Wireless for rural broaband?

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › Wireless for rural broaband?

Wob

310 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

NBN Co

#17057 9-Nov-2007 14:41

Herald article today: Wireless for rural ares says minister

I can't see any company going for these licences - if there was a viable business case for offering up service for rural customers, wouldn't someone be doing it by now?

Now based in Perth WA.

AmooMan

307 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#94458 9-Nov-2007 14:49

Their are a few.. but to few..

i know of http://www.southnet.co.nz/

KiwiOverseas66

173 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#94497 9-Nov-2007 18:00

nice to see the gov taking some action but agreed - if it was a commercially viable/ attractive option then it wouldn't need any help from the gov in the first place. Aside from the setup cost for a new operator , they will be catering to a regional market only which may still face competition from some of the national operators. Add to that - the operator would face the same costs as everyone else when it comes to backhaul and international traffic. Makes for a fairly tight scenario!?

Wob

310 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

NBN Co

#94559 10-Nov-2007 11:25

Yet again the government makes an ill-advised knee-jerk reaction to a perceived issue that it doesn't really understand.

Perhaps the minister should post his ideas on Geekzone before he goes to the house with them (and the media).

Now based in Perth WA.

MauriceWinn

141 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 6

Trusted

#94646 11-Nov-2007 10:33

Clearing 450MHz for CDMA/OFDM services would be the way to cover rural areas.   Legacy low value operations are using 450 MHz spectrum which could be used for high-volume, high-value cyberspace services.    Propagation is so bad in high frequencies that it's untenable to provide ubiquitous rural coverage with it.   Even 2 GHz requires too many base stations to cover rural areas.   Telecom can do the job much cheaper using 800MHz.

Zenbu would like to have some spectrum, but not with the strings attached, having to build out city coverage.   Wi-Fi and WiMAX have their place, but they can't beat CDMA/OFDM combinations in 800MHz for wide area rural networks, let alone 450MHz. Sprint is ditching their WiMAX activities. NextWave share price has take a plunge [from $12 to $6] as the competitive position of WiMAX [and metropolitan Wi-Fi] is looking less robust.

WiMAX is over-hyped.   CDMA/OFDM by QUALCOMM [in HSDPA, and EV-DO and Flarion varieties] can do a LOT which WiMAX is supposed to do.    Even with huge advantage over GSM, it has taken CDMA a decade to start superseding it in a big way.   WiMAX has a lot less advantage over CDMA than CDMA had over GSM.

As the cost of providing wireless cyberspace drops, the spectrum advantages become less important.    GSM had huge economies of scale and the cost of handsets, their functionality, and design were more important than the spectrum advantages of CDMA air interfaces.   So CDMA had a hard row to hoe, especially in W-CDMA mode with technical problems.

Telecom is holding the cards with EV-DO and heaps of 800MHz spectrum.   They can add an HSDPA [W-CDMA] network to compete with Vodafone while maintaining their EV-DO [CDMA2000] system, much as oil companies sell both diesel and petrol, [in both high and low octane versions].     Telecom will also be able to roll out Flarion-based OFDM systems.

Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#95057 13-Nov-2007 19:52

If 700mhz gets opened up overseas for WiMAX then we are likely to see some vendors manufacturing equipment for this spectrum. There are already some manufacturer which are manufacturing 802.11b/g equipment for this spectrum actually.

Spectrum propogation issues aside, WiMax is the more powerful delivery standard for fixed broadband services currently.