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."

Comments

Lag

[The Slashdotted]

For services like Vonage, thy name is lag.

Great way to meet wireless peers?

[number]

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?

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Great way to meet wireless peers?

[geekee]

That makes no sense. The tower you communicate with in WiMAX has a large pipe to get the multiple data streams between the internet and the WiMAX subscribers. A grass roots network using this technology would violate FCC regulations since the broadcast range is on the order of a kilometer. There would be too much interference between networks without a entral tower to control things.

Think, people :)

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[FirstTimeCaller]

Well if I didn't know better, I'd think that Mr. McCaw got his idea from a Robert X. Cringely 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?

[rebelcool]

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.

[TechyImmigrant]

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

Re:Hmmm, Nice Article.

[TechyImmigrant]

>Ok, seeing as you wrote it, explain to those who might be too lazy to RTFA, why 802.16 is better than 802.11[a|b|g].

It's not better; it's different.

5 mile radius cells = metro area service = MAN = 802.16 = lower bps/unit_area
100m radius cells = local area service = LAN = 802.11 = higher bps/unit_area

Why work so hard at layer 2?

[jonbrewer]

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?

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:WiMax the next iridium?

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

This is NOT WiMax

[sargon]

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.

Mobile-Fi vs. WiMax citywide POP's

[dre23]

http://www.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.

Re:Mobile-Fi vs. WiMax citywide POP's

[Wesley Felter]

The IEEE hasn't even started writing the 802.20 spec, so Nextel can't be using 802.20.

In New Zealand..

[Segway Ninja]

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)

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

[Brandybuck]

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.

Not really wireless

[iamacat]

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.

Way Ahead of Him..

[dethb0y]

These Guys 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.