* Alan Spicers Comments:
WiMax sounds to a lot of people like WiFi except it is not and will not be FREE and a lot of WiFi Hotspots are FREE. It has to compete head-to-head with existing Cellular 3G (and moving rapidly towards 4G) in which the Big Three (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon) and others are well entrenched. If the technology keeps pace and the cost remains reasonable (and other rediculous things like 5GB monthly limits go away!) then WiMax has a big battle to even put a dent in Cellular (Mobile Broadband) Internet. Here’s a portion of the article:
[end of my comments]
A competing technology to 3G/3G+ Cellular Internet: WiMax in 2010: Too little, too late?
WiMax is finally making wide-area wireless broadband a reality in many cities — but another technology is fast encroaching.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
September 18, 2009 06:00 AM ET
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137908/WiMax_in_2010_Too_little_too_late_
Computerworld – By the end of 2010, users in more than 80 U.S. 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 (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) broadband 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 via e-mail.
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.”
The promise of WiMax
Clearwire and partners like Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cisco want to change the last networking mile in the same way that Wi-Fi changed the last 100 feet of networking: by complementing or possibly replacing the existing technologies.
WiMax can cover up to 31 square miles instead of the few hundred square feet per access point provided by the more familiar 802.11g and 802.11n Wi-Fi technologies. In theory, WiMax can also deliver more than 75Mbit/sec. data-transfer speeds. In practice, it doesn’t have either that range or that speed. But with real-world speeds of up to 9Mbit/sec., it’s about as fast as today’s standard 802.11g (though not as fast as 802.11n), and it offers far greater range than any Wi-Fi technology.
(more at the link above…)
How fast, how far, how much?
Just how high-speed is WiMax? The honest answer is “it depends.”
“Speed and coverage area depend on several factors, such as frequency, terrain and tower height,” Jones explained. “Any amateur radio operator or electrical engineer can tell you that propagation characteristics vary significantly based on frequency.” In other words, a deployment on 700 MHz will have a different coverage area than one based on 2.3 GHz or 3.65 GHz.
Further, “the flat, open fields of Kansas will see different coverage on 3.65 GHz than my neighborhood nestled at the base of three mountain ranges in Alaska,” he continued. A base station mounted 40 feet high on a tower will reach far fewer subscribers than if it was mounted 80 feet high. And the amount of throughput users see on a wireless connection is directly related to the signal quality, Jones said. “You really can’t make general statements related to speed and coverage because not every deployment is the same.”
Brough Turner, an independent wireless analyst and blogger, isn’t optimistic. In an e-mail, Turner wrote, “The problem is WiMax products can never achieve the volumes associated with the GSM family of technologies (GSM, UMTS, HSPA, LTE). As a result, WiMax will always cost more to deploy, and WiMax handsets will be more expensive than comparable GSM family handsets. It doesn’t matter if WiMax is ‘better’ than LTE or not, or that WiMax is ahead today. The installed base of GSM family technologies generates very high volumes for GSM family products. As those products migrate to LTE, LTE product volumes will drive costs well below WiMax costs.”
It’s not necessarily an either/or proposition, however. “In my opinion, LTE and WiMax will co-exist, as they are actually targeting different markets,” said Schoolar of Current Analysis. “LTE for the most part is an extension of the current mobile ecosystem. It will primarily be used to do what we are doing today with 3G, but better. WiMax’s primary market, however, will be more about fixed and portable services. As much as I hate to say it, WiMax really will be Wi-Fi on steroids. While WiMax’s head start over LTE has diminished, I don’t think it matters as much as people think, as the two technologies are running a separate race.”
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a Computerworld blogger, has been writing about technology since CP/M was the dominant desktop operating system. You can learn more about Steven and read some of his other stories on his Practical Technology site.
—
Alan Spicer (Amateur Radio: General Class: KA4UDX)
DBA Alan Spicer Telcom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
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