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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.
Maybe because hundreds of millions of people listen to AM radio every day -- and those of us driving 1991 cars can't just switch to digital radio (too expensive). The world doesn't have to conform to your personal priorities.
>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?
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.
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.
You don't even need that. One diode and some high impedance headphones is all you need. You don't even need any kind of power. There is no amplification, but I dare you to find one other broadcast technology that can draw all the power it needs from the signal its self.
Even if we switch off of AM and FM and such to fancy digital encodings, every radio should have the ability to tune into old-fashioned AM signals built in. It's trivial to add, and functions no matter what if they need to put stations up in an emergency.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I think part of the argument is legitimate, in that we're stuck in the unlicensed bands, where there is significant opportunities for interference both within those bands and from licensed bands sitting on the borders at each side.
2.4ghz and 5.6ghz/5.8ghz are good bands for line of sight transmission. Unfortunately, these frequencies are increasingly noisy and all of the fancy algorithms in the world can't help you when some of son-of-bitch with a home-made outfit is spewing out at obscene power levels.
As to non-line-of-sight, well, the higher bands just don't do so well. It's one thing to have a wood-framed house with drywall, which doesn't offer much of an obstacle, but apartment buildings and the like, where there's significant amounts of steel and concrete aren't going to cut it too well, at least without tons of access points all over the place (translation: $$$). The 900mhz band is pretty good at non-line-of-sight, but this section of the spectrum has been utterly poisoned by cordless phones (2.4ghz is getting that bad too).
What WiFi needs is some protected chunks of spectrum at the low, middle and high. Without that, forget about it. Maybe this latest auction will open some stuff up, but I doubt it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
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"