprintPCS and Verizon) will have 2Mbps 1xEVDO (TRUE 3G networks) up and active. The biggest single limiting factor to creating a wireless infrastructure is that somewhere it has to tie into fibre optics. Wireless carriers, nacent though the technology is today, have this figured out. Some xx,000 wireless radio towers all terminate at a base station connected to real telco networks.

    You know, I've been hearing this exact verbiage for four years now, and I don't believe it any more. When I worked at Metricom, Ricochet was the product that was going to be 'killed' by 3G. Luckily for 3G, Metricom's brain-dead, overspendy management and ridiculous pricing model killed the company instead. Curiously, the arrangement Intel seems to be proposing here is strikingly similar to the dual-band microcellular architecture Ricochet used/uses. Microcellular architecture has some unique strengths, as evidenced by the fact that Ricochet was the ONLY way to get data to ground zero in the days immediately following the WTC attacks.

    Now the previous poster is saying this uplink and backhaul arrangement will be obviated by 3G. You know what? Show me. Then I'll believe it. Until then, I don't think 3G will ever solve anything for anyone.

    3G sounds like great technology. But it isn't shipping, and there are LOTS of caveats. have you ever seen a technology that worked out of the box? 3G is still "months" away, and it probably won't work as advertised when it does ship, if ever. Perhaps 3G should be renamed "Duke Nukem Forever Wireless".

    I'm tired of hearing "wait until 3G". Hell, I'm tired of waiting.