What is the Current Status of WiMAX?

PalletBoy asks: "I live in BFE (read 'remote') Pennsylvania where BroadBand is not available in any form save satellite, which is no good for price and latency reasons (curse my MMO addiction!). My big question is: what is the -actual- current status of WiMAX technology? Different sites have me believing different things and I can't find an exact answer to the question 'When will I be able to buy a WiMAX router and cards so I can remotely receive broadband?' When will WiMAX (802.16) be solidly standardized, out, and affordable? Or is it already there?"

Comments

Reminds me of DSL

[ackthpt]

Back in the early days of DSL in the Bay Area (SFO/OAK/SJC) there was a guide in the now-defunct MicroTimes outlining about 40 vendors and what they offered. It was a bit exasperating trying to figure out which to buy into. Sounds like WiMAX is going to have a shaking out period, too.

Re:Wi-Max

[MightyMartian]

The problem with 900mhz stuff nowadays is the huge amount of noise in adjacent bands, not to mention the crap being spewed from cordless phones and the like. The non-line-of-site benefits of 900mhz band are being undone. I remember some of our equipment having major interference problems because some paging tower's transmitter went on the fritz and started spewing like nuts, and the big guys just don't give a damn. 2.4ghz is getting nearly as bad, and the higher unlicensed bands will doubtless in turn also begin to suffer.

Re:Nagging question about bandwidth

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I have a question which I haven't seen discussed when it comes to WiMAX. Is there enough radio frequency bandwidth to support more than a few dozen high-speed users per access point?

The bottom line with any wireless system is how well engineered it is.

The following techniques help a lot:

a) broadband suppliers give a 'contention ratio' somewhere between 20 and 50. In other words they assume you are only using it 1/20 to 1/50 of the time. So a single 2M radio link can handle 20-50 customers each with 2M and a 100M radio link can handle 1000-2500 people (in principle.)

b) directional antennas help a lot. So, if they stick up a mast with antennas pointing in different directions (adjacent antennas on different frequencies) then they'll get very little contention.

c) nodes that don't 'shout'; in other words if the nodes don't transmit at any more power than they absolutely need to; this minimises the distance that any interference is likely to occur at; permitting channel reuse.

d) add base stations, (particularly in conjunction with c) ) this mean that each base station can transmit and receive at lower power- this reduces the size of the coverage area, and you gain multiple times the users (since each node only uses up the bandwidth for a smaller distance).

e) use different channels (each channel has its own customers on)

f) node routing (in other words, instead of a customer sending a signal all the way to the base station, route it through another customer that is closer).

If you use all these techniques appropriately, the amount of bandwidth per user is constant, independent of the number of users, surprisingly.