Australian WiMax Pioneer Calls It a Disaster 202
Anonymous Coward writes "Garth Freeman, CEO of Australia's first WiMax operator, sat down at the recent International WiMax Conference in Bangkok and unleashed a tirade about the failings of the technology, leaving an otherwise pro-WiMax audience stunned. His company, Buzz Broadband, had deployed a WiMax network over a year ago, and Freeman left no doubt about what conclusions he had drawn. He claimed that 'its non-line of sight performance was "non-existent" beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, indoor performance decayed at just 400m and that latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP, which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to shed their use of incumbent services.' We've previously discussed the beginnings of WiMax as well as recent plans for a massive network in India.
All of AM? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just hear it now: RUSH: "It's a Liberal conspiracy to get rid of us who tell the TRUTH!"
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:1, Insightful)
These are to different issues. Come back when you can string a logical argument together.
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stations of relatively modest power can provide services to distances of about 100 miles.
Receivers are cheap, portable and ubiquitous.
The AM radio is as accessible and familiar to the four year old as it is to the centenarian.
Re:Real life experience with WIMAX (Score:4, Insightful)
and the cost of building and maintaining 10,000 access points will be what. exactly?
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:complaining about it for years (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:5, Insightful)
AM radio is a really durable technology. You can listen to solar powered broadcasts on crank powered radios.
Re:Real life experience with WIMAX (Score:5, Insightful)
Less than the cost of laying fiber to millions of homes.
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch (USA) (Score:2, Insightful)
ISPs losing interest in citywide wireless coverage.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/23/1213255/ [slashdot.org]
Is patience in order?
In the '90s I could not drive from Oklahoma City to Dallas and keep cellphone service during the entire trip. If I was in an area not serviced by my cellphone provider, I had to "force" roaming by turning my Motorola flipphone off and on, then wait.
AT&T saw no future for data networks and the Internet!r
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Real life experience with WIMAX (Score:5, Insightful)
But forget that, it's the least of your worries. Your real problem will be to make the access points and subscribers not all hear each other in the limited frequency available, drowning each other out, causing network brownouts (or blackouts), hurting efficiency, causing lag and re-registrations, etc. Go downtown Toronto and you'll see what I mean. It just doesn't work the way people want it to.
Re:complaining about it for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it annoying when people try to point out the hypocrisy of "Slashdotters" without citing individual people who are hypocritical that way. We are individuals, and despite the apparent groupthink, we can actually disagree. I don't agree with you that all Slashdotters are the same, and I don't agree with GP that fundie talk shows should actually be censored. Oh, and I don't agree with pretty much anything fundie talk shows have to say, but I will defend to my death their right to say it.
But nuance (sanity?) like that is completely lost when you lump us all in a group like that. Good job.
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never once heard anyone on
Violence is abhorrent and I have never seriously heard people on
Violence for self-defense is another story....
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to buy into that as well, but its wrong. Should people be given carte blanche to lie, just because it's about their favourite superstitious belief?
People in the past have said (and continue to say) stupid things - would you really "defend to my death their right to say it"?:
How about people like Fred Phelps [wikipedia.org]? He said that 9/11 was god punishing America. Ditto with the people killed in the Missouri bridge collapse. Or his tactics at military funerals, which deliberately go way beyond any limits of decency.
Lets look again at what you wrote:
If you're willing to throw your life away to defend Fred Phelp's "right to be an asshole", you value yourself less than any two-bit hooker or crackhead. People with principles will use their judgement rather than blindly follow their "freedom of speech" dogma to self-defeating extremes. Principles come with responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is to make sure that liars don't stand unchallenged. The fundies are liars. So are the scientologists, etc. Heck, look at the crazies going on about holy jihad over "images of Mohammad." How would they know those are really "images of Mohammed" if they're forbidden to have images of Mohammad? Goofballs, just like any other religion. Dawkins is right. Such stupidity only continues to exist because we don't challenge it, using rationalization such as "I may ot agree, but I'll defend to the death ..."
Re:Who's fault? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.oneringnetworks.com/ [oneringnetworks.com]
I told you guys (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:2, Insightful)
IE if he wants, he can demonstrate on his own property, on public property available for that purpose, etc... If he can afford a radio station, he can spew all he likes. That's what I'll defend. Today you can't say 'I like puppies' without offending somebody. Freedom of speech protects speech that people find embarrassing, offensive, etc...
Doesn't mean that he has the right to disrupt other people's freedom of speech(IE the funeral he's interrupting).
As far as AM radio goes, I understand that there have been a number of liberal attempts to break into that broadcast medium. Most have failed. Besides, all you have to do to get away from, say Rush, is to change the dial or turn the radio off. What are you going to do to get away from Phelps? Leave your son's funeral?
There's being offensive, there's being controversial, then there's being a dick. Phelps is a dick.
Well, challenge it then (Score:2, Insightful)
I know I would have had my own station (low power, all I could afford) long ago if the FCC and the big broadcasters weren't such dicks about it, and that includes those NPR cretins who lobbied hard to restrict any competition. I can see it from the major broadcasters, but that was sure a bummer to find out they were against opening up low power. I don't want to go pirate radio because the HAMS throw hissy fits over it (even if you aren't interfering anyplace and have a clean signal) and nark on people, and netcasting takes a decent broadband connection, which I can't get here. Someday though...although reading that WiMax thread was a bummer, kept hoping that might be the magic to get broadband out into the sticks, and so far, cellphone broadband ain't it either. So...I type on teh internets.
Re:The real dissaster is spectrum regulation. (Score:3, Insightful)
A few klicks to the west?
Boston to SF is 4,344 km.
St Petersburg to Vladivostok is 9,288 km by rail. Eight time zones.
But how many middle or western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of distances on either scale?