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Australian WiMax Pioneer Calls It a Disaster
Anonymous Coward writes "Garth Freeman, CEO of Australia's first WiMax operator, sat down at the recent International WiMax Conference in Bangkok and unleashed a tirade about the failings of the technology, leaving an otherwise pro-WiMax audience stunned. His company, Buzz Broadband, had deployed a WiMax network over a year ago, and Freeman left no doubt about what conclusions he had drawn. He claimed that 'its non-line of sight performance was "non-existent" beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, indoor performance decayed at just 400m and that latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP, which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to shed their use of incumbent services.' We've previously discussed the beginnings of WiMax as well as recent plans for a massive network in India.
There is no technical excuse for spectrum regulation in it's current form. If wimax has faults, the cause is poor spectrum allocation. Why is it that we still have broadcast TV and AM radio? Nothing short of spectrum liberation is just or acceptable.
No calls now, I'm
For some time now I've been taking part in WIMAX trials here in Hamilton Ontario. This too was trumpeted as a glorious thing that would change the face of our city, bring us into the high tech 21st century etc.
In practice although WIMAX seems to work OK (aside from a real lag much of the time, which may just be bad server configuration by Primus Communications), My sense is that the company isn't really committed to it. I doubt that there will be a serious public roll out.
The idea seems great - a wireless Internet connection that works wherever you are. The reality seems a bit less rosy, and my guess is that a city wide wireless network will need a good level of customer support - not Primus' strong point by a long shot.
Three Squirrels
Me kangaroo hates it and me sheila left me over it. Fortunately I still have me sheep.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I can just hear it now: RUSH: "It's a Liberal conspiracy to get rid of us who tell the TRUTH!"
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
>Not all WiMAX operators are unhappy.
>
>Internode says an Airspan-supplied network is providing consistent average speeds of 6Mbps at >distances up to 30km, with CEO Simon Hackett describing the platform as "proven."
So where exactly lies the problem? Implementation?
Netx technology, please.
WIMAX isn't going to be the success that it should be because I think it was driven more by marketing than technology.
I'm going to fiddle my fingers until they have a few more disasters till they get it working. In the meantime mesh will definitely deflate the momentum WIMAX needs right now.
Your ISP, cable, phone and cell phone all charge you monopoly prices each month. A $200 car radio with a $500 install service is cheap next to that but the real cost will be more like $50 at Walmart after a real conversion to rational spectrum allocation. You will still get your daily Rush if you want it.
This will ruin Christmas for the rest of us but it's worth it. If your favorite AM DJ has any sense, they will package everything up so you can have archive copies and share them with your friends. Oh, the joy of that kind of sharing.
No calls now, I'm
Maybe someone can clear this up- does Clearwire use WiMax or not? Wikipedia didn't make it clear. My experience with them was that they didn't either have the infrastructure or the bandwidth to support their meager customer base. The thing worked just fine during the day when nobody really used it, but during busier hours you had significant lag and flow problems- however, the download rate was still good, but you can't play games with a ping of over a second.
To me, WiMax is the future version of 56k.
NLOS performance depends on a number of things, including how well the underlying technology can handle multipath and otherwise distorted signals. But the main thing is probably frequency; the higher the frequency, the worse the NLOS performance. WiMax is designed to run at many different frequencies, and the article fails to mention which one was in use.
The issues with latency and jitter, though, probably aren't as dependent on frequency.
One word it sucks and stay away. It is the worst service. I had TATA Wifi Max ( http://www.tataindicombroadband.in/ ) connection and it used to work only 10 days out of 30 days. Now I'm switched back to Wired ADSL - It just works everyday [TM]. I wrote review of their sucky service on http://www.mouthshut.com/ review site and it was taken down twice by TATA by sending them DCMA or some sort of legal threat. Just stay away from Wifi Max if you need 100% peace of mind
"latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds"
1000 milliseconds = 1 second
AM radio is still around because it is ubiquitous, cheap and it's lower frequency gives it long range. That's the technical advantage over FM which offers clearer signals and more bandwidth but shorter range. If AM radio had no advantage, no amount of regulation would save it.
Yes, you are one of those anti government nutters.
ISPs losing interest in citywide wireless coverage.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/23/1213255/
Is patience in order?
In the '90s I could not drive from Oklahoma City to Dallas and keep cellphone service during the entire trip. If I was in an area not serviced by my cellphone provider, I had to "force" roaming by turning my Motorola flipphone off and on, then wait.
AT&T saw no future for data networks and the Internet!r
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
> latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds
Say it like it is. Latency of 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds. UNACCEPTABLE. Maybe some people are more interested in bandwidth, but as for me, I'm not waiting a BILLION nanoseconds for my data.
WiMax typically operates at 2.3GHz or 2.5GHz while Bluetooth operates at around 2.4GHz. Both use time-slot based scheduling but the WiMax scheme has not been designed to be compatible with Blueooth's. This apparently causes real difficulties in designing WiMax-based mobile phones that can be used with Bluetooth headsets.
Also known as "one second".
Reminds me of the Futurama episode with the giant fish dragging them underwater:
"7 hundred feet.....8 hundred....9 hundred....10 hundred.....One thousand feet!"
Marketing of new technologies is incredibly potent. Case in point: Bluetooth 2.0. To this day there are those asking "when is suchinsuch going to suppot Bluetooth 2.0? I want to blahblah wirelessly," even though everyone who has actually fallen for it will post its failure to do anything even remotely similar to what it promised, i.e. wireless audio fidelity. But with a slick logo and media outlets jumping to reiterate the claims as though proven, the new tech is always seen as the only good solution even before its released.
The Admin and the Engineer
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is nothing modest about broadcast power requirements and antennas. They are some of the tallest structures built by man and they require hundreds of kilowatts. They also require special technical knowledge to operate. Now compare that to the cost and ubiquity of wifi. All radio could be like that.
These issues and more are well covered in the link I provided and it's author knows what he's talking about.
No calls now, I'm
AT&T came to the same conclusion after their tests of WiMax. It doesn't live up to the promise.
We tested it at the company I work for and data rates were horrible after 1 mile.
I think its a bridge technology....hopefully to something better.
I chose as my ISP in Mexico City E-go, co-owned by Alestra, the Mexican AT&T subsidiary. It started offering WiMax connection in 2003 in limited areas of Mexico City (I understand nowadays it covers most of the Central, Western and Southern parts), before even WiMax was standardized. Clients get a NextNet RSU unit, which is basically a network bridge. :) E-go owns 20MHz of spectrum, which allows it to give a theoretical maximum of 70Mbps to a given area. If many too people were to subscribe, each client would have much less effectibe bandwidth alloted.
The latency complaints you state are simply not true - I get consistent ping response times of 100ms in average (with minimum response times of around 50ms) to hosts in Mexico City, 200ms to hosts in the USA. Yes, this is about 80ms higher than wired equivalents - but it's not so much of a killer. What I do get, of course, is way higher packet loss - About 5% when things are optimal, and it sometimes gets up to 50%. But yes, I'm located at a relatively poor reception area, at one of the lower-income (this means, no incentive to place many antennas nearby) neighbourhoods in the South of the city, where the mostly flat valley where most of the city is located begins to become quite hilly. The RSU unit does not provide any means (for the client) for monitoring connection, to help choose the best possible location. It only has five LEDs (and no, they are not blue, just an unfashionable old green. Bummer.) indicating signal strength, and I always get one or two of them. I have seen signal quality significantly better when at a five-leds connection.
Prices and speed are more or less in-par with Mexico's near-monopoly TelMex; I'm paying about US$40 for a nominal 1Mbps/128Kbps connection (512K guaranteed, whatever that means). The upstream data flow _is_ shaped to 128k, but the downstream speed is not - when the network smiles on me, I get up to 2Mbps. It is not common, though.
I understand E-go (back then called I-go, don't ask me why) was praised as the world-first massive WiMax deployment - Even before the standard was finalized. There are several aspects of the installed network that show clearly the gear is pre-standard (i.e. extreme sensibility to position changes - If I move my RSU over two centimeters, it has to resynchronize with the antenna. This process takes around two seconds, so no big deal).
To me, clearly, the reason it hasn't got more popular is because it is owned by a relatively small company, and has not had the muscle to stand in front of Telmex's publicity machine.
Of course, we benefit more than DSL users from having a low client density
I mean, this just seems like something I'd like to work, yeah? Ultimately though, I'm just pleased that the guy in charge of making it actually came out and said his service blows instead of trying to spin or hide it. Refreshing honesty from the corporate world.
No doubt this story is true, In Australia the common names for Wireless Internet, which imply certain speeds or bandwidths are meaningless.
... They had no response when I reminded them that Sydney is twice the size and and denser than Vancouver, and pointed out the undersea cables and geosynchronous communication satellites they have full access to.
I recently had a vacation in eastern Australia. Sydney and the surrounding suburbs, Cairns, Port Douglas.
Like Canada, there are wireless connections everywhere, most of them locked properly by their owners.
But, here in Vancouver, you never have to hunt for too long to find an open connection you can check your email with. I found that in the above locations finding any open wireless connection sufficient for just email was nearly impossible.
I subscribe to Boingo for $8 per month, giving me access to wireless hotspots around the world. Even the Boingo hotspots were nearly useless in Sydney. If I stood in just the right place at the Imax theatre in Darling Harbour, or just the right spot at Circular Quay I could connect.
Now, If I was willing to pay the brutal local wireless fees there would have been all kinds of hotspots available from Telstra, the local phone company, for $8 to $12 PER HOUR or $30 PER DAY!!! Here in Vancouver most hotels come with free internet but they all charge for it in Australia.
I complained to Telstra about their rediculous rates, they told me that Australia is an island, with low population densities
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Wireless anything is a big pile of steaming shit. And now the experts agree.
Telstra is a bunch of evil bastards. This is news how? I've never even set foot on Australian soil and I know how bad their phone company is, that's how bad they are.
There's nothing magical about WiMax. Other frequency ranges, other protocols, that's about it.
The only interesting thing about it is that it's not operated by traditional telcos.
But remember, what traditional telcos sell is not telecom, they're SELLING UBIQUITOUS telecom.
An untraditional telco would have to sell at a nonzero price ubiquitous. If they sell at zero price (or truly flat rate), a smartass will monopolize all access and resell it at real market price (what people are truly willing to pay). If the service is only sporadically available, no one will want to pay for it, or they would be better off setting up a fix line connection at the only place it works. If they comply to the two conditions, they are definitely traditional telcos.
In the long run, WiMax is bad for the consumer. As I explained above, the business model behind WiMax can only be the "traditional telco model". But now we have two technologies with incompatible end user hardware, incompatible operator hardware. Nokia and Alcatel Lucent will sell less copies of their products to operators, thus the price will rise. Nokia and Alcatel Lucent will ask for higher fees from the opco, guess who will pay the bill. Nokia and Motorola will sell less copies of their products to end users, guess who will pay for the relatively higher cost.
Furthermore, with WiMax vs 3G, there are now not one, but two markets for mobile data and voice. Barrier to jump from one to the other market is nonzero for the consumers. Each of the individual markets is also smaller, hence less competitive.
Fuck WiMax
we import our assholes now days...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I listen to AM radio all the time (it propagates well, I can listen to stations from all over the nation at night when I listen, and there is a dearth of talk radio on the FM bands and you are limited to close by stations) and most of the shows have phone numbers you can call in and comment. Go right ahead, challenge the views of guests or hosts you don't agree with, with reasons, etc. That is what it is all about. If you feel even stronger about the subject or subjects, get your own show on some radio station or do netcasting. So far, the RIAA hasn't screwed over net "talk" radio, just anything with music.
I know I would have had my own station (low power, all I could afford) long ago if the FCC and the big broadcasters weren't such dicks about it, and that includes those NPR cretins who lobbied hard to restrict any competition. I can see it from the major broadcasters, but that was sure a bummer to find out they were against opening up low power. I don't want to go pirate radio because the HAMS throw hissy fits over it (even if you aren't interfering anyplace and have a clean signal) and nark on people, and netcasting takes a decent broadband connection, which I can't get here. Someday though...although reading that WiMax thread was a bummer, kept hoping that might be the magic to get broadband out into the sticks, and so far, cellphone broadband ain't it either. So...I type on teh internets.
The article is about whether Wi-Max - a technology - is worth a shit.
The entire first page is taken up by a flame war over free speech because the "first poster" made a comment about spectrum regulation (which might or might not have been relevant to the article as well.)
I suggest Slashdot pare its readers back to those who can establish some connection with technology, rather than just Microsoft shills and Republicans.
This might also ease the "my network was Slashdotted" problem.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's to match the arseholes-a-plenty we currently have in surplus.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2007/10/02/2048411.htm
.
Ya, I looked into any sort of small commercial AM station, egads, you need to be a millionaire to even think about it. Then I looked at commercial shortwave (thinking a SSB rig might work for cheap), SOL again, just the monthly fees to the FCC rule that out, let alone operating expenses. More or less, millionaires and corporations own the airwaves, there are *no* "peoples airwaves" to use, the system is rigged.
If it's not the broad spectrum de-regulators, it will the digital spectrum land grab speculators. I was talking to a friend who is a broadcast TV engineer and some European countries have switched analogue TV off entirely. Some number of people with 1991 TV sets just couldn't switch to digital or if they could afford it, couldn't grok the new user interface. A significant percentage of elderly folk just said "fsck it" and gave up on TV entirely.
Over here in Australia, our FM band is being switched off to make space for digital allocations. The "big picture" will be far more important than individual circumstance. Presumably sets will drop in price as the user base grows.
The open spectrum people are the least of your problems, the digital spectrum people have a lot more cash and backing to take over your AM spectrum.
Too true. But maybe not in the way you expect...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The point is that those things should be cheap or free but are expensive. Everyone would be better served by the internet than by broadcast. Imagine if your $20 cell phone had no provider charges because is just works out of the box or that your sub $100 tablet gave you the best public library remote classroom and entertainment available. That is what Open Spectrum promises and it's what the telco/publishing incumbents are scared to death of.
No calls now, I'm
Tesltra??? You tried talking sense into Telstra! Ha ha ha...
Its like talking a pig into voluntarily dying to become Bacon.
Not even parliment could talk or order Telstra into doing anything the people wanted.
Telstra is a scum bag. Period.
They make COmcast plus Verizon look like saints.
They even had a funny nickname: Telescum.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
http://www.rfcomm.harris.com/products/embeddable-security/SecNet54_11_Brochure.pdf
I would have to disagree that wireless in Australia is generally awful. I am currently using 3g(HSPDA) from one of the local providers, and routinely see 200 kilobytes per second, sometimes bursting to 400 kilobytes/sec. A 2 gigabyte plan from my provider is approx $25 per month. (Okay, so I cannot effectively pirate movies on this ... but for nearly everything else it is sufficient!)
... A big, convoluted subject ...
This service seems to work just about everywhere in the Melbourne metropolitan area.
Might just be Telstra that are the problem. (As pointed out, Telstra management is now been subverted to arse-holes from the USA, who are attempting to suck as much money from the public without upgrading any network infrastructure.) Testra has had a bad image for some time, and its only getting worse! EG: They are currently being investigated for GPS tracking of their external plant maintenance people.)
IMHO, the privatisation of Telstra has not been a good thing for this country! Telstra used to support an R&D arm, directly employed over 90000 people (many in technical capacities). This is down to 25000 now (Few of these are tech positions.) The privatisation of Telstra appears in many ways to be the same as privatisation in Russia. (Mainly a few dishonest people gain a benefit, while the greater bulk of the population can all go and get stuffed!) The most curious thing about Telstra's privatisation was the money that was made. Sale of 1/4 of the network made more money (approx population at the time was 20e6) than the privatisation of some german telecomunications network, serving 54e6.
Here we have AT&T's Pahrump, NV WiMAX Test rollout... A year ago it was an average of 300 Kbytes/second down AND 128 KBytes / Second upload speed. Not great, better than anything else in town, except the DSL downtown. Given we are about 4 miles past where DSL would be acceptable, we are happy with WiMAX as it was first introduced. - SPOILER - Month by month, as new customers were added, our speed dropped over 1 year to 2/3 of it's former glory... The brand of WiMAX in our town is rated by the manufacturer for a total throughput of 71MB/s,,, that is per WiMAX tower, (per unit installed there) which is 1 for each of the 2 towers in our town... AT&T admits they have 200 customers per tower... 71MB/s divided by 200 customers = .355MB/s (This number must include failed packets and other overhead related to wireless traffic)
If we went by our average inbound speed: 350 customers all sharing equally would be 202KB/s averaged...
There is now noticeable latency, but not much..
So, equipment used, and node loading seem to be the big issues here.
Late at night, when the town's children are sleeping, speeds return to last year's all night...
Can you say Peer to Peer? (Bit torrents or otherwise)
While the rolled out speed and the eventual speeds are reasonable, they could be much better with less loading per WiMAX node.
If I compared this to a 54Mbit link to a cable modem (Comcast in this case, and outside of our area) it is extremely slow, but better than anything else here...
While on vacation in Washington State, I had opportunity to borrow some of the neighbor's unused bandwidth... with my laptop some 800-900 feet away... I could easily pull 650KB/s...
Before returning from vacation I let them know their wireless router was unsecured... and of course they had had no idea.
The point here being I was not even noticed as but a drop in the bucket of their 8+Mbit/s connection... I hardly ever used the maximum I COULD draw off them, until the night before I was to return...
____
Next subject: MESH
802.11S where S stands for sucks...
Mesh sounds good, until a few users start using Bit Torrent clients...
Anyone saying they can be stopped is wrong... here is why: encrypted protocols and multiple and non-standard ports..
If a way is found to stop or slow torrents either legit torrent users will sue over the blockage or a new protocol will be adopted that hides it's contents better..
Only the sheer number of connections gives it away.
Would you be willing to stand against lawsuits for blocking a pay service, for legal music or movie delivery?
I doubt it...
I do not doubt that someone will eventually be sued in just such a case... I pity the one doing the blocking.
If I were to use one of the legal online movie services, Torrent or not, and my movie I had paid for were interrupted or made unwatchable, you can bet I would have a lawyer in a heartbeat.
Selling a 8Mbit/s cable connection and then telling the customer they can't use it to it's fullest is not going to be lokked at as a fair business practice...
Providers would be better off renaming their service according to the continuous speed they will tolerate, not the maximum.
Call it 2Mbit cable, and provide more for short bursts and a reasonable amount of movie downloads, or start a legal site whitelist that is free to join upon showing that the content is legal for download...
There is no invasion of privacy here, if the sites are not logged, but allowed free access by the provider's cable or other high speed customers...
Of course this is /. so there isn't much chance of my words getting anywhere...
Enough said for now...
"I find it annoying when people try to point out the hypocrisy of "Slashdotters" without citing individual people who are hypocritical that way. "
That's not enough for slashdotters. All or nothing is their motto.
"We are individuals, and despite the apparent groupthink, we can actually disagree. I don't agree with you that all Slashdotters are the same, and I don't agree with GP that fundie talk shows should actually be censored. Oh, and I don't agree with pretty much anything fundie talk shows have to say, but I will defend to my death their right to say it."
The definition of groupthink doesn't mean that a 100% of a group agree. Just that a majority do. Statistics and psychology would make that apparent, assuming slashdot doesn't benefit as a collective from pretending that there's no problem.
He claimed ... latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP, which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to shed their use of incumbent
Sounds like they didn't configure it right, on one or both of two issues.
First: WiMAX has a frame rate that is an exact multiple of the 8000 frames/second rate of the telephone networks' digital carriers (and A/D converters). While this was obviously intended to allow it to carry telephone TDM signals and their associated timing (which normally isn't an issue for IP transport), WiMAX has its own, unrelated, timing issues that mandate the base stations be synchronized - to each other and preferably to a telephony network clock or a GPS-derived clock.
The base stations assign timeslots to each remote. They measure the propagation characteristics and (depending on the sort of base station) may adjust signal strengths, modulation rates, and/or antenna aim for the associated timeslot to obtain good communication, and may pick a timeslot that is currently "quiet" on the antenna / antenna-aim appropriate for the remote in question.
The problem is that multiple subscriber stations between two base stations (perhaps not adjacent ones) that are reusing a channel may both be "audible" to both base stations - perhaps due to using non-directinal antennas, perhaps due to reflections. If the base stations assign overlapping timeslots to their peered subscriber stations they will interfere. So the base stations try to assign their subscriber stations "quiet" slots - i.e. slots that don't already have interference from another nearby base station's remotes.
Now that's just fine if the base stations' clocks are synchronized. The timeslots hold a constant relationship to each other and a quiet slot stays quiet. But if the base stations are not synchronized their relative framing drifts. So one base station's subscriber's slot may drift into that of another base station's subscriber, resulting in a drop of the link quality. Then the base stations readjust the configuration - perhaps moving the subscriber stations to new slots. But these do the same thing. Over and over. Result: Links keep flaking out and control traffic is massive.
With the base stations synchronized and the subscriber stations carrying VoIP or other fixed-rate stream traffic, the stations will tend to hold on to quiet slots that march along with the stratum-III timing regularity of telephone carriers.
The second Quality of Service issue is packet priority. The routers at both the subscriber and base stations should be identifying the VoIP (or other fixed-bandwidth streaming) flow and giving its packets priority over other traffic on the link. That way the (limited and constant bandwidth) voice packets can take the preallocated slots every time while any additional variable traffic waits for the necessary additional slot allocation. If this is not done, other traffic (such as file transfers and web browsing) will keep "stealing" the time slots out from under the time-critical VoIP / streaming packets, resulting in long and variable latencies - horrendous jitter. If it IS done (and the link is stable due to the base-station timing synchronization), the VoIP flows will have jitter characteristics virtually identical to those of telephony TDM networks.
(This, by the way, is why "network neutrality" can't be reduced to "treat all packets the same" if you want to share the same IP network between streaming services such as video and VoIP and best-effort services such as file transfers and browsing.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That isn't commercial broadcasting. Completely different deal there. That's amateur hobbiest radio, doing "shows" isn't permitted at all. The closest they have to cheap in low power is called "micro broadcasting" and even then it isn't allowed to be commercial, and still has unacceptable restrictions and it is ~reasonably~ hard to be licensed for it. The "pirate" radio stations you hear of are those, microbroadcasters who operate outside the technical law and frequently get busted and have their gear confiscated and so on, although a lot still exist out there, typically running like 10-20 watt stations in major urban areas, along those lines.
Nope, the big established commercial guys and the FCC have made it pretty hard to "join their club".
Security is another concern, in long distance links and metro wifi. If I have the hardware, I can listen to what you say, and speak my piece to the network too. I may have to break the encryption, and I may have to spoof a MAC, but if you can talk to a machine on the airwaves, so can I. I can also MITM most communications rather easily, and poison communications. Metro wifi and wireless point to point links are not replacements for cat6 droplines/FIOS.
www.isoHunt.com
WiMAX is not magical pixie dust that you can sprinkle around to create a fabulous wireless service. It requires careful RF engineering - as other have pointed out, at its most common frequencies it doesn't have good non-line-of-sight support, but then neither do other protocols in those frequencies (and LTE, the 4G development from the 3GPP people who defined UMTS/3G and GSM, is based on very similar technology). Indoor performance is gated by quality of antenna - I understand Buzz are using antennas on the modem rather than mounting them on the house, which is a guarantee of problems with indoor coverage, not surprisingly.
There are many operators using WiMAX for VoIP and getting good RF performance (i.e. fewer retries and less jitter). It sounds like Buzz needs some serious work on their RF and network engineering, which is hardly the fault of WiMAX...
Incidentally, top tier vendors are all supporting WiMAX to cover the risk that WiMAX becomes a big market - they can't afford to be left out. Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Nortel and others are doing WiMAX user devices and network equipment - Ericsson is not but that's because they don't want to cannibalise their huge share of the UMTS/HSPA 3G/3.5G market, and future LTE market. LTE will also be huge, and may still win out over WiMAX, but it won't be due to fundamental issues with WiMAX technology - most likely WiMAX will be strongest outside the traditional mobile/cellular operators, with LTE dominating within such operators.
In my view, this article is really about a clueless CEO trying to throw mud at WiMAX to distract investors from the fact that his company has messed up their network design and deployment.
"If you're willing to throw your life away to defend Fred Phelp's "right to be an asshole", you value yourself less than any two-bit hooker or crackhead."
See, this explains why you're wrong about this issue (and clueless as well).
It's not "Fred Phelps' 'right to be an asshole'" it is MY right to be an asshole, it just so happens in this case someone else is taking advantage of the same right.
You appear to be taking advantage of the same right in your post.
Ah, mesh, the new FidoNet. Faster!, Better?, Cheaper?
--
I was sane once, but I'm better now.
"cogito, ergo sum."
That is an unquestionable truth. Even the attempt to question it shows that you do in fact exist ... thus making its' truthfulness truly unquestionable
1+1=2 in base 10 math. Care to question that?
The sum of the angles in all triangles is exactly half a circle - 180 degrees. Is that not an absolute truth?
To make the claim that "there cannot be any unquestionable truths" is not only dogmatic, but demonstrably wrong.
Democracy doesn't mean that people have the right to unbridled free speech, when that speech is a lie. Quite the contrary, in a democracy people have the right to band together and punish those who choose to cause harm by their words, same as we can choose to punish those who cause harm by their actions.
That's why many countries consider the examples I gave as grounds for a "hate crime" - the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. We have the right, in a democracy, to state that encouraging people to lynch blacks because of their skin colour is a crime.
Democracy doesn't mean unbridled freedom - that is anarchy. Same as saying "There cannot be any unquestionable truths." It's all just an excuse to avoid making the hard choices - one of which is that people should be accountable for what they say. After all, we hold people accountable for all other actions - why should what you say be magically free of consequences?
The only speech that is free of consequences is inconsequential to begin with.
If the best you can come up with is an accusation of "sophistry" (which you use incorrectly) and hyperbole like "Now, if you want to throw your life away..." is it any wonder I don't put any stock in what you think. I mean, you don't even have a coherent point, but you act like you've proven something other than your own willingness to say stupid shit.
"Next you'll be saying it's your "right" to be an asshole and go into a crowded theatre and shout "fire.""
Newsflash chump, I DO have that right, the caveat being there HAD BETTER BE A FIRE or it's my ass. You clearly are too ignorant to discuss this subject further.
Looks like there are other potential issues with WiMax and this time it is with satellite reception:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/16/wimax-could-interfere-with-satellite-communications/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
CW and Sprint own the WiMax spectrum in the U.S. (not overlapping). CW has one beta market out right now and is rolling out a few real markets in Q3 of this year per their announcements to investors.