Doubts Over Intel's WiMAX Service Pricing Claim 69
Ian Lamont writes "An Intel executive has suggested in a blog post that WiMAX could lead to massive savings on broadband Internet, mobile voice, and mobile data service prices. His post lists a WiMAX-based package of services including home broadband, mobile voice and broadband, home phone service (including international) and even video phone service for $50 to $100 total. It sounds great, but unfortunately for Intel and consumers, it's unlikely to happen any time soon, thanks to factors ranging from costly WiMAX buildouts to the telcos' lucrative business models based on existing wired and 2.5G/3G infrastructures. There are also questions about WiMAX's actual range following a messy Australian rollout, although the vendor there claims the Australian service provider under-provisioned the network."
16e versus 16d (Score:5, Informative)
To provide some context here -- since they used Airspan's equipment, the Australian operator probably deployed the older variant of WiMAX, based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard (called 16d or Fixed WiMAX). The majority of the industry on the other hand has shifted to the newer 802.16e-2005 standard (mobile WiMAX). Fixed WiMAX is essentially a near line of sight technology, not intended for non line of sight or mobile applications.
Mobile WiMAX uses a different physical layer than 16d, and it supports radio features to improve link robustness (such as convolutional turbo coding) and smart antenna technologies (2x2 MIMO to increase capacity and beam forming to increase cell range). In short, you can't gauge the performance of a mobile WiMAX network based on the results from a 16d network. The results I've seen in trials have matched radio propagation estimates fairly well, with the range being roughly what you see you traditional 2G/3G cellular -- 0.5 to 2 miles for non line of sight conditions. I've heard anecdotally of longer ranges of up to 30 miles for line of sight.
The rest of the industry has been fairly pleased with the performance of WiMAX during trials and early market deployments. Consider the number of service providers spending capital dollars to deploy. The WiMAX Forum recently announced there are more than 300 service providers deploying WiMAX in 118 countries worldwide [wimaxforum.org]. With Sprint's XOHM network going commercial later this year, we should have a better understanding of the benefits of WiMAX in a few months. The biggest concern I've heard of is the lack of devices today, but hopefully that will be alleviated late this year or early 2009.
Real life experience with WiMAX (Score:5, Informative)
I am typing this through a WiMAX connection in Greece, so let me clarify a couple of things...
The technology itself is proven and works, both for data and VoIP. You do need to have a proper backbone though; it just doesn't scale to use WiMAX everywhere. A better idea is to use Ethernet microwave links for the backbone and WiMAX stations locally. If you couple this with a multiservice access node (MSAN) you can service remote areas that have local copper lines installed, but lack a proper backbone (eg fiber is too expensive to install and maintain in a mountain side). Right now, this is the killer application for this technology, as this is how it sells itself with most countrys' incumbent telecommunications providers.
The range is just fine, we have tested successfully with distances up to 30Km. Mind you, this is line of sight, the first generation (called fixed WiMAX) is not very good in urban conditions, but for semi-urban and rural areas it performs as advertised. The second generation (called mobile WiMAX) is supposed to give as 2G penetration and coverage, but I have not played around with it yet. This is also supposed to be the killer application for the second generation; broadband everywhere, even on the go.
The available spectrum is limited, but proper planning goes a long way. I can't get too specific, but in our trials we have been quite limited with spectrum with no real problems.
I don't see prices to be dirt cheap though; licensed spectrum costs money. On the other hand, stations and terminals are getting cheaper all the time. I think that WiMAX services' cost will follow the same general trend; slightly more expensive that the equivalent fixed line broadband at first, getting cheaper as it catches on.
WiMax has one big advantage (for public use) (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a wireless company, developing WiMax and WiFi. It's pretty hard to beat the raw speed we can get out of 802.11 (WiFi), and we can stretch WiFi to fairly long distances as we can with WiMax.
However, WiMax has one huge advantage for system design - because transfers are a mix of scheduled and free-for-all instead of only free-for-all like WiFi, you can actually guarantee service. You can lock clients down to a fixed bandwidth _without_ letting them flood the channel, or you can guarantee minimum throughput, and you can classify packets into multiple service flows at the protocol level (prioritizing ACKs as an example). WiFi has 4 levels of service with WME, but the client gets to decide and can lie for advantage.
With WiFi you can throttle flows at the gateway, but you can't stop some greedy dick from completely swamping the channel. With WiMax you can throttle at the client. Some of you are obviously going to think that's a bad thing, but if we want to set up a public deployment we really need to be able to make sure that someone torrenting with 512 connections open isn't going to knock everyone else off the air and make it unusable for everyone. WiMax does a far superior job to WiFi of sharing the bandwidth so more total clients get at least a reasonable amount of throughput even if one greedy S.O.B. _really_ wants to eat up the entire channel and then more. And this is the assurance provisioners need when deciding they're going to offer the service.
I don't know about Intel's claims, but you are certainly able to guarantee a better experience with WiMax than you are with WiFi as long as your product doesn't suck.
To be fair, a major WiMax disadvantage is that there's really no equivalent of mesh networks. It's all server/client, no useful ad-hoc like WiFi has. You can simulate it with each node having a server and a client, but they're very asymmetrical, so it's currently pretty wasteful to do so.
Actually, WiMax is intended for one kilometer. (Score:5, Informative)
The Australian ISP that was whining about their deployment said they were expecting to get full strength at two kilometers and that's not even part of the spec for current generation customer premise equipment. Moreover, their VoIP problems were apparently aggravated by a shaky upstream connect at the ISP.
WiMax is not really a homogenous entity, it's more like a collection of protocols that work at different service levels according to power requirements and distance and are totally different for the sending radios and the base stations. Overall it's a system that works out to seem like a homgenous entity but that's sort of an illusion because the gory details are reserved for the ISPs. But with the power levels that are going into current customer premise equipment there are technical reasons related to amplifier performance that limit the sending power of the field radios to about a kilometer for a full strength signal and the drop-off comes pretty fast as you go beyond that.
Having said that, it's still completely true that this is no doubt much cheaper than any kind of wired infrastructure. Even if you had to put in a base station for a single user --which actually would not make sense-- you've got to compare that to the cost of a kilometer of wire and the cost of installing that wire.
But, again, it wouldn't make sense to install WiMax for a single user because the base stations have a sort of minimum density of downstream clients to make them cost effective. You basically will only see WiMax in areas where there are at least fifty users in a kilometer sized circle. That will change when the amplifiers in the base stations can be increased in power but that will not happen for several years if it does happen at all.
Still, the costs are minimal for an ISP and it does enable a new generation of small ISPs focused on remote local communities. It may not be a perfect solution for the remotest locations, but consider that you can use directional WiFi line-of-site for literally hundreds of miles as a feed into a small town and then cover the entire town with one or two WiMax base stations. If you allow users to set up their own directional WiFi with line-of-site to more remote locations you can extend that network at better than DSL upstream rates far into remote areas surrounding small towns at very low costs.
Within cities, there's no reason WiMax shouldn't cost far less than DSL or cable. Wholesale bandwidth costs are like nothing compared to what ISPs are charging in the States.
Re:Hard for WiMAX NOT to be cheaper. (Score:3, Informative)
Cable companies had a lot of upgrading to do before they could add high speed internet service. First, they had to upgrade the system to handle 2-way services. Then, they had to reduce the amount of coax between the headend and customer, otherwise troubleshooting would be next to impossible. Third, they had to increase their maintenance standards to keep ahead of problems. The system I worked in when @Home was new started out with 3 "line techs" and very quickly increased that number to 7 to keep up with the demand. And as the customer base increased, the system had to add more fiber optic lines and reduce the node footprint to help manage bandwidth.
The difference is, for the most part, the average person wouldn't have noticed the changes. A CATV node looks like any other active device, maybe a little larger. Compare that to a remote DSLAM, which can be as large as a toolshed.
The newest trend is to recover analog spectrum by moving everyone to a digital platform. Digital cable penetration is well over 50%, so it is a good time to do it. Once that happens, operators will be able to move to a switched digital distribution system. The hardware is being tested by all the usual players now, and it seems to work just fine. Personally, I think we should move everything to video on demand, but that will require the programmers (cable channels) to get onboard, and there is a lot of resistance from them.
Here's some helpful graphics to visualize range. (Score:3, Informative)
What these two graphics show is first
http://i.cmpnet.com/wirelessnetdesignline/2008/06/sige-fig1.jpg [cmpnet.com]
the range you would expect with currently shipping customer premise equipment
versus a second graphic
http://i.cmpnet.com/wirelessnetdesignline/2008/06/sige-fig3.jpg [cmpnet.com]
showing how the range may be extended to nearly a kilometer and a half with improved amplifiers in the customer radios.
So, with these graphics, it clarifies how there could be some miscommunication about the coverage. You could both say that the furthest user from the base station is at a maximum of one kilometer and at the same time argue that a single base station could serve two customers two kilometers apart. Both of those are true and yet they mean imply slightly different things about the nature of the coverage.