Sprint's Xohm WiMax Network Debuts In Baltimore, Works Well

bsk_cw writes "Sprint's newly launched Xohm service is now offering America's first WiMax network. Computerworld's Brian Nadel went to Baltimore to try it out, and he reports that Xohm delivered data smoothly to a car moving at highway speeds, played YouTube videos flawlessly, and on average, pushed through more than 3Mbit/sec., compared with 1.3 Mbit/sec. for the AT&T network Brian used as a comparison. But right now, coverage is only planned in a few US cities; if Sprint isn't able to ramp up its coverage quickly, it may lose its advantage."

Comments

Woo hoo!

[grub]

Xohm delivered data smoothly to a car moving at highway speeds, played YouTube videos flawlessly

Awesome!

Talking on a cell while driving is illegal, so I may as well watch YouTube!

Re:Woo hoo!

[molarmass192]

"We already know the CO2 hypothesis for the so-called "climate change" was wrong"

Really? Do you have a reputable source to back that up? There are many reputable sources that completely contradict your statement, so I'm understandably curious about your sources.

Still not worth it

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd take quite a bit more bandwidth to get me to visit Baltimore.

Re:Still not worth it

[darkmeridian]

Most Sprint customers don't know the half of how hypocritical and money-driven Sprint really is as a whole.

I strongly disagree with this statement. We know.

Re:Still not worth it

[bigman2003]

I'd rather pull my car over to the nearest 7-11, and use a pay phone to connect to the Internet through a 300 baud acoustic modem than get 3mbps through a Sprint product.

I made the HUGE mistake of switching to Sprint 18 months ago. I've regretted it ever since. Their customer service is 100% atrocious. Their policies are horrible (and deemed illegal in California*).

Sending photos to another cell phone is ridiculous (via e-mail?!?! WTF? Tons of phones are capable of receiving SMS with media, but not nearly as many can receive e-mail)

The phone selection is crap. The website sucks. (Anyone who has an account there can attest to that...how many times do I need to log in just to view my bill, like 3?)

Generally, every single thing I have to say about Sprint is that the company is bad. I switched from AT&T because I had the impression that they sucked. But on the scale of suck, AT&T is like a peck on the cheek compared to the 24 hour airport bathroom glory hole that is Sprint.

**** The illegal part: My daughter had 3 phone through Sprint, she canceled 2 of them 2 months prior to her contract ending. These phones cost $9.99 each per month. Sprint charged a $400 early termination fee, even though they would have only received $40 in service fees...that is what has been deemed illegal- the fee is punitive. (Fee doesn't just cover costs, it punishes the consumer)

Re:Still not worth it

[lysergic.acid]

are other U.S. carriers any better?

i'm sick of U.S. ISPs & telecoms' charge more for less business model which is getting the U.S. left in the dust by Europe and Asia. enough is enough. personally, i'd rather see most of the UHF spectrum appropriate for WiMax use being reserved for the deployment of open public wireless networks. there are so many potential applications for ubiquitous public wi-fi once the infrastructure is in place.

the first thing to go will be the cellular networks. with all of the telecoms except for T-mobile, Verizon, and Qwest cooperating with NSA spying, i'd much rather make calls over an encrypted VoIP connection. heck, with open wi-fi access handset makers would finally be free to implement more advanced mobile features like video calls using VVoIP. and with municipal wi-fi, the public would actually have a say in how the network is run. instead of overselling and then throttling user connections and using packet shaping to manipulate usage, the infrastructure would just be upgraded to meet demand.

right now we have an opportunity to break free from the monopolies held by the telecoms and ISPs. if we don't seize this opportunity and simply let the UHF spectrum be bought up by the telecoms & ISPs, then we'll just be stuck in the same situation all over again. communication networks are a natural monopoly; that cannot be changed. but that doesn't mean that consumers have to keep getting shafted by the telecom & ISP companies. we purport to be members of a democratic society, so its our democratic prerogative to make sure the government serves public interest. in this case it means collectively taking control of a limited public resource like the UHF spectrum rather than let it fall into the hands of selfish commercial interests who would exploit it for profit without consideration for public good.

Re:Still not worth it

[rabbit994]

DSL and Cable work by providing a continuing stream of packets. Cell phone networks can't offer that though so there is times where they may delay delivery for 200MS or so while tower is busy doing something else before delivering all your data to you in on massive chunk. Mbit/s isn't only measure of network connection.

Flawless with one user?

[cdrguru]

Sure, you can deliver 3Mb/sec wirelessly. But can you deliver 30,000Mb/sec?

See, the problem is that what I (and a good portion of the tech-using community) would like is to be able to access this bandwidth on demand, anywhere. Do you believe there would be 10,000 users in a wingle WiMax coverage area? If so, they are going to need 30,000Mb/sec to keep everyone working at this speed.

Microcells work for cell phones, but the rules are different.

Re:Flawless with one user?

[frieko]

AFAIK WiMax supports a cellular configuration. They can start out with widely spaced towers, and wherever they have too many people connecting they fill in more towers. Just like cell phones. That or they can just buy a wider swath of spectrum, although it's a precious commodity these days.

Re:Flawless with one user?

[AmberBlackCat]

Do you happen to work for Comcast?

Ugh, more Slashdot commentary in the post

[Lord Byron II]

So why will Sprint "lose its advantage" if it doesn't ramp up quickly? Seriously, is ATT or Comcast on the verge of offering some great new service that's going to make WiMax obsolete? Is there some competitor to Sprint that is going to build out first? I would love it if either of those possibilities were true, but the truth is that these companies are exceedingly conservative and slow to upgrade. Sprint could take the next decade doing a nationwide roll-out and probably not lose too much market share.

Re:Ugh, more Slashdot commentary in the post

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that that statement is largely the "OMG CONSTANTURGENCY!!!" flavor that people seem disturbingly enamored of; but not entirely.

The likely competition comes, not from some other WiMax buildout; but from other cellular data services. Most are inferior to Sprint's offering in terms of price, longterm contracts, and in many cases speed; but computers and phones with the necessary hardware built in are pretty common, and you can get at least dialup speeds virtually everywhere(yes, I know, there are exceptions and you live in one). Anybody outside of Sprint's coverage area will be buying these, if they care about mobile internet at all. The more non-WiMax cellular modems that end up embedded in laptops and whatnot, the worse for Sprint, since "Plug this dongle into your laptop for mobile broadband" is a much easier sell to somebody who doesn't already have an internal cellular modem. Even within Sprint's coverage area, the other cellular providers can respond by lowering prices, or playing up the roaming abilities of their stuff.

None of this is fatal, but I do think that Sprint will have a harder time if it tries to play simple local ISP with WiMax for too long; it runs the risk of being squeezed between inferior data services with superior mobility on one side(cellular modems) and superior data services with inferior mobility(hardwired ISPs and wifi) on the other, which could be uncomfortable.

Clearwire: am I missing something?

[ahow628]

Clearwire is WiMax, right? How is it not America's first WiMax network? I'm so confused...

Re:Clearwire: am I missing something?

[sg3000]

Clearwire deployed a proprietary broadband wireless access network based on Nextnet's technology. Nextnet was later bought by Motorola, who is a major infrastructure vendor for WiMAX, and Clearwire, as part of their merger with Sprint Xohm, will be switching to WiMAX.

WiMAX has two major variants: those based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard (called 16d or fixed WiMAX) and those based on the newer IEEE 802.16e-2005 (called 16e or mobile WiMAX) standard. There have been some small, limited build-outs of 16d, but 16e is destined to be much bigger, and that's why this is a big deal.

Sprint has been the primary backer of 16e because they acquired a lot of 2.5 GHz unpaired spectrum from their Nextel acquisition. With the launch of Sprint's Baltimore network, they've proven that a large, citywide network can deliver on the promises of WiMAX. This is a huge step forward for mobile broadband wireless access.

Horrible, horrible technology

[klapaucjusz]

I've browsed through the WiMax standards, and they almost make ATM look elegant. A connection-base technology with no less than three incompatible encapsulations. Disconnected operation is simulated by establishing connections to a back-end server and running bridging software there.

I'm looking forward to the day when multiple implementations of WiMax are available and the interoperability issues start showing up...