[MLB-WIRELESS] WiMAX to go Australia wide?

[Dean Collins]

As it's still early in the announcement I think it's a moot point to
complain what they are/are not rolling out.

Anything that is able to increase to connectivity for remote/rural
people above dial up is a good thing.

My point was people seem to be making a lot of assumptions already about
this announcement without a lot of factual data (both gov/corp and
public)

 
Cheers,
 
Dean
 
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Haigh [mailto:netwiz at crc.id.au]
> Sent: Monday, 18 June 2007 11:31 AM
> To: Dean Collins
> Cc: Gary Winder; melbwireless at wireless.org.au
> Subject: RE: [MLB-WIRELESS] WiMAX to go Australia wide?
> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: melbwireless-bounces at wireless.org.au [mailto:melbwireless-
> >> bounces at wireless.org.au] On Behalf Of Steven Haigh
> >> Sent: Monday, 18 June 2007 10:05 AM
> >> To: Gary Winder
> >> Cc: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
> >> Subject: Re: [MLB-WIRELESS] WiMAX to go Australia wide?
> >>
> >> I agree - a WiMAX rollout will be pretty much useless....
> 
> Quoting Dean Collins <Dean at cognation.net>:
> > That's a ballsy statement - want to explain why?
> 
> Easy. For the infrastructure required, the operator may as well run
> ADSL. Hell, as there's no reason it can't be ADSL2+, do that. 4Mbit
> speed is about half of what an ADSL1 spec connection can do. 12Mbit -
> about half of what an ADSL2+ connection can do. "But wait" I hear you
> think. "Those ADSL speeds are theoretical maximums!" - and you're
> quite correct - they are - but so are these WiMAX speeds.
> 
> Now lets have a look at the rollout infrastructure required vs
> finance. You want to serve quite a few customers to make each 'cell'
> worthwhile. You have to run a backhaul to the radio equipment (either
> fibre, ATM, STM etc) so that you have enough bandwidth for the
> customers on that cell.
> 
> After you've done all this, you've just replicated what you would do
> for an ADSL rollout. Replace radio with DSLAM and you have ADSL - at
> comparable or faster speeds. Keep in mind that ADSL1 can do ~6.5Mbit
> over 3.5Km of copper. That's a lot of range you just added from your
> radio/dslam point. Your backhaul will cost the same if you use ADSL or
> wireless.
> 
> So what about the people further out? The answer is already there. A
> Minimux. This is a small ADSL DSLAM in a cabinet that can service up
> to a few hundred people.
> 
> Now lets look at it from a technical side. The radios are a shared
> spectrum - think a hub or your local cable segment. The more nodes you
> have in the same area, the more retransmits, the more errors, the
> slower the connection. I'd tip that with any serious use to have any
> ISP make a profit with WiMAX that your speeds will be well under
4Mbit.
> 
> Now lets add a dash of reality. A lot of these places in the bush
> don't even have a working GSM phone network. There are places where
> people can't make mobile phone calls - and we all know that is a
> priority over broadband. Now using this same logic, unless the WiMAX
> system can magically cover more area than a mobile phone network via
> higher node density (and higher rollout costs), then I don't see it
> standing a chance in a wide scale deployment.
> 
> A lot of people call Wireless great for the "last mile" delivery of
> connectivity, however it's only really useful as a simple point to
> point system. When point to multipoint starts getting implemented on a
> large area, it quickly gets overloaded.
> 
> For some people that want to see an already existing wireless network,
> iBurst and Unwired do a fair job of this and have fairly good
> coverage. However as soon as these networks get under load, the
> quality of the service plummets. I've done some testing on our works
> test iBurst connection, and sometimes been lucky to get 5Kb/sec. Good
> enough for an SSH connection, but certainly not broadband.
> 
> --
> Steven Haigh
> 
> Email: netwiz at crc.id.au
> Web: http://www.crc.id.au
> Phone: (03) 9017 0597 - 0404 087 474