Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card

krispy78 writes "If you're looking forward to the day your laptop has WiMax built in and can access wireless broadband as easily as WiFi, you're not alone. But the 802.16e mobile WiMax standard is yet to be finalized on paper, and we'll be lucky to see it the first products this side of 2007. In Australia, a wireless PCMCIA card has been released that comes close to the "WiMax ideal". It appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card (no heinous login clients to run) but can pick up wide-area wireless broadband signals. The network that runs the cards ("Navini Ripwave") is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too."

Comments

Ireland has had this for a while

[donutface]

Ireland had this for a while, and a lot of people arent happy with the service, hopefully the aussies will do a better job. If your interested check out www.irishbroadband.ie, they also sell "ripwave" modems.

Re:Ireland has had this for a while

[REBloomfield]

My bad, I was looking at ripwave. Breeze seems better. There is another success story in the UK: http://skylink.telabria.com/

Re:Ireland has had this for a while

[GekkePrutser]

Exactly! I just sent my modem back, glad to get rid of it.

Problems I had with it were:

• VERY bad latency (variable from 200 to 2000 ms
• Some days it dropped out every minute for at least 20 seconds
• Throughput on busy days was below 2kbyte/s even though it was supposed to be a 512/128 connection.

Basically it was totally not useable for SSH and Voice-Over-IP (what I wanted to use it for). Also no good for gaming. Downloading was only possible on 'good' days.

And yes, I wasn't very close to the transmitter but some of my colleagues who had the service too had line-of-sight within 200 metres from the transmitter and their service was just as bad.

It was also bad for them on the same days, we even used to text each other when it was fast again so we could all start a download quickly before it would drop again.

I'm glad I switched to cable!

That's some range!

[intmainvoid]

So this card is being released in Australia... but the network is apparently being rolled out in USA and other countries too.

That thing must really have an amazing range!

Yeah cool.

[Spit]

I'm using a desktop rabbit unit right now, just plug your ethernet in and your on. No phone line, no ADSL bullshit, no headache when moving.

Also good for test when at a client site. Wireless broadband is the greatest!

Great Things About Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Unwired (www.unwired.com.au) unleashes this card.
2) John Howard knows how to take care of the muzzie extremists before they strike.
3) We will phase out analog TV before the USA.
4) Topless beaches.
5) 3G phone systems. How's that UTMS going you AT&T/Cingular tards?
6) Topless beaches.
7) It's far from America and even further from England.
8) Car accidents are called "smashes"
9) Drunk driving is called "drink driving"

If you live anywhere else, WAYSA?

Re:Great Things About Australia

[narkotix]

Hold on...the only reason why 3g phone systems are being picked up is because of the rates being offered by 1 company alone. If it was up to our national carrier and our no 2 carrier, prices would be ridicously high. In Australia, the govt hasnt had the balls and or the intelligence to see that there is obvious pricefixing between the top 3 mobile phone carriers. Its only through hutchison's actions where marginally better pricing schemes and call rates have been introduced. Now as for wireless internet, i realistically only know of 1 company in australia that offers REASONABLE pricing on wireless services (but unfortunately they are fixed position setups utilising 802.11 and a CPE). The rest dont have really good pricing in terms of data usage compared to other countries.

Re:Great Things About Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, the English and the Americans are pretty happy about Number 7 too.

Lack of info amidst marketing barrage

[lightyear4]

This device works across a wide range, from 2-6ghz. WiMax, being part of the 802.16 spec, can hop all around that range.

So then, I have question for the better informed (considering that any real information on Navini's site is very effectively obscured under a deluge of marketing babble). Does this device support the accessing of 802.11 networks as well? The article summary seem to infer it: [the card] appears to Windows like a regular WiFi card... Also, (from TFA) the card's hardware includes a range of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips. Does this mean it COULD support 802.11 with a change of firmware? I imagine this functionality would be welcomed by many.

Re:Lack of info amidst marketing barrage

[REBloomfield]

Providing it supports the 802.16 spec as it currently stands, it will allow the integration of 802.11 networks, and the support already exists at the MAC layer...

Another DoCoMo ?

[Gopal.V]

Somehow I have this feeling that this is giving birth to yet another proprietary standard - ala NTT DoCoMo . Something that works only locally, but works very well in those local conditions.

And how well could it work on an open platform - like GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. I use two laptops on and off, borrowed from office. They run FreeBSD or RHEL (and are re-imaged on return). I'm still wondering whether I should get a wireless WAN card for India.

Re:Australian Angle

[FinestLittleSpace]

You aussies have computers?!

For those who want wireless broadband now

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

For those of us who want wireless broadband today, Sprint and Verzion both offer 1x EV-DO (about 512k, 200-300ms latency) in the US for about $60. There aren't any bandwidth caps, but you probably get cut off if you download 80GB.

Re:Australian Angle

[Anonymous Coward]

You aussies have computers?!

Yeah, but we run into problems, because the endianness switches once you are south of the equator.

Re:Australian Angle

[Chuck Chunder]

Hyped up the Australian angle? It mentioned the word "Australia" once as the place the card was available.

Maybe someday Australians won't suffer from cultural cringe and feel the need to wince whenever their country is mentioned in public.....

Got it in the UK too

[frinkacheese]

NOW Broadband www.now.com have a similar service in the UK but it's not PCMCIA yet. They use IP Wireless www.ipwireless.com which is a 3g (but for data only) type system and whom according to their website have a PCMCIA card version so maybe NOW will have PCMCIA soon too. But for now, only in London.

Re:Australian Angle

[DeafByBeheading]

(My deepest apologies, but I can't pass up the opportunity)

I think the submission only makes such a big deal out of it because it must have been really tough to develop this while fighting off dingos and kangaroos and crocodiles and throwing boomerangs around and playing didgeridoos.

Range?

[wondercool]

What is the range of this product? When I think WiMax I think 15 miles or so. Nowhere is there any mention of how far you can be away of the antenna.

If the range is the same as iBurst I don't see much improvement. Only pricing will make a difference.

Obligatory Windows Sledge

[denebola]

FTFA

What's particularly impressive about Unwired's card over all other solutions is that it doesn't need any godawful proprietary software clients to log in to the network.

Except Windows.