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Nextel Jumps into Wide-Area Wireless Broadband

Posted by simoniker on from the lots-of-bits dept.

Atryn writes "Nextel Communications appears to be entering the world of wireless wide-area broadband technology. A new site showed up today describing their market level trial of Flash OFDM technology. Using a PCMCIA Type II modem card in your laptop or a tethered modem, you can have speeds of 1.5 Mbps (bursting to 3 Mbps) downstream and 375 Kbps (bursting to 750 Kbps) upstream as described here. They also appear to be seeking seeking trial participants, who, when selected, will get the technology free of charge! Of course, you need to be in North Carolina."

7 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing like a company CEO with wireless laptop by t0qer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How often do I see the salespeople and Exec crying because they're laptops hard drive fell apart after being dropped because the careless twits were swinging their shiny new $2k+ around now that they were "freed from wires"

    Wan wireless would be cool if the people that actually had an application for it either got approval or they could justify wireless's cost, but it usually ends up in the hands of marketdroids or MBA's.

    Basically i'm asking, what will the price on this be?

  2. WiMax anyone by Lord+Prox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I may be off base here but I think these guys are not that bright and mabey should read /. more often. WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these celluar data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems. Blowing the $$$ on this type of system now is just a waste.

    Should we tell em or sit back and watch the flameout (packing hot dogs and marshmellows read:sell short)

    1. Re:WiMax anyone by Lord+Prox · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do you think that the people who are in charge of rolling this out are aware of WiMax? Were they 6 months ago? This effort has probably been in the works for about 6 months (that's a SWAG based on what I can remember about the abandoned data wireless rollout at UUNet/WCOM in 2000).

      Well I dunno about Nextel but I have been folling it for well over a year. One would think that a big corp would look at things like this before jumping into something like this. What with the engineers and anaylists and the miserable 3G failures of there compeditors.

    2. Re:WiMax anyone by stripes · · Score: 2, Insightful
      WiMax products are a year off and that technology is going displace all of these cellular data/Internet systems much like WiFi wiped out all of the wireless LAN systems.

      Maybe, but there are some differences. WiMax "head ends" are not intended to become cheap, so it will take them longer to get cheap then 802.11 did. 802.11 also crushed all of the other wireless stuff in the same frequency band, but some of the 900Mhz ones remain in use because 900Mhz will go through more trees and stuff then 2.4Ghz. WiMax will be in (I think) the 5Ghz area, so killing proprietary 5Ghz wireless equipment is a good guess, but eliminating stuff in the PCS spectrum (about 2Ghz) may not be as likely.

      Also the power ranges on WiMax might be similar to other "non-licensed" bands (about 100 milliW) while NexTel can use about 3W at the base station and 300milliW at the mobile unit.

      The existing cell companies also already have rooftop and antenna rights in a bunch of places, so WiMax competitors will have some trouble getting the same sort of coverage areas quickly (this assumes NetTel's stuff can use the same antennas that their voice stuff uses, which I think is the case with VZ's EV-DO).

      If I were starting a wireless data company and didn't own a cell company then WiMax would look like the right bet (assuming I can wait that long, otherwise maybe 802.11), at least if I'm not looking at customers with lots of trees and stuff in their way (which might make me go looking at 900Mhz solutions). If I were starting a wireless data company that was part of a cell company I would look at stuff that lets me reuse the existing cell stuff, which ain't WiMax.

      The thing I would be doing that VZ and NexTel aren't (at least not yet) is focusing on areas that don't have DSL or cable available. You can sell to those people at prices higher then DSL/cable without even taking the mobility into account, then bring prices down as you move into areas that cable/DSL is already in.

  3. Re:Ahem... aren't they the last to join the party? by Jack+Porter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I just don't understand how the last big name to get in the game is considered news. Was their hyped numbers are bigger than the other hyped numbers? Or was it just general ignorance about the market.

    How about reading the link in the article. Flash OFDM is specifically designed for wireless broadband as opposed to 2.5G and 3G data solutions available from the telcos you mentioned.

  4. Re:Windows only! by EricWright · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I, too, am in the RTP area, and saw the same thing. Luckily, we have a very heterogeneous home network... one iBook, one XP laptop and one linux server. I completed the survey, intending to use it with the XP laptop if selected. I noticed that the form factors are pcmcia, external USB and, presumably, internal (PCI?) NIC.

    Nothing from a hardware standpoint prohibits using with another system, but since mac laptops don't have pcmcia cards, and I really want to test this out away from home, the XP laptop is really the only sensible choice.

    Based on what I know about hardware rollouts, they just figure that a) most people use windows, b) they need to support users, and c) it's easiest to train techs to support one system, so they pick the most prevalent one. Now, if the full service is rolled out with lack of support for non-MS operating systems, I'd be somewhat more upset...

  5. Re:Windows only! by Tarwn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This requirement is probably for a piece of client software to track usage or something like that. When I first signed up with RoadRunner (I haven't checked lately so it may have changed) one of the requirements was Windows 95/98/etc/etc, they didn't offically support anything else. What I later realized was that the only reason they required windows was so they could try and force you to install their little software app that would call home on a regular basis and was a real pain in the butt to kill (you could quit but it would still pop up messages when "updates" were available).

    I wouldn't be surprised if Nextel had some sort of mini-app they expect their trial people to install as part of the trial, probably to track bandwidth usage, ping times, etc.

    --
    Whee signature.