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WiMax Is Finally Coming — Here's How It Performs
GMGruman writes "Carriers have promised WiMax networks for years. But will they deliver the goods, or be slow like many early 3G networks or patchy in coverage like the metro Wi-Fi attempts in most cities? This hands-on review looks at a nearly-WiMax deployment (technically, OFDM) in Reno, testing its speeds and reach, as a measure of what Sprint and Clearwire will deliver in their joint WiMax rollouts starting next month. The good news is that this time, the carrier promises look to be delivered on."
From TFA:
"To be completely accurate, the Clearwire service is not officially WiMax but OFDM, the underlying technology behind the WiMax standard. Clearwire deployed the Reno network before the WiMax standard was final, but it is practically the same technology."
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
Madison, WI has had WiMAX for over a year, but it wasn't been publicly launched until January. TDS Telecom offers WiMAX not just for internet, but for phone! You get indoor or outdoor WiMAX equipment depending on how the survey of your location goes, and you also get a UPS for the equipment so it doesn't go down when the power's out.
Residents using it report that it gives better call quality (which is probably due to poor phone lines) and say their connection is faster than landline DSL (also probably line quality, but could be less congested networks).
Here's some infos on what we have:
http://www.tdstelecom.com/absolutenews/templates/news_template.asp?articleid=496&zoneid=5
I have a good friend that works directly for the WiMax team. According to him, there are many cities all ready to go with WiMax, and the first city to sell it will be Baltimore, with two months later Washington DC and LA I believe coming on next. Then, if all turns out well, 30 cities in 2009, and by 2010, most all major metro areas being covered. My friend already has a working WiMax card at his house (here in DC) and has been using it for the past 2 months. He said Baltimore was going to be first because it is the city with the most "complete" coverage. There is even suppose to be some sort of ceremony going on with the mayor of Baltimore attending. I am also told that anyone from the DC area could potentially drive to DC to buy the WiMax cards and use it back home in DC no problem.
My friend also said that the current limitations are with the WiMax cards, only getting about 2 megs a sec, while the ones coming next year will be almost twice as fast.
This is a good friend, so I trust what he says, but, as always, YMMV.
WiMAX has been around for a while - the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard has been around a while, mostly for stationary links in rural or semi-wilderness areas. I know that AT&T has deployed some stationary WiMAX services in Alaska.
The XOHM network that Sprint is unrolling is a MOBILE WiMAX network. This is IEEE 802.16e-2005. It adds additional features meant to help with mobility (e.g. Hybrid ARQ). Some of these features may or may not be present in the Clearwire service.
There are a lot of vendors that are implementing WiMAX hardware, so one review isn't going to say everything.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
See my other post, but according to my friend that works for the WiMax project, there will not be any bandwidth cap. The reason the cellular data cards needed bandwidth caps is because the problem with the towers. Each tower for 3G technologies have about a T1 running to them, so the line can easily get saturated. From what I understand, the WiMax towers have something crazy like a 10GB line running to them, thus not having to have the same caps as the cellular networks to artificially keep usage low. He also said that the WiMax team will re-evaluate the unlimited usage after a year or so to see if it is still feasible.
Laptopmag.com is live blogging a test of the XOHM WiMax deployment in Baltmore http://blog.laptopmag.com/live-with-xohm-wimax-in-baltimore