Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan Plans Mobile WiMax Network Rollout
OneInEveryCrowd writes "Pakistan is apparently ready to move ahead of the USA in the deployment of a mobile wireless network." From the article: "The deployment is a milestone in the spread of WiMax, a superfast wireless technology that has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second. The 802.16-2004 standard, which is used in fixed WiMax networks, is being skipped in favor of a large-scale introduction of 802.16e, which was only recently agreed upon by the WiMax Forum. 'We made the decision 18 months ago to jump over (802.16-2004) and go straight to 802.16e,' Paul Sergeant, Motorola's marketing director for Motowi4, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday. 'We've been working on it for a while, which is how we're able to ship so soon after agreement.'"
Osama Bin Laden can finally now upgrade to higher quality video for his latest release.
30 miles? Now they don't even need a presence on the ground, unless the antennas are very directional.
Hopefully this new wireless technology will help them crack the 50% literacy milestone. I'm sure the 4% of the population with internet access will really appreaciate it, though.
p0wn3d, man. Fucking p0wn3d.
"ready to move ahead of the USA"
We get it already, 30% of high school kids drop out, our President has an IQ of 60, and smart kids are beaten in the streets, what the hell do you expect?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
While 802.16e is mainly a mobile technology, it also supports "Fixed" access and mesh networking, which means that signals can be relayed from one access point to another instead of needing to hardwire every connection.
This should help implementation and penetration of the region by reducing the overall amount of infrastructure required.
Alcatel is teaming up with the Government of India to set up a WiMax development center in the South Indian city of Chennai and the products developed there will be marketed worldwide. It appears that parts of Asia prefer to rollout wireless data networks as opposed to wireline ones, probably due to the fact that it is easier to deploy wireless networks. With Europe going ahead with the adoption of UMTS and HSDPA, it looks like wireless data networks are going to become pretty ubiquitous in many parts of the world. I wonder what new applications we will see once the pipe to the phone/wireless device gets much bigger than what it is today.
It's the distance, man. WAY too many places in the US have no broadband at all with cable/wires/fiber and wifi is too short a range and trees and hills just muck it up.. WiMax is about the only way I'll get broadband, even then it will be iffy, and there are millions and millions more people in the same boat. the US is not just the top major urban areas afrter all and even a lot of suburban areas have little to no choice in broadband. If some companies get wimax out there, they WILL sell it. All these people still on dialup will go to it if it works and it is at least a reasonable cost. As it is now I pop for a phone line just to get net access, I don't *need* the land line phone, my cell works fine for phone calls, so wimax would maybe be cheaper than dialup!
Parent says: "..cheap wireless broadband access for the masses is GREAT!"
True, but I rtfa and I don't recall anything about pricing. I suspect that the masses will not benefit anytime soon.
All five Pakistani internet users are joyous.
For a coverage range of 30 miles (You)
has a range of up to 30 miles (TFA)
Reality: There are PTP applications that can hit 30 miles. Users will never be on a point to point link as it would take one AP per subscriber. For mobile applications, you are looking at a range of about two miles with six access points creating a 360 degree cluster. Assuming we get half of the theoretical 75 megabits per second, we have ~35 Mb/s per AP and 225 Mb/s per cluster.
Sometimes my cable connection could get slow in my house, with my other roomates using it, and thats an 8 Mbps connection, wired.
First, I would like to remind you that it is highly unlikely that you have an 8Mbps connection. It is more likely that your connection maxes out at 8Mbps and is best effort. It is also likely that you are maxing out your upload queue which is making your connection appear slow. Lets compare your connection to our theoretical connection above.
Comcast or other cable provider.
Up to 1000 subscribers per node with 100 Mbps per node.
(This is limited by Comcasts backhaul. Bandwidth on the coax is shared)
Theoretical WiMax deployment:
Up to 1536 (6X256) Subscribers per node with 225 Mbps per node
(Most likely limited to less by the backhaul. Bandwidth per AP is shared)
(It is unlikely that they will pull this many subs in a 15 sq mile node.
The government is expanding internet access in an attempt to maintain Pakistan's top rank amongst nations that search Google for "sex".
http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex&ctab=1&sa=N
Unfortunately, Britain's industry snoozed all through the ultra-Conservative Thatcher years and now has very little industry to speak of. Steel - all gone. Coal - all gone. Engineering - damn near all gone, even the mighty BAe Systems only has a tiny site on the Clyde these days. Computers - well, in Scotland we have a fairly healthy games industry in Dundee I suppose.
It all went wrong on the Conservative's watch. The US might do well to learn from that.