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WiMax: When, Not If
Omega1045 writes "An article over at SiliconValley.com got me excited about the new WiMax Technology that over 140 companies and organizations are pushing. The article is a little low on the technical side of things, but discusses a possible 10-mile range for the wireless technology. Many see this as a nice solution for the "last mile" problem. Similar technologies have seen a lot of hype before, but with the likes of Intel, Dell, British Telecom, AT&T and bunch of the Ma Bells, I think one can be forgiven for getting a little excited. If you are still skeptical, you can download the 'Complete Guide to WiMax.'"
It is amazing what happens when the FCC de-regulates part of the spectrum.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Ten miles?!?! goodbye, boring lectures, Hello slacking off at school!
-ND
Oh. Right. It's encrypted... Right? What if they're able to break that encryption in 5-10 years? They'll still have all my data...
No thanks....
What's with the Wikipedia link? Do people not know what the word "excited" means?
#redirect [[Wiktionary:excited]]
{{vfd}}
Makes sense. Maybe the submitter is being psychic about this WiMax thing and he's saying we'll shortly find out how unfeasible WiMax really is.
...but in reality, this is just another stopgap until homes, curbs, etc. have better last-mile wiring capabilities (i.e. from SLIC huts and such).
Wireless remains a shared medium, of generally limited bandwidth...therefore, limited usefulness. This is just because it's a unguided medium. 10 miles sounds nice, but this is going to require specialized equipment because the signal losses between 10 GHz and 66 GHz are pretty significant over any distance, and will probably require line-of-sight as current wireless networks do.
Definitely a hyped up technology, I say.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Perhaps you meant Baby Bells... or maybe there was some sort of polygamy.
How about that idea? Wouldn't that be a great competition for expensive mobile phone plans?
Though I do honestly hope WiMax succeeds, there's absolutely no gaurantee that they will be able to get the consumers to buy these things like hotcakes. Quite franky 802.11b at 11MBit/s is good enough to carry (US anyways) consumer broadband which averages around 1.5Mbit down 384kbit up. Until broadband reaches the speeds where a consumers WiFi link is what's slowing them down, that's when we'll get the upgrades. But in the meantime, unless people suddenly have a real use for the increased speed/distance, I can't see think taking off so quickly.
The thing about this is the power requirements to broadcast must be enormous!
:(
I have a usb wifi from Linksys and it overheats and stops working after about 2 hours of bittorrent.
I'm currently looking for a pocketPc capable of running Skype with good wifi (b is alright) but of course WiMax is theoretically better. If they get this technology right then there will be no more cell phones, ever.
I don't think I'm going to wait for wimax though... Being constantly interupted doesn't sound like my cup of tea so 30ft isn't the end of the world.
Hope WiMax doesn't overheat things though that really sucks.
Also my English teacher (read tree hugger) mentioned that you get a headache when you are in one building since it got a cell antena on top. It is noticeable.
Maybe this isn't the safest technology to base future societies around
Wimax has been in the planning stages for a couple of years now. I can't believe it's just now hitting the radar screen..
In any case the specified range is 30km (a lot more than 10 mi), and over rugged terrain. Perfect for rural, or forested areas (where I live).
BTW, Intel is one of the biggest names pushing the standard.
Since there is no broadband or cable service here, I have been bugging the local providers to put a base station on my property in exchange for service. We'll see what happens.
jesus, and you call yerself a slashdotter. It was on wikipedia like hours ago. ...kids noadays.. their gettin rusty i say....
-ND
Broadband WarDriving $ WAN parties! I welcome our BIG hot-spot providing overlords!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Not to brag, as I have no idea how fast WiMax professes to be, but:
I've already got a functional network, where endpoints are all about 10 miles away from a central access point. It runs 5.7GHz Motorola Canopy, and shoots several megabits per second in any direction over flat terrain.
No funky amps, no wacky antennas, no broken FCC regs, and no lossy coaxial feedlines. Just a clear line of sight and some out-of-the-box Canopy gear. It works well enough that I don't particularly care that it is proprietary.
What advantage does WiMax offer? (And remember, over here in the real world, tens-of-GHz frequencies are usually not advantageous.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Oh great.... more cancer to blast on everyone.
------
insert sig here,here, and here
I smell hype.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Won't we need a pretty big radio transmitter to transmit to an access point that is 10 miles away? Wouldn't it drain laptop battery in no time?
When I first heard of the concept of a wireless internet connection, I thought it would be cool to set up a network between my friends. Unfortunately, HAM packet radio required a license, and 802.11 doesn't have enough range. But this finally does.
So you're thinking, "what's the point?" The point is that it would be completely free of government and commercial control. Kind of like Freenet, but with better performance.
But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that with the right hardware and enough people, it could spread beyond my circle of friends and eventually replace the wired internet! It would be what the internet should have been -- completely decentralized and in control of the people.
Now, I realize that WiMax at 10 miles and not that much bandwith won't be completely adequate, but at least it's a start.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Wardriving is history now.
Imagine the potentials of hacking in to systems by just sitting inside your room - welcome to Airdriving.
On the other hand, this standard will be very useful for new countries(eg: India) trying to play big in the broadband scenario, since it needs very less infrastucture(no need to laying cable's).
The WLAN cards will become cheaper once the taiwanese starts to clone.
10 Miles isn't anything special. We use normal 802.11b and reach about 10 miles now, we just put a flat panel antenna and a 100mw Cisco 350 / 200mw Engenius bridge / 100 mw Smartbridge bridge at the client location. Simple.
I suspect WiMAX will just cause us interference headaches, although since we can take 802.11b (what, a few hundred feet) adn stretch it to 10 miles, I wonder what we'll be able to do with WiMAX.
This may not sound like wonderful news to those countries with a comprehensive telecommunications infrastructure, such as the USA, Asia and parts of Europe, but for countries with smaller infrastructures, it's great news.
South Africa, where I live, has a 'first world' infrastructure for the majority of uses, but for broadband internet, we simply don't cut it yet. Broadband is priced at a premium, with your average 512k ADSL connection 3 times the cost of developed countries and capped at 3gig a month.
Recently, we saw the introduction of Sentech Mywireless, using technology from IPWireless - the UMTS Standard. They had some major teething problems initially, but seem to be stabalising thier operations after loosing a lot of customers due to poor service implementation (read: underestimated the demand)
Later this year, a competitor, iBurst, who are already conducting tests, will roll out thier service with an official opening in the first quarter of 2005 - they currently run the Lotto network in South Africa. They'll be using IntelliCell technology from ArrayComm.
And finally, our wonderfull national telecom company (Telkom), who still hold the monopoly despite deregulation, will be introducing WiMax technology to South Africa in 2005 in partnership with Intel.
For a country starved of broadband options for years, wireless technology has become "the holy grail" of broadband for South Africans.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Let see, thats 16.09344 kilometers. I'll never remember that. Strike one up for the imperial system.
As many people are sure to point out, there's the possibility of using WiMAX for VoIP but that's too blas'e. What would be interesting is providing a mobile like user experience using VoIP+WiMAX, thereby challenging the commercial wireless carriers (read guys with big $$). But before we get to that we need to note that for VoIP (sent over any wireless medium) to rival a cellular voice offering, a user really has to be mobile and should be able to carry a small piece of equipment a la a mobile phone to be able to access the network. With VoIP, using say Wi-Fi, the user is expected to lug around at least a laptop and if she doesn't have one, she's got to be tied to the PC at home. If a truly mobile, VoIP service could be provided over something like WiMAX which uses free spectrum, just imagine the savings that could be made by whoever's providing the service.
:-)
Coming back to WiMAX, there is better scope to channel VoIP traffic (along with user mobility) over WiMAX than over WiFi for several reasons, bandwidth being only one of them. For any kind of wireless telephony to be taken seriously, the handoff problem needs to be solved in a clean way. The commercial cellular offerings have no issues in handling handoffs and in providing true mobile service over large geographical areas. With Wi-Fi's range being much shorter than that of WiMAX, providing wireless telephony with handoffs over Wi-Fi for even a medium sized city will mean that the entire region be covered by hundreds (if not thousands) of access points. This complicates both the RF network planning as well as managing of the core network (the backend) which actually handles and routes the calls/handoffs. With WiMAX's larger range, the complexity of these problems gets reduced.
So how does geek community make money out of this ?
1. Try to make a portable WiMAX device which can handle VoIP on the lines of a mobile phone. This is not as difficult as it sounds. The VoIP protocols have been ported to embedded devices before. All this device would need are a WiMAX chip, VoIP protocols, some DSP to handle digitized voice and a minimal user intrface (at least to start with).
2. Get the core network to handle multiple WiMAX access points, do handoffs, route calls etc. This is also not too difficult. There's free software for things distributed call handling, fault management etc, some of it even from telecom companies like Ericsson.
3. Get taken seriously. This is probably going to be the biggest challenge (Sigh !) and I don't know how the average geek can do that
4. This is the step we all love - Profit !!!
Using WiMAX to run Skype etc over it isn't that great. If someone could go to the next level and use the range + bandwidth of WiMAX to actually provide a cellular like mobile service, then there's scope for making a lot of money.
Sorry for the long post.
Someone needs to start tracking how often boingboing and engadget.com links get picked up by Slashdot...
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Whole time the WiMAX has been on radar it has been advertised as backbone solution and not for "the last mile". What has changed?
Anyone know where Broadcom is in all of this? They are one of the most important, if not the most important, modern communication chip vendor today. Don't see them on the list.
A PDF can really take out a server!
suffice it to say, above is not a gmail invite
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I distinctly recall it being introduced in 2007.
And then it will still be ridiculously overpriced and probably have an insane cap.
I don't see telkom giving up it's cash cows lightly.
Also. sentech deserves no credit.
their service still sucks
In cities, WiMax will enable cellular and wireless companies bypass Telco's through urban mesh networks. And with it's 40Km range it's possible to begin reaching out to the last mile crowd in a way that has not been possible until now.
IMO the first cellular company that can roll out large scale mesh networks in tower dense urban areas letting them not pay several thousand dollars a month per tower will have a huge economic advantage over their competitors.
I'm still not convinced all these rf waves bouncing around aren't dangerous. I bought an airport card for my powerbook months ago but have yet to install it, I guess all those stories about living near radio towers got to me.
[Right now RF is putting food on my table. I'm not totally unbiased in the radiation-emitting radio/cell phone issue, however, as I lost a brother, a heavy cell phone user, to a brain tumor just this year and also work in a building with a 300 foot tower located three feet away from the back of the building...and just got my first cell phone after avoiding the darn things like the plague all of these years. -- Usurper_ii]
Jeffrey Silva wrote:
At the annual International Association of Fire Fighters, a call for a moratorium on new cell towers located on fire stations was called for until possible health effects can be examined.
Firefighters plan to seek nearly $1 million for the study, said Janet Newton, president of the EMR Policy Institute. The group is working with other firefighter advocates on the cell-tower issue. Cash-strapped cities and townships are paid by mobile-phone carriers to erect towers near fire stations, which tend to reside in densely populated areas.
Lt. Ron Cronin, who spearheaded the passage of the cell-tower measure at the IAFF convention, stated, "Some firefighters with cell towers currently located on their stations are experiencing symptoms that put our first responders at risk." "It is important to be sure we understand what effects these towers may have on the firefighters living in these stations. If the jakes in the fire house are suffering from headaches, can't respond quickly and their ability to make decisions is clouded by a sort of brain fog, then entire communities they are protecting will clearly be at risk."
RCR wireless news, August 30, 2004, p. 25
Ron Paul
that those frequencies HAVE been deregulated, they just aren't unregulated. Deregulation just means that some of the regulations/restrictions have been removed, it doesn't mean there aren't any rules at all.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
The article is in swedish but basically it says the system has been running for about 3 weeks now in 3 small villages which are too small and too remote to get the fiber which is used in the other villages around here.
http://norran.se/sektion_c.php?id=402667&avdelning _1=102&avdelning_2=0#/
The project is a cooperation between the local power company, intel and others.
as I lost a brother, a heavy cell phone user, to a brain tumor just this year...
And yet here I am brain tumor free. And the dozens of people I know who use cellphones alot. And my grandfather who was a radioman in WW2 (those radios used WATTS of power, and the antenna was right behind the head). And all my friends who operated radio jamming equipment in the gulf war (this requires 1000's of watts of power). Plus all the Hams I know who use 2 meter walkie talkies which put out up to 10 watts. So my anecdote more than cancels yours. I'm sorry about your brother though.
1 Billion Anecdotes != Data
have found that regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without.' The article continues: 'The study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters.' While 'their study did not prove a direct link between cancer and the transmitters', the FDA and the World Health Organization are urging more studies, especially of radio waves from cell phones."
Ron Paul
THis competition will force the utiiities to lower prices, uncap bandwidth and uploads, and run fiber to the door. Once that is done, a new kind of internet will emerge, and we will get a new kind of grassroots mass media, which will make the USA more like Europe.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This is an excellent article on radiation from cell phones:
You can find this article at:
http://www.alternativemedicine.com/ and search
for cell phone. The name of the article is "You
Make The Call."
-=-=-=
Studies show that people who don't think cell phones have adverse health effects need to have their heads examined.
-=-=-=-
Cell phones are not just here to stay. They have evolved into ever more versatile and powerful devices and have become indispensable to our way of life. Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?
Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless: "After a substantial amount of research, scientists and governments around the world continue to reaffirm that there is no public health threat from the use of wireless phones," says Tom Wheeler, president and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
According to numerous prominent researchers, that statement is nonsense. Henry Lai, Ph.D., is a research professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. Over the last several years he has conducted cell phone studies funded originally by the U.S. Navy and Air Force and later by the National Institutes of Health. "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."
What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."
"More research" is the mantra of all three groups - industry, government and scientists - each with their differing motives. And, in fact, more research is needed - but not to prove that cell phones do pose a health threat: That has been proven beyond any doubt. Swedish researcher Clas Tegenfeld, who is writing a book on biological effects of electromagnetic fields, says "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."
There have, in fact, been several studies that show no correlation between cell phone use and cancer. These studies were conducted by respected institutions and researchers and the results published in peer-reviewed journals. However, these were all simple statistical studies that compared the incidence of brain cancer among cell phone users to that of the general population. Typical of these studies is an oft-cited one from Sweden that was published in the July 1999 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. According to the NCI, "This study compared cellular telephone use in a group of 209 individuals who had brain tumors (the case group) with a group of 425 people without brain cancer (the control group). The study reported a statistically nonsignificant increased risk for brain tumors on the side of the head on which the cellular telephone was used. However, researchers found no overall increase in the risk for brain tumors with cellular telephone use."
Does this prove that cell phone use does not lead to increased risk of brain cancer? No. As the NCI itself points out, "Cancers that take a long time to develop would not have been detected by these studies." What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.
Lai's experiments are instructive in this regard. One of his main findings was that radiation from cell phones at levels below current
Ron Paul
1. Leukemia != brain tumor.
2. I notice you don't quote the many studies which show there is no corrolation.
3. AM radio broadcasting towers put out as much as 50,000 Watts. Cell phones are in the milliwatts. That is about a 100,000x difference in power. The frequency is radically different than cell phones
Yes, alternativemedicine.com says its so. This is not suprising.
The study reported a statistically nonsignificant increased risk for brain tumors on the side of the head on which the cellular telephone was used....
A statistically nonsignificant increase in risk exactly equivelent to no increase at all. In other words, the study shows that there is no corrolation to cell phones and the side the tumor appears on in people with tumors.
What we witnessed was that simply answering a cell phone call measurably stresses the body, immediately putting it into "fight-or-flight" mode.
Frankly, this article is rediculous.
It is possible to quote way-out-there websites which support any view. This article even tries to use a "statistically nonsignificant" corrolation to try to say that cell phones cause damage. If this is the best evidence available, I'll take my chances.
I find it hard to get excited about this system. They are using unlicensed spectrum (at least that is there focus), so there is NO protection from interference (at least in the US). Add in the catch that the operator of an unlicensed device (in the US) must cease operations if the device interferes with a licensed device.
I can't see using this technology without a licensed spectrum allocation. Right now my 802.11 link gets trashed when someone uses my cordless phone, so I don't have much confidence in the industry's ability to coperate and not produce devices that interfere with each other. If cheap chips come out to cover the frequency band, manufacturers will use them for cordless phones, wireless intercoms, baby monitors, etc.
. there used to be a sig here.....
For example, just last night on the machine I am typing this on, a dell latitude c840 connected via 802.11b, I thought "I'll copy over the 3 svcd images for man on fire, and watch it later in bed"
start the process abd ooh, 72 minutes to go...
FUCK
plug the RJ45 in and it is done in a couple of minutes.
So the truth?
Wireless is OK for web browsing, email, and maybe copying the odd few megabytes, but everything else on the LAN, including the fileserver which is the whole point of a LAN for many people, is limited to cable modem speeds AT BEST.
This was with only ONE active wireless client using my local AP.
You can't increase the bandwidth (significantly) without increasing the frequency significantly, and you lose loads of range when you do that, so you need to up the power significantly, and that is the achilles heel. POWER.
My missus just bought a new mobile phone, as a proportion of volume it is mainly battery, the only significant power consumer inside is the transmit circuit, it will last days on standby, but a couple of hours of talk time and zap.
Laptops proportionally speaking (this includes PDA's etc) must have a much smaller battery, and they also have a bunch of power hungry internal devices (screen, hard disk, cpu, etc) of which the wireless card is just one.
There just ISN'T the spare electrical power to run a fast wireless transmitter to spare, not for any useful period of time.
The ONLY way to get the power to spare is to run it off the mains, then you don't have a portable device, then you might as well just pick up the RJ45, it is one hell of a lot more secure and orders of magnitude faster.
(gigabit 802.11 anyone?)
And yet all I see and hear is wireless being touted as the emperors new clothes, you gotta have this or your life will be meaningless, it will make everything so easy for you, blah blah blah.
You know the ONLY real application for wireless in the real world that actually causes it to be used?
I'm typing this on a laptop with ONE cable, the mains power cable, running in to it, as it happens it is a "pull it and it will fall out" not a "pull it and either the cable plug or socket will break" type connection, that and the fact that 2 wires will always tangle themselves no matter what you do, makes it worth using.
UNTIL I want to transfer a gig or two across the network, then I pick up the RJ45.
My contention is this, the more "professional" you are (as opposed to an amateur who uses a PC for home use only, for maybe a couple of hours a day) then the MORE likely you are to want to transfer lots of files, the less use wireless becomes.
I use my laptop at home, as I am now, and "at work" when it functions as a portable personalised computer and mobile hard disk storage system, where I will use it for everything from temporary file backup of clients computer while I do X to clients computer, through network diagnostic tool, to repository of wads of useful files (eg XPsp2 et al) that I might want, to the other benefits of a mobile personal workstation, the "oh, while you're here, I don't suppose you could take a look at" to which the answer is yes because I have my tools in the form of my laptop, to the bottom line which is while you are sat there waiting for some time depemndent process to complete, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can just go online and check your email and poke slashdot.
In those scenarios listed above, you the only use I have for a network card?
To see if they have a wireless network up.
For actually DOING anything it is too slow by orders of magnitude and too insecure by entire paradigms.
my 2c anyway.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Netvigator (http://www.netvigator.co.uk/) have been rolling out IPWireless in the Thames Valley this year - I believe it's soon going UK-wide. Works a treat for me...
I think there is a huge advantage for WiMAX compared to WiFi: the coverage area for a WiMAX is pretty much close to line of sight, while WiFi has a very, very tiny coverage area in comparison. Also, WiMAX can cover thousands of users per antenna, far more than WiFi setups.
Given the distance and capacity advantage, is it small wonder why I personally think WiMAX is how the USA will become a large-scale user of broadband Internet access?
"WiMax will be to DSL and cable modems what cellular was to land-line phones" i guess this means we can look forward to crappy connections that drop all the time.
http://www.alvarion.com/RunTime/CorpInf_30160.asp? fuf=448&type=item
or
http://www.kdn.co.ke/
From what I can read from previous posts, the WiMAX spectrum is unlicenced correct??
In Australia, (if i recall correctly) it is licenced and has already been auctioned off to the corporate powers that be.
I would be interested in what the spectrum status is in other countries.
So much for the litte guy using it.
It's time to upgrade to 11g. You should get up to 20mbit of real-world performance with 11g compared to the 3-5 from 11b.
There is a very simple way to tell if this technology will succede ....
If I can make the thing in my grage, or maybe even FAB it from a third party, out of commodity parts without signing a bunch of cross licensing agreements, and without halving to worry about a bunch of patents and lawsuits - then it will take off. Otherwise it is BS.
I completely agree with you. I just moved and installed a 802.11b wireless network in my house. It IS useful when I want to sit upstairs on the couch and surf or in the backyard. However, I still did run a RJ-45 cable into my room because I use my other computer to backup large files and wireless just does not cut it. Although I don't notice it while using Torrent, for big file transfers over the network the good ol' cable does the job best.
You had a 400 W power supply for your 286?? Are you sure it wasn't 40? That's closer to the number of what I had on my 386
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, your 400W was definitely not being used by the processor. The 80286 processor requires 3 Watts (5 volts at 600 mA). In comparison, the pentium 4 requires about 55 watts.
You're right though, his link didn't account for decreasing power consumption. That's because he's assuming an "ideal computer" with power requirements much lower than even your 286. As the text says, the numbers given have NOTHING to do with technology, "they are the maximum that thermodynamics will allow...until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space".
A hypothetical particle that travels faster than light is a Tachyon and according to wikipedia, "some strange properties have been attributed" to them. They definitely haven't been proven, and in fact their existance would cause problems with our understanding of several things. You may have seen something related to that, or something else that "appears" to violate that limit but no one is challenging the speed of light in normal space for particles that have positive mass right now. Not to say that they won't...as you've mentioned, our understanding of how things work has been challenged and replaced with new theories many, many times, but the above link doesn't use relativity, it uses the law of thermodynamics to prove a point and, as Einstein has said, "[Thermodynamics] is the only physical theory of universal content which, within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, I am convinced will never be overthrown," and it wasn't even his theory.
Pretty much the only hope you have to violate the concepts in that link is to hope what the author suggested happens, that is a computer not made of any matter.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Hopefully they implement it correctly.
:-
;)
Bottom line - if your into online gaming, don't bother with it - latency is way too high. In relation, if you administer PC's remotely (servers and what not) - don't bother.
If you want inside info on the South African implementation that comes from the users rather than the media, hang a left to this forum
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/ - go to the forum section and then to the MyWireless part. This is what Sentech have labelled the technology.
If it works, it works brilliantly - when it doesn't, well, you'll find info on that forum link I just posted
Sentech over here royally fucked up the launch with problems from may right through to September - starting to come right now, but that may be because half thier userbase cancelled.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
There are two target applications areas for WiMAX
- Fixed point (fixed and portable) is available today in "Pre-WiMAX" forms from vendors who promise to be WiMAX compliant when the 802.16 standards are settled.
- Mobile (roughly 35 mph) available sometime between 2006-2008, depending on who's talking.
WiMAX is designed to work non-line-of-sight between 2-11 GHz (licensed and unlicensed), but the standard designers are pushing the FCC to permit use in the 800+MHz UHF TV bands. If the FCC approves, it will be a huge boost for WiMAX because 800 MHz penetrates walls better and a WiMAX transmit range can be much larger.
Several small operators are successfully (and profitably) using radios similar to WiMAX in urban areas, such as Towerstream in NYC (expanding to other cities soon), Biltmore Communications in Atlanta, airBand Communications in Dallas, and others. They sell to business users, who are willing to spend $500-$2500/month for a reliable high-bandwidth connection. They can't achieve low-cost residential rates yet.
Incidentally, wireless operators are successfully competing against wired operators because they can get an installation up and running in one day, compared with a 2-3 month wait for a baby Bell to install something. Also, when there is a network problem the wireless operators can quickly fix the problem because they own their equipment. A wired telephone company and an ISP are likely to blame each other for the problem until they can be bothered to investigate and actually fix the problem.
The major sticking point preventing WiMAX to the home is the cost of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE), which is at best arount $275 per CPE today.
Some observers believe WiMAX will be the wireless data of choice when the user is not in range of a WiFi hotspot. Others believe WiMAX has a chance of supplanting WiFi because WiMAX has support for "Quality of Service", meaning your VoIP call still sounds good even if somebody else is streaming a video.
Intel, who is betting a lot of money on WiMAX, is planning to put hybrid WiFi 802.11 / WiMAX 802.16e chips in laptops sometime in 2006. Some say 2007. Laptop use is very important, because it makes CPE look like it costs $0. As soon as CPE is cheap, service providers know they can profitably compete with cable/dsl/3G cellular.
In order for Intel to put WiMAX into laptops, they will have to reduce the power requirements. Intel has a good track record for reducing power consumption.
WalMart is rumored to be considering deploying WiMAX. This means your local WalMart would install a WiMAX base station, and sell service to the local region (around 3-5km). Unlike a normal wireless operator, WiMAX doesn't have to make money for WalMart in 12 months time. WalMart can use WiMAX as a promotional device (think coupons, ads), as well as provide a wireless movie rental service. Think this sounds silly? Carrefour in France is a grocery store chain. They are already in trials with WiMAX-like equipment for the same reasons WalMart is allegedly considering it.
I'm doing 108Mbps (39Mbps realworld). You guys are WAY behind.
As much as I like cheap broadband, why do you think that this will enable a new form of grassroots media? Alternatives to the mainstream media have existed for years (The Economist, IndyMedia, The Nation, Utne reader, I could list these forever)
In theory, each of these publications could have the ubiquity of Newsweek if the demand existed. All of these are easily accessable to everybody in the country if they so chose. There is no reason to believe that cheaper internet access will change that.
In other words, why will cheap internet access succeed, where these other publications have failed?
Perhaps the new phrase is wimaxing? Airdriving sounds more like a manuver in a hovercraft, and not quite picking up wireless signals at their location.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I do wonder how much the issue with the OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)
l a te nt_landrush/
l -f requency-division-multiplexing/
patents will delay the roll-out of WiMax.
See:
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0625wilan.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/04/wi_fi_p
OFDM is, in part, what makes WiMax work via non-line of sight (NLOS), cope with interfence, and provide high bandwidth.
See:
http://www.ofdmnews.com/
and one vendor's product here:
http://www.yenra.com/w-ofdm-wide-band-orthogona
There's a whole lot of misunderstanding about WiMax floating around! The hype is incredible. You'd think Dick Cheney himself had invented it. ;-)
Seriously, the problem is not that WiMax is not interesting technology, but that it's still just a way to use radio waves. It's no miracle. It's designed for longer range than WiFi, but that doesn't overcome licensing issues. So what it boils down to is what my summary said. The good news is that WiMax offers:
1) Unlicensed or licensed operation. Most interest worldwide, btw, is licensed, with the assumption that big rich service providers will pay their government for licenses. Especially the 3.5 GHz fixed-wireless band, which is found in most countries except the United States. Unlicensed, however, is subject to the usual power limits, so the range is necessarily very limited, unless there's a very good antenna, a very clear shot, modest speed, and nobody else causing interference.
2) 70 Mbps speed. Well, maybe, but remember that bits = power, so if you go faster, you have less range than if you go slower. WiMax lets you have a wide range of speeds, to trade off with range. Sort of like WiFi in that regard.
3) 30 mile range. Well, that's a typical number for high-power (as in licensed) microwave radio systems in the 2-10 GHz bands, if there's a clear path. WiMax can handle some "non-line-of-sight" paths, but that doesn't mean blocked by a hill or horizon, it means that there's multipath, meaning that something is reflecting the signal to the destination, and the different reflections arrive at slightly different times. There still has to be a decent-strength signal. Unlicensed range is more likely to be under a mile, depending on speed and path; in some cases more like a block or two.
So the bad news is "pick one", not pick three. Not even as good as engineering's "faster, better, cheaper, pick two".
Now wrt long-range frequencies in the USA, the FCC is rejiggering some frequencies in the 2.5 GHz range to make it more flexible for licensees who want to offer WiMax (or other data) in lieu of video. And they're talking about a 3.6 GHz unlicensed band, at least for use in rural areas away from the coasts, with more power than the existing WiFi and U-NII (5 GHz) bands. But it ain't there yet.
The firefighters could save a lot of time and money by just consulting you.
I know a large amount of people who smoke and they are all just fine. I've known smokers who lived longer than some non-smokers. And my great-grandmother, who lived to be 99 (or 100?) dipped snuff right up until the end.
Therefore, all of those studies on tobacco can't be true because I have seen the above things with my own two eyes! And the tobacco industry keeps talking about the studies that didn't show an increase in cancer among smokers, too! Why doesn't anyone mention these studies?
ltbarcly:
1 Billion Anecdotes != Data
Bob Dylan:
"Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?"
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
You gave one (1) example of what you claim is an RF induced tumor. I gave some examples of some RF induced nothings. The burden of proof is on you. There isn't any study that shows that RF can cause any damage at all at the energy levels attained by human-carried equipment. Using AM radio as an example is NOT reasonable, since AM radio towers are by far the largest RF emmiters on earth. It is 6 or 7 orders of magnitude of difference in energy levels. Even in that hokey article you posted from, chuckle chuckle, alternativemedicine.com, it quotes only a statistically insignificant corrolation.
Let me explain to you what statistically insignificant means. If you take 7 people who use cell phones and then got brain tumors, and 4 of them got tumors on the side which they held the cell phone, this does not imply that cell phones caused the tumors. It implies that you have an odd number of people in your trial, and so there has to be one more with the same side or with the opposite side. A statistically insignificant corrolation is in NO WAY better than that example. It in no way implies that there is in fact a corrolation.
Idiot.