Whither WiMAX, WiBRO and 802.20?
Since LLU wasn't going anywhere in New Zealand, wireless has emerged as the one and only hope. However, two of the wireless providers first out the blocks, Woosh and Wired Country failed to make any real inroads in the market. Woosh's fault was picking the UMTS TDD technology from ipWireless but Wired Country could have made it, had not its owners, Counties Power, lost its collective nerve and sold off everything, probably because they didn't understand the data networking business.
Now some providers are holding out for WiMAX, which promises high speeds and cheaper deployment than existing wireless technologies, thanks to giants like Intel backing the standard with their mass-manufacturing muscle.
I've got a WiMAX connection now, which works very nicely - here's the blog entry about it. Since I wrote that, Natcom has improved the upstream so I'm getting around 4.5Mbit/s in that direction now. Clearly, the technology's there and CPE pricing's coming down; even so, providers here aren't flocking to WiMAX for last-mile access to customers. No doubt this is because some reseller providers got burnt with Wired Country and others have watched Woosh wither and not deliver on its promises. It's wait and see but how long?
The Koreans are keener on taking risks however. Sightings of Samsung's WiBro (Wireless Broadband) phones are starting to appear on the 'net and they sound like neat enough devices: the SPH-M8000 promises mobility up to 120kph, 3Mbps download and 1Mbps uploads, Windows Mobile 5.0 and the usual bundle of handheld device features. A test of the Samsung SPH-M8000 can be found at Esato. Very short and incomplete test, but the phone looks far from prime-time ready.
Also, WiBro runs in the 2.3GHz spectrum, which in New Zealand is licensed and used for data and video transmission, so fuhgeddaboodit here.
Meanwhile, CDMA and wireless in general giant Qualcomm is convinced that 802.16e is a dead standard. See The INQ's report here. What is really interesting about that report is the mention of fall-back to GSM for CDMA2000 devices; it may not be so hard for Qualcomm to build a 802.20/CDMA2000/GSM chip set, to "incentivise" cellular providers to deploy that standard.
CDMA seems far from dead, however. Jama has covered the upcoming Rev A, B and C standards for CDMA2000 in the Geekzone forums, but this news item summarises them rather nicely. 200mbps downstream speeds in commercial products by 2008... where does that leave 802.16* vendors? Ironically, it'll be Telecom New Zealand, our dear telco monopoly, that'll bring out Revisions B and C of CDMA here (they're already deploying Rev A together with Verizon Wireless in the States) if anyone will.
Other related posts:
Wannabe wifi jacker pwned
Woosh upgrades to 1Mbit/s
Taipei's citywide Wifi brings converged phones and free calls
Comment by B. Booten, on 7-AUG-2006 18:40
Woosh, initially Walker Wireless, has not achieved success due to poor management full stop. The leadship was more of a popularity contest then getting down to business. They ignored good advice from many people who know whaty they are on about. We never plan to fail, but we always failed to plan was their undoing as Walker Wireless, and will continue to be the issue as Woosh. Bob's approach to the mass market was on par to Bush going to Iraq looking for WMD's. At least Bush keeps his word.
I find it quite ironic that there is this huge race to be a mass provider of last mile connectivity to the WWW, when a small percentage of NZ'ers actually own, have access, or even use computers. They are all competing for the same small market and selling on price versus features and benefits.
I know, I was Walker Wirelss's South Island Manager before they made me and 28 other staff from the sales department redundant 1 month before Christmas 4 years ago so they could partake on the re-branding to Woosh and failed mass market approach. They still can't see the trees from the forest, and Bob realising this, is moving on to bigger better things, like boat racing. What a surprise.
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Comment by peter a. howley, on 14-APR-2006 04:59
Juha,
So what is so wrong with Woosh's selection of world standard and world leading TD-CDMA or UMTS-TDD technology as developed by IPWireless? Woosh has close to 20,000 happy and potentially mobile customers who don't have to go to Starbucks unless they want coffee. Smart company, smart customers, great retention and even sign-ups for voice service now. Yes, I am an original co-founder and initial CEO of IPWireless (no longer involved day-to-day), but that doesn't make me wrong! Try it; you'll like it!