The WiMax Future Could be Closer

[HenryTo]

From internetnews.com. WiMax may be closer to us than we think. Long live broadband!
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May 31, 2005
The WiMax Future Could be Closer
By Tim Gray

Mobile devices equipped with WiMax (define) cards could hit the streets earlier than initially anticipated, research published today is predicting -- but the product may be more limited than advocates would like.

At least that's what ABI Research analysts are saying.

As the optional specifications built into the 802.16 standard continue to beef up the sensitivity of receiving equipment, WiMax PC cards and built-in receivers are becoming practical for many devices.

However, this first generation may not be as satisfactory as a fully mobile WiMax solution, but it still could be an advantage over current systems, according to ABI Research senior analyst Philip Solis.

"There may be WiMax PC cards on the market earlier than many observers have expected," Solis said in a statement. "These will result from superior chipsets permitting the use of WiMax in laptops and similar devices in homes and offices within the reach of fixed WiMax transmissions. You will not have full mobility as you will with 802.16e, but you will have some portability."

He also said at least two smaller companies, TeleCIS and Sequans, have been designing their chipsets to implement under-utilized options in the standard.

Laptops, PDAs and other portable devices are considered to be optimal equipment for the first-generation WiMax cards.

"Generally, these optional specifications have not been implemented by the largest vendors of WiMax equipment," Solis said.

What intrigues industry insiders is the potential that WiMax brings to a range of wireless options.

The technology supports high bit rates in uploading and downloading from a base station up to a distance of 30 miles. It is hoped by many researchers that WiMax will yield, among other innovations, high-speed Internet access, VoIP (define), and services to rural areas, commercial spaces and schools at a far cheaper cost.

Some wireless carriers and chipmakers have rushed to set WiMax technical standards, testing equipment and checking interoperability with other network components in hopes of laying the groundwork for new devices and services.

As reported by internetnews.com in May, Sprint (Quote, Chart) and Intel (Quote, Chart) teamed on products and services based on the emerging 802.16e mobile WiMax wireless broadband specification.

[diesel]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41004

Forget the wimax. You need a 40Gbps Internet connection Henry!

[HenryTo]

Update on Sprint Wimax. I have been stuck on either a fixed cable/DSL connection or a Wi-Fi connection since 1999. Bring on WiMax. To me, the municipal investments into city-wide Wi-Fi is really just a waste of time and money.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/07/15/a1f_wimax_0715.html

Sprint plans WiMax test launches in December in Chicago, Washington and Baltimore, followed by commercial availability in those markets in April. The company intends to offer WiMax coverage reaching 100 million people by the end of 2008 in cities including Austin, Texas, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia and Seattle.

West said download speeds would be 3 to 4 megabits per second and uploads about half that. Subscription prices for the WiMax service have not been announced, but West said they would be competitive with cable and DSL.

[HenryTo]

A review of the WiMax service in Seoul, South Korea - 12 months after initial rollouts:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=15&articleId=9025718&intsrc=hm_topic

[HenryTo]

WiMax a success on the Isle of Man:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/wimax-works-a-treat-on-isle-of-man/2007/06/20/1182019202455.html

[HenryTo]

Clearwire performs successful first phase of Wimax trial.

[HenryTo]

Wimax now available in Silicon Valley:

http://www.govtech.net/dc/120235

[rffrydr]

Folsom will have it very soon.

It pays to be a convict!
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Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[HenryTo]

Following article courtesy of Ars Technica. Intel incorporating Wi-Max into its mobile platform in the first half of next year - while Sprint is scheduled to roll out its Wi-Max service 19 different cities in April 2008. Unfortunately for me, no city in California is on that initial list.
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WiMAX coming to Intel laptops in 2008
By Eric Bangeman Published: April 16, 2007 - 12:28PM CT

The Intel Developer Forum is going on in Beijing this week, and Intel is using the Beijing stage to reveal details of its upcoming Montevina mobile platform. One feature that Intel is hoping will make road warriors happy is the inclusion of support for WiMAX.

Montevina is currently targeted for the first half of 2008 and will be the successor to Santa Rosa, which is due to arrive next month. We touched on Santa Rosa last month, which will include support for Intel Turbo Memory Technology (aka, Robson), built-in 802.11n Draft 2.0 capability, support for vPro under the Centrino Pro brand, and Advanced Management Technology, all rolled into a new chipset.

Intel will support WiMAX and 802.11b/g/n on the same piece of silicon (called Echo Peak) with Montevina, but will also offer a WiMAX-only card. Montevina will still feature the Core 2 Duo CPU, but fabbed at the 45nm process and containing up to 6MB of shared L2 cache.

Intel had planned to bring support for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) to Santa Rosa, which would have enabled laptops with that chipset to access many 3G networks out of the box and allow for seamless transitions between 802.11b/g/n and 3G networks. Those plans changed earlier this year, when Nokia and Intel decided that the potential return on investment from supporting HSDPA didn't justify the development effort.

WiMAX has been slow to get off the ground, but Intel apparently believes that WiMAX access will be widespread enough to justify supporting it. In the US, Sprint plans to begin offering WiMAX in early 2008 in a number of US cities.

Montevina will likely support 802.16e-2005, which is better known as Mobile WiMAX. Users should see average download speeds of 2-4Mbps, at least on Sprint's WiMAX network. Down the road, Intel will likely add support for 802.16m, or "gigabit WiMAX," which offers speeds of up to 1Gbps per channel, but the 802.16m standard is unlikely to be officially ratified by the IEEE before early 2009.

[rffrydr]

Ericsson is out Clearwire down. Politcs central here:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198700881
_________________
Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday!

[HenryTo]

As usual, folks are sulking about WiMax simply because they wasted tens of billions of dollars on WiMax licenses in the late 1990s. The CEO of Vodafone recently came out and tried to discredit WiMax - but is probably just in a state of denial.

Following article is courtesy of WSJ:
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WiMax Takes Shape in Europe
By NINA SOVICH
February 14, 2007; Page B9

The deployment of WiMax, a faster form of wireless broadband, has been two years away for six years, jokes Daryl Schoolar, a senior analyst for networking at market-research firm In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"It's like this great idea -- but always around the corner," he says. And finally, he adds, the corner is in sight: "I think it's ready for the big time."

After years of hype and promise, WiMax technology is taking shape in Europe. Last year, France and Germany allocated l icenses to WiMax operators, though they came with some significant restrictions, and the U.K.'s telecommunications regulator likely will auction licenses by the end of 2007 with new spectrum available to both WiMax and other wireless operators.

In the U.S., Sprint Nextel Corp. recently announced a $1 billion initial investment in WiMax and is working with Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Intel Corp. and Nokia Corp. to roll out the technology in late 2007. If WiMax is widely adopted, mobile-phone companies, chip makers and equipment manufacturers all stand to gain.

WiMax acts much like Wi-Fi, the wireless Internet technology often available for free in cafes and hotel rooms, but has broader reach, about 30 miles. It also transfers data much faster than Wi-Fi. Proponents say it works just like 3G, the advanced technology available in many cellphones, but is more potent indoors. WiMax is far less expensive to roll out than fixed-line broadband.

While WiMax enthusiasts say the technology is ready to deploy, its operators maintain some European telephone companies don't want to see it hit the market, given that they have spent tens of billions of euros on their 3G networks. That includes paying more than €120 billion ($155.57 billion) for 3G licenses during the Internet-stock bubble, Mr. Schoolar says.

The 3G networks operate on a low spectrum such as 1.9-2.5 gigahertz that allows customers to walk or take trains while on the phone or surfing the Internet. Most WiMax in Europe currently operates on the 3.5-gigahertz spectrum, which isn't fast enough for that sort of mobility. For now, both France and Germany restrict WiMax from being used in a mobile context.

"There is a general sense that incumbent operators want to protect their investment," says Vincent Grivet, co-chief executive of Maxtel, a WiMax company in Paris. "But we are confident that the regulators will eventually open WiMax to mobility" by providing access to the lower-spectrum radio waves.

"If you are a big incumbent and have already gone down the road to 3G," it would be expected that "there is a lot of lobbying going on to make sure that WiMax never gets the spectrum that would let them go truly mobile," adds Mr. Schoolar, the market-research analyst.

The established telecommunications companies say they aren't blocking WiMax companies, many of them small start-ups, from getting the lower spectrum, but that the technology itself isn't ready.

WiMax operators paint a more positive picture of the technology's performance "than we do," says a Deutsche Telekom AG spokesman. He adds that any company, including Deutsche Telekom, is interested in protecting investments against competition that could undermine them.

BT Group PLC, the U.K.'s dominant phone company, maintains that WiMax technology will take years to mature. The company declined to comment directly on British regulator Ofcom's decision to open new spectrum to WiMax and 3G operators. France Télécom SA declined to comment publicly on any WiMax spectrum issues.

Many WiMax proponents say that Ofcom's planned auction of 2.6-gigahertz spectrum to both types of operators signals that the regulator has enough faith in WiMax to allow its operators to buy precious and limited spectrum. For Ofcom's part, a spokeswoman says: "We want to take a technology-neutral approach because we believe the market is better placed to make decisions about what works and what doesn't than the regulator."

A spokesman for the German telecommunications regulator says there are no immediate plans to allow WiMax mobility. In France, a spokesman for the regulator says WiMax operators would be allowed to become mobile at some point, but such a decision is years away. "We are in active discussions with the European regulator about this," he adds.

WiMax operators maintain that the regulators' stance amounts to unfair protectionism of 3G and eventually will be challenged by the European Commission. To date, the commission has shied away from taking action on the issue but says it would like to give WiMax and other technologies a chance to prove themselves on a level playing field.

A spokeswoman for European telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding says authorities are "listening to all parties concerned."

Andy McKinnon, a Motorola executive who works with WiMax, believes competition between 3G and WiMax is temporary. "There is room for both of these technologies and sometimes in the same devices," he says.

WiMax proponents also see the technology playing different roles in different countries: widespread in Eastern Europe, where little broadband exists, and less evident in places like Paris, which is introducing high-speed fiber-optic cables, which are as much as 50 times faster than a WiMax connection.

Alcatel-Lucent Chief Technology Officer Olivier Baujard says that, in some locations, it is about 40% cheaper for fixed-line operators to deploy WiMax than to dig up pavement and install fiber to a home. "By the end of the third quarter of 2007, we'll see widespread deployment of WiMax," he predicts. He is currently testing the next generation of WiMax.

Write to Nina Sovich at nina.sovich@dowjones.com