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WiMax In 2010 — Too Little, Too Late?
CWmike writes "By the end of 2010, users in more than 80 US cities may be able to ditch their cable modems, T1 setups and DSL lines — and the Wi-Fi routers that go with them — in favor of WiMax wireless technology. Wait, haven't we heard that before? WiMax has been promised 'any day now' for years, but WiMax vendors such as Clearwire Communications LLC have suffered numerous delays in rolling out services. A recent ramp-up in Clearwire deployments bodes well for WiMax, but it may not have the chance to fully get off the ground before a competing technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE) does it in. Craig Mathias, principal analyst at Farpoint Group and a Computerworld columnist, sees WiMax taking a minority stake in the wireless broadband future. 'LTE will eventually be a combined broadband voice/data solution that can do everything that WiMax can and more,' he said. Mathias believes that LTE could get up to 80% of the global market share in future cellular installations. 'This leaves WiMax with a potential market share that cannot exceed 20% — but that's still a huge number, assuming 4 billion users around 2020 or so," he said. 'You do the math. The opportunity is nothing to sneeze at.'"
Wi Not?
Can I download music using this without getting sued?
Is it free? Is it anonymous?
Who would want to ditch a perfectly good DSL line, for a slow, unstable and laggy wireless?
Wimax is probably great for people on the move, but I just don't see it replacing my 10/10mbit line.
Back in the good old days there was hype surrounding WiMax that anyone would be able to buy an access point and use it in unlicensed spectrum but so far all the WiMax equipment I've seen is horrendously expensive and looks more like GSM equipment
What we need is a longer range version of WiFi that ordinary people can deploy and set up a decentralised network and hopefully put these mobile phone companies who charge extortionate amounts for bandwidth out of business.
LTE is just boring, ordinary consumers will never be able to set up their own private LTE base. All LTE will allow me to do is use up my 250MB a month data allowance even faster and requires me to buy a new phone. The good news is that WiMax will be updated to support speeds up to 1Gbit but if they won't make a couple of cheap and cheerful access points that ordinary folk can install in their homes for a few 100 dollars and maybe with an external antenna then there is no point.
Future LTE will also support 1Gbit and all the telco lads will be using that, so unless WiMax is going to allow for small scale single-cell setups nobody will use it.
WiMAX will be great for mobile devices, where a bit of latency or a dropped connection is better than no internet at all. But does anyone seriously think it'll be replacing the hard line? The nice thing about using wires or optical fiber is that the signals don't get crossed and it tends to work much more consistently much more of the time.
Where is the news in this article? Wimax has been coming soonâ for like 700 years.
Wow, getting rich is easy! After analysis, I believe my unproven product will get 80% market share. I'll just wait for the cash to start rolling in now. I feel bad for all my competitors wasting their time!
My flying cars will take over the automobile market and make roads obsolete. Coming in 2012.
The featured article says that these competing technologies are essentially the same, but with different "politics" and brand names. Can anyone clarify why LTE would get 80% and WiMax only 20%, or is that speculation bogus?
LTE is still far into the future. We are currently testing LTE in some sites here in Sweden and it's quite expensive. Plus we need more terminals with the LTE chip before this will be a breakthrough among the population. My guess is that here in Sweden we will have a bad/ok LTE connection around 2015, and around 2017 ïwe will have about as much as 90ï-95% of Sweden covered with LTE. Where as in USA which is a bit larger I don't think you'll have okish LTE connectivity until 2020. But these are just number I pulled out from a dark place and guesses from when I worked at TeliaSonera (Swedens largest mobile access provider) with different projects like Telia Homerun (wifi in public places) and UMTS. Wimax is a good solution until then, if it's rolled out within 2-3 years.
Just in time for a Duke Nukem Forever tournament!
I tried several times to follow up with the link that I forgot to include, but kept getting the "Slow Down Cowboy!" horseshit, so fuck it.
Now there's a debate.
all i gotta say is i use clear (clearwire) and it kinda sux... and they have you locked into a 2 year commitment, i want my cable back...
this is the most retardedly transparent advertisement I've ever seen as a slashdot front page story
Research the technologies, it takes about 20 minutes, and you'll see that LTE and WiMax are nearly identical. Basically WiMax and LTE have different optimization strategies, but they operate on the same band ranges, the same equipment, etc. In nearly all cases, a firmware update could make a WiMax radio into an LTE radio.
As it is, WiMax is best suited for non-moving targets, or, alternatively, short range cells that would best suit a city with skyscrapers. It's not a big difference but it's there.
Anyway, clearwire has already made it ... clear... that they could switch to LTE if needed with minimal impact financially or technically, and minor research supports that claim.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
LTE will eventually be a combined broadband voice/data solution that can do everything that WiMax can and more
I thought that, as a species, we had evolved beyond separating voice and data.
Come on, guys, everything's a number.
In 80 cities? I mean CITIES? Hey, F the cities, pal, there's all kindza options in the cities. Don't ask me to cry the crocadile tears for those poor schmucks in the cities, get all this crap working out here in the middle of f'n nowhere - then you've got some progress. But having to wait for a connection when traveling between DC and Richmond, or Columbus and Toledo or Findlay? Fergeddaboudit. Cities are easy. Do something significant, and blanket the countryside... then you know you've done something...
Wimax is what ISDN happen to be in 90's
In other news, PowerBook G5 next Tuesday.
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
The old adage applies: if someone claims they can predict the future, chances are they are trying to sell you something.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
assuming 4 billion users
Can I have some of what that guy's smoking? There is hardly even 4 billion electricity users, let alone 4 billion literate people.
You just got troll'd!
he's clearly never heard of latency or the reliability issues of wireless. then again, he has managed to whore his crap on /. so he can't be all stupid...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
WiMax hasn't quite made it out the door yet and now this new wireless tech is "coming out" threatening to take 80% of ... the nothing that is already not being dominated.
Unquestionably there are problems with wireless technologies, but the most significant are those associated with deployment and adoption.
They(Sprint/Clearwire) have been trying to push Wimax for 4g mobile networks forever now and a lot of dummies have bought into it. LTE is going to be the 4g wireless standard. About the only thing Wimax is good for is last mile fixed position connectivity. Which is probably not a bad niche to service. But even Clearwire just said recently that they could easily flip to LTE with just a software push, so even they are hedging their bets.
So many injustices..so little time..
this is probably the most ignorant statement I'll read all month
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
assuming 4 billion users
Can I have some of what that guy's smoking? There is hardly even 4 billion electricity users, let alone 4 billion literate people.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/24/4bn_gsm_users/
It's an estimate, but the numbers are probably pretty close. 3.5B are supposedly on 2G technology.
And the only electricity you need access to is enough to charge your phone, which a small solar panel can probably handle. A mobile phone is essential to life in many parts of African (which isn't know for its robust grid):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8194241.stm
I own an ISP (www.kos.net) which does rural broadband, and we've been very successful at that. Sometimes performance isn't what people expect, but that's to be expected... just not by those people who want unlimited fibre to their cottage. ;)
WiMax has been shouted from mountaintop to mountaintop for the past six years. And it isn't really being deployed much. Why?
Let me tell you.
First of all, WiMax has a range of 10 miles. That's not so bad but in rural installations, it's just barely enough.
Secondly in many places, WiMax has a max emitted power of 43dbm. In others it has up to 58dbm. Either way, it's not that much power. Further, the wattage is about 15 watts for the CPE equipment and about 200 watts for the base station - but the base station cannot emit 200 watts to a single transmitter by law, so that's just a red herring unless you plan to build out a base station with multiple antennas (good idea for the first build). Many (Redline, Alvarion, Aperto) use 2.3 watts.
Third, line of sight is a major requirement for WiMax. 802.16d or 802.16e. It is possible to get some non line of sight connections at close range (2 miles) if the conditions are right, but in the end it's a high speed wave (2.3Ghz for the Clearwire + Inukshuk early adopters, 3.4-3.7Ghz for the later adopters like my company). High speed waves have a much higher chance of hitting a particle and stopping than lower speed waves. 400Mhz used for voice and cell data has a much better NLoS capability and 900Mhz radios we use for rural broadband are also quite good, especially at low power levels they are allowed. WiMax does, however, have pretty good NEAR line of sight capabilities, we're finding.
Fourth, WiMax standards aren't. Rarely will one device interoperate with another vendor's equipment. So those WiMax chips in your Intel laptop? Junk.
Fifth, performance of WiMax isn't as good as 5.8Ghz access points. That's right. WiMax uses a 5, 7 or 10Mhz channel and while 10Mhz has slightly better throughput, you're not going to see much of that because of antenna spacing and distance characteristics. It's "54Mbps" rating per base antenna ($5,000 U.S. per + antenna) works out to 23Mbps aggregate at a 50% RX/TX spacing, which means 10.5Mbps in either direction.... although some companies are talking about a 75TX/25RX percentage split in upcoming firmware. In any case, it's not a panacea, and yes that bandwidth is shared between up to 200 people per base station.
Sixth, WiMax gear is really expensive. Everything about it is expensive, from base stations to subscriber modules, to tower placement, to purchasing licenses for transmitting.
Seventh, because it's licensed and it is a high-speed wave, it's mostly useless except to rural customers. Not to mention that nobody wants 15 watts of emitted power on their crotch.
Eigth, you will need to register your transmitter with Industry Canada or the FCC in the States. Maybe both. Not only is this fairly complex to do unless you're a service provider, you may find yourself having to bid on spectrum or with the 3.65Ghz band, you may be told that another transmitter is too near to you and you'll have to coordinate with that operator.
So. That's WiMax. It's not much good to most people, it has limited abilities to provide rural service (only better than 2.4Ghz WiFi because it's got more output power and has a licensed clean channel), it's really expensive, it's not fast enough and it's got complex licensing.
Why are we using it? We are desperately in need of another frequency, since we have filled many of our 900Mhz radios and the 5.8Ghz radios are not good for rural use at all (no near or non line of sight ability). 2.4Ghz is a dirty frequency with a lot of operators and power-company "smart meters" in it (that's a stupidity of a whole other level that needs a whole other discussion). So, it's WiMax.
BTW, those thinking city-wide WiFi is cool should do a little study on why it's not workable. I
...Steve
Ron Paul stands for bigger government and increased taxes! http://bobmccarty.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/paul-10x10-1.jpg
An interesting note that the OP is talking about what LTE WILL do compared to what WiMax is DOING! Bird in the hand, People.
I use WiFi (both fixed link and evdo rev A) because I am in an isolated rural area (my rev A dongle has a 3 watt booster).
Radio ip links always suffer from a plethora of ills that hardwired systems don't. Any spectrum available over the air is essentially available on a wire, except everyone shares the air and only you use your DSL link.
Also (as pointed out elsewhere), the noise level on the wire is constant but highly variable and increasing with load over the air.
The propagation characteristics over the air varies with frequency of the transmission: a perfectly good 900 MHz path will not necessarily work at 3.5 GHz.
The solution to all of the above problems is to use a cellular system and increase capacity by increasing sites... but that is problematic as well: costs increase dramatically with load and it is very difficult to deliver any SLA for performance.
Realtime apps like VOIP have difficulty maintaining sufficient QOS even during low usage periods. I get 7 Mbits/sec at 3 am with about 40 msec base latency but VOIP testing shows that even at that my QoS is marginal to maintain a good connection.
Wireless is a niche solution for portability and for delivery to areas where wired connections are too costly. It will always be that way. Consider that any technical improvement to wireless can generally be applied to wired in a cheaper more effective way.
"I have no reasonable hope of WiMax or LTE any time in the near future."
That's partly because phone companies have tried very hard to hold back and delay WiMax, even going to the authorities to create every block and legal delay on it they can. They have also run an extensive and on going negative PR campaign against WiMax trying to say its not worth having ... all because ultimately they know and fear it competes in an open way with part of their business. Its not a total competitor to phones but it risks them loosing a lot of money in areas you can get WiMax.
I can't wait until we can bypass the phone companies more easily. All service providing companies like phone and ISP's are a bunch of control freaks and they keep showing they want to exploit their controlled minions in ever more ways, all ultimately for their own profit. WiMax is a threat to them as it allows many of these control freaks to be bypassed, so they don't want it and will say anything they can to put people off it. The sooner we all open up wider access the better.
Why is any money being invested in "new" technology for major cities while those of us that live in rural areas still suffer with dial-up or insufferably slow satellite or cellular service. Lets invest this money in equalizing the playing field for everybody. Us "poor dumb farm boys" aren't always dumb by choice. Sometimes we just don't have any good options.
I was about to rip on TFA for being poorly informed and very out of date, then I re-read the top:
By Matt Hamblen
May 14, 2008 12:00 PM ET
Good job submitting a link that's over a year old CWmike, did you have to use the wayback machine to find that?
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
- Only ONE of all the users can have the maximum speed in the same area. If others use it too, it drops. Which for thousands of users can easily mean a very crappy bandwidth.
- Everyone can access and potentially crack it, without having physical access.
- General pointlessness to replace the wired connection of stationary devices with it because... [HYPEHYPEHYPEHYPESCREAMHYPEBLINGHYPEHYPEHYPE]
For mobile devices it's OK when well encrypted, because you've got no choice. But if you can use cables, their bandwitdh will always be higher, and their connection safer. If only because you can use the full spectrum for yourself alone.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
WiMAX is optimized for single-frequency (time division duplex) use. It works on single channels in the 2.3, 3.65 or 2.6 GHz bands, for instance. Clearwire has lots of 2.6 licenses.
LTE is optimized for dual-frequency (frequency division duplex) use, as are cell phones. It will eventually replace TDMA (GSM) and CDMA. It will initially coexist with them; the carriers will roll out LTE on some frequencies while preserving their legacy digital networks. This is sort of how the analog-digital transition (and the 2G-3G, for GSM operators; CDMA 2G and 3G are compatible) worked.
Yes, there is dual-frequency WiMAX and there might even be a spec somewhere for single-frequency LTE. But the two specs are similar. Both (this refers to the later "mobile" WiMAX) use OFDMA transmission and multiple antennas (for range or speed). They license some of the same patents. So if a licensee (Clearwire) is sitting on unpaired spectrum, they'll use WiMAX, and if they're paired, they'll used LTE.
And it's thus likely that in practice, WiMAX will act more like the Internet, while LTE, owned mostly by VZW and ATT, will be constrained to "wireless web" crap, charging by the message or picture, restricting the "app" you're allowed to use, etc.
will matter to someone!
and then I can complete my planes to.....take over the WORLD!!!!
muhahahahaha
Even if there were no reliability or speed issues,why would I choose a slower service for about the same price?
You may not have a problem but some of us want mobile broadband.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do the math. OK, so peak download speeds with LTE might be 100Mbps. That sounds good. But put 1000 users on that link, and let 50-100 simultaneously try to do bandwidth-intensive stuff (from YouTube to gaming to you-name-it), and the whole thing will STILL slow to a crawl.
I don't see wireless ever completely replacing wired access. Right now, I'm in a great situation -- I'm in a relatively rural area that just upgraded its backbone, but with few users competing with me for bandwidth -- but I have no illusions that this will last.
What I'd like to see here at /. is an article about growing bandwidth demands vs. the complete inability of the current (or even planned) infrastructure to handle it.
In my area last year, same as in many others, ATT did an ad blitz about their DSL-based packages that offered cable, wireless and high-speed Internet. I note that this past month, they've stopped promoting the Cable-over-DSL and have instead worked a deal with one of the satellite providers!
Why? They did the math.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
An interesting note that the OP is talking about what LTE WILL do compared to what WiMax is DOING!
How many providers offer WiMax? In Minneapolis, St Paul we have 4 broadband wireless providers. Of them 3 use EV-DO and the other uses EDGE.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Well I've downloaded a few movies at most, the longest one was 20 minutes I think. However soon I plan on downloading an ISO of Ubuntu then install software for it. I also hope to be uploading files, mostly photographs, as I want to start a photography business. If I do and I make money at it I'll go ahead and upgrade my service, get a business account. Luckily while I have cable access now, through ComCast which hasn't given me much problems, I can also get DSL. So when it comes tyme to upgrade I can compare plans from ComCast and Qwest.
Actually I want to try Ubuntu in part for my business. Although I want to start a business as a photographer, I also would like to some programming and development and take the business online. Then once I have it online I'd like to work with other photographers who want to take theirs online too. I also want to try KDE's graphics editor Krita to edit my photos, so after I install Ubuntu I'll also install KDE then switch between Gnome and KDE. I only hope Krita can do what I want otherwise I'll have to buy Photoshop. GIMP just does not cut it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wimax is essentially a IT solution, forcing an open, wireless internet, free of detailed accounts for data, voice, minutes, etc. LTE is the answer to keep the current wireless business model without a major shift.
Looking at the specifications, it looks like any government wanting to have still an economical future would invest itself in Wimax This is what is actually happening in some Asian countries.
Here in Baltimore we've had WiMax for well over a year. I've been running WiMax via XOHM both on my laptops as well as a secondary/redundant connection at home using XOHM's Pick Two plan. I get consistently respectable speeds (3-5M Down, ~1M up). The biggest hurdle right now is that coverage quickly goes from dense in the city itself, to moderate in the more populated suburbs such as in Columbia, to non-existent the further you get from the city.
When it works, it works wonderfully and I'm glad I have it, especially when I was having trouble with Comcast, I was able to stay online through XOHM until the issue was resolved. It may not have been as fast or as low latency, but it's still pretty darn fast. Fast enough for large downloads, video streaming, etc. (even HD Netflix streams to my Roku!)
From what I've seen, WiMax is being considered by many as more of a incremental stepping stone to LTE deployment further into the future.
A word of advice however. Go with XOHM or Clearwire (which now owns XOHM) and not the Sprint 3G/4G service. Sprint imposes a total bandwidth cap (I believe it's around 5GB) which covers both 3G and 4G usage whereas with XOHM, which is only WiMax (4G) only, there is no usage cap I am aware of (and they also claim it is "unlimited" with no cap, especially since they do pitch and offer service designed to be a primary connection, potentially replacing traditional wired DSL/Cable connections). When it was my primary connection while arguing with Comcast, I used MANY (tens, if not hundreds) GB's of data over the XOHM connection (HD Video streams, multi GB software downloads, online gaming, etc.) and never got any sort of complaints about "excessive usage", or "overage fees".
In malaysia wimax is still new.. damn slow and lack of coverage.. but cheep though.. :)
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