When will we see WiMax

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#49302 22-Oct-2006 20:27

TheBartender: And I could be wrong in saying this, and Im sure that will be quickly pointed out to me if I am, but I assume $1m to build a wireless network covering all Wellington is far cheaper than laying a cable network to cover the same area.

You're correct in saying that $1m is peanuts in the context of telecommunications infrastructure, but when that figure was originally quoted in this thread, it was implied that this covers only the transmission towers. When you factor in the costs of resource consents and other overheads, the economic case becomes much more complex.

euanandrews

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#49306 22-Oct-2006 20:31

alasta: You're correct in saying that $1m is peanuts in the context of telecommunications infrastructure, but when that figure was originally quoted in this thread, it was implied that this covers only the transmission towers. When you factor in the costs of resource consents and other overheads, the economic case becomes much more complex.

Granted, there are many hidden costs, but for the sake of the arguement was just looking at it from a very simplistic view.

swiftideas

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#49538 24-Oct-2006 19:38

figures in this thread appear neither substantiated nor comprehensive.

Getting back to when? Device uptake will be the driving benchmark for launch. Nokia are building devices for launch in 2008.

But don't rely on WiMax to deliver Sky to your home. IPTV looks more like mobile TV rather than high def home theatre.

And WiMax trials.. puhlease.. who wants a prehistoric trailer trash antenna stuck on the side of their house?

Fraktul

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#49926 26-Oct-2006 21:38

Who wants a Sky Digital dish either? Quite a few people it turns out..

Wimax antennas tend to be a self contained dual pole grid with intergrated radio in a poly-carbonate casing, they are not 'nice' but wouldnt go as far to say they are ugly. We are not talking a 1.2m wide parabolic dish of 802.1b wisp yesteryear.

What figures would you like substantiated?

Kezzainc

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#49984 27-Oct-2006 14:37

Swiftideas :

I think you'll find alot of stuff to do with WiMax is corporate sensitive right now.

This place and the people who post here know alot more than it might seems. Dont judge it too early. It will all come in good time....

One can also get internal WiMax systems/bridges... I thought that one one of the strong points about WiMax!? Not 100% reliant of LOS...

Tokes

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#49994 27-Oct-2006 16:49

There are two forms of WiMax - fixed and mobile (802.16e). Mobile networks are going to be the interesting ones, and these will take a lot longer to come to our shores (I think Intel have just released the first mobile WiMax chip - so will be a few years away yet...)

swiftideas

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#50050 28-Oct-2006 12:26

Who wants a Sky Digital dish either? Quite a few people it turns out..

I get your point but it's not a good comparison. Actually people want pay TV. Just like people want Broadband Internet. Neither want a dish or an antenna. And imagine if Sky offered Pay TV that you could take with you and play on any screen nearby. Well then you'd feel pretty cheap if you had to rely on a dish. .. and that's my point.. that mobile Wi-max is a different and far more exciting beast than fixed Wi-Max.

As for substantiating figures, I'm fine. What I was saying that the preceding tangent of conversation seemed to be based on guesswork. Hence I was trying to move the topic back to when..

I think you'll find alot of stuff to do with WiMax is corporate sensitive right now -
..yeah and a lot of it is hype too ..but still, a wireless data standard will see some cool developments for mobile applications, bandwidth innovation and of course roaming,

In respect to roaming, I see that only Telecom and Woosh are members of www.wisoa.com so not sure when.. but as for mobile offerings, I can hazard a good guess as to who.

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swiftideas

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#50051 28-Oct-2006 12:33

Hey and whilst we're on about Wi-Max, what are everyones thoughts on X-max?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMax

(sorry if this should be a new topic)

Fraktul

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#50063 28-Oct-2006 14:21

I have been watching xmax for the best part of a year, not much has happened during that time and their public demonstration was a bit of a 'black box'. The lack of commercial product available 12-18 months after this was announced for at least fixed applications makes me wary. General purpose silicon could be used for these fixed applications initially where the costing and power requirements are not paramount, that this has not been the case raises the vaporware flag.

liam

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#50325 30-Oct-2006 18:07

Interesting stuff though -
If half the facts in this article are true it would be shame not to see it developed into a commercial
wireless broadband solution:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/12/02/beyond_wireless_broadband_wifi_wimax.htm

Felix

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#50328 30-Oct-2006 18:19

Mauricio, you still interested in speaking to NZ Wireless?

freitasm

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#50330 30-Oct-2006 18:26

Felix: Mauricio, you still interested in speaking to NZ Wireless?

I don't rememeber showing an interest before, but hey. Is it the New Zealand Wireless and Broadband Forum meetings (Wednesday)?

Please contact me in private - unless this related to the topic at hand.

nzwireless

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#50376 31-Oct-2006 08:17

Hi All,

I've been pointed in the direction of this post, and as such feel compelled to offer some more accurate details about what is going on in the WiMAX space for nzwireless. While I'm not privy to all the details, I can at least straighten up a few of the misconceptions. This is all public information.

Alasta, you're right. We have been trailing WiMAX in the 3.5GHz band for 6 months now. Why such a long trial period ? The last thing we need to do now if offer a substandard service to a market that is possibly quite wary of wireless at the moment. Over subscription, bad radio planning, high latency, these are problems that have plagued the wireless industry both here and overseas. Also, due to delays within the MED, we only recently secured the last chunk of 3.5GHz spectrum in Wellington. The media also portrays WiMAX having these incredible abilities, and while it's characteristics are far beyond what we've seen before, it is still bound by the laws of physics ( bits per htz and the like ), and must be designed and managed as such.

Now, as to how many towers will cover Wellington. Wellington is ideal for WiMAX, as mentioned, due to it's topography, but the problems come with scalability. 7 BSU's may cover most of the region, and offer LOS coverage to most areas. However, you wouldn't get too many customers on those if you wanted to provide any sort of quality internet to them. The contention ratio would be huge !

TheBarTender. Fair call. I accept your challenge. The problem in this industry is the hype. As mentioned above, we can't let the hype overshadow what we feel the customers really want. Which is quality. So yes, we are taking fair amount of time getting everything right. And I can assure you that what comes out the end will hopefully meet expectations.

802.16d vs 802.16e, fixed vs nomadic vs mobile. Well that's 4 page rant in it's own right, so if you don't mind I'll avoid it for now.

Mauricio, it really sounds like we dropped the ball on your emails. I'm not even going to offer any excuses, I wouldn't deal with us either if we didn't return emails or phone calls.

freitasm

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#50380 31-Oct-2006 09:08

Good post! Thanks for dropping by and making the time to reply to those questions and comments.

juha

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#50382 31-Oct-2006 09:21

nzwireless: The ~~media~~ equipment vendors' marketing people also portray WiMAX having these incredible abilities, and while it's characteristics are far beyond what we've seen before, it is still bound by the laws of physics ( bits per htz and the like ), and must be designed and managed as such.

Just thought I'd propose a correction to an otherwise very good post.

I've tried WiMAX from Natcom, running in the public 5.8GHz spectrum. Here's the first blog entry actually about it. I thought it worked great, but it was a lightly loaded network, so...

Juha

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