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.

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.

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.

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.

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.