For many companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses
(SMBs), WiMax is an exciting prospect because it promises to
broaden current wireless access and bandwidth boundaries.
WiMax stands for
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave
Access, and represents an industry consortium assembled to
advance and promote
IEEE 802.16 standards for broadband wireless
networks. WiMax 802.16 hardware delivers bandwidth to support
multimedia applications, including high-definition video
streams, and has a range of up to 30 miles, creating a
reasonable and viable
last mile wireless solution.
That's good for providers because it lets them avoid running
fiber optic or copper cables for that last mile (always the most
expensive one). It's also good for consumers because it promises
additional options for broadband networking that not only break the
cable and DSL "duopoly," as it's sometimes called, but also offer
untethered access to network services, without requiring additional
end-user equipment.
But when it comes to pondering the future of WiMax and its
usability, there's both good news and bad news.
- The good news is business interest in and momentum toward WiMax
deployment is high. Intel Corp. invested $600 million in Kirkland,
Wash.-based WiMax provider Clearwire U.S. LLC in early July.
Clearwire was founded by cellular telephony pioneer Craig McCaw.
Clearwire already offers pilot WiMax programs in Seattle, Honolulu
and southern Florida for as little as $26 per month. This puts the
heat on existing cable- and DSL-based broadband Internet access to
do more, and charge less.
- Intel plans to deliver a next-generation version of Centrino in
the first half of 2007. This new offering will be built around a
chipset code-named Santa Rosa that already supports 802.11n. But
Intel has also demonstrated a single-chip Wi-Fi/WiMax radio that
could connect to either type of network, and a plug-in WiMax PC
Card that lets any notebook with an open PC Card slot make a WiMax
connection. Both the chipset and the PC Card run the mobile version
of WiMax, which recently won IEEE approval. All this adds up to
potent mobile WiMax options, for new laptops (which can use the
chipset) and older ones (which can use the PC Card).
- Today, more than 10 original equipment manufacturer vendors
offer WiMax hardware solutions to system builders, a sign that the
industry is gearing up to make parts available for notebooks,
personal digital assistants and network interface cards or
motherboard chipsets, not including Intel's own efforts in this
area.
The bad news is that you can't configure a WiMax notebook
through any of the major notebook or PC vendors just yet. However,
WiMax is building plenty of momentum and it looks likely that if
such capability isn't part of the notebook configuration process in
the first half of 2007, it will be by the second half.
The future of WiMax hinges on a couple of big and important
"ifs," but should those possibilities become realities it could
represent the next big step forward in mobile and/or wireless
networking and slowly force 802.11a/b/g out of use.
The first big "if" is cost: Early WiMax PC Cards max out at 750
Kbps and cost more than $250, plus $40 or more in monthly service
charges. Vendors will have to provide chipsets and card components
at significantly lower prices to build a market for this
technology. Actual pricing is not yet clear, with bulk products not
likely to be available until late 2007.
The second big "if" is how perceived price/value compares with
existing wireless and mobile networking technologies. Mobile
offerings probably won't be hard to beat -- Verizon Wireless is
charging $60 or more per month for its BroadbandAccess, and it
claims average download speeds of 400-700 Kbps with a top end of
2.0 Mbps. However, displacing 802.11a/b/g will require considerably
more capability.
While it's clear WiMax has a lot of potential and enough
powerful backing to go somewhere, it remains to be seen if users in
general, and SMBs in particular, have similar destinations in mind.
Unless the two big unknowns of price and perceived price/value are
better understood, WiMax still qualifies as "interesting
technology" rather than "must-have networking."
Ed Tittel is a freelance writer and trainer based in Austin,
Texas, who's been writing and teaching about networking topics
since the late 1980s. A regular contributor to numerous
TechTarget.com Web sites, Ed also writes for Certification
Magazine, TechBuilder.org, and Tom's Hardware/Mobility
Guru.