"but radio frequency physics remain problematic"

Bummer, they should work on that!

..but why not stick an antenna *outside* the receiving building and reproduce the signal inside? Worked for years with TVs...

This http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=943390 from an ISP that knows what it's doing.

Paris, because she knows what she's doing.

Look, WiMax is WiMax. You understand the technology and its shortcomings. So you use it where you know that you don't have the shortcomings.

The promise of WiMax is broadband speeds without the wires.

So you set up your WiMax antenna by the window or outdoors (depending on the antenna) and you the have your hub/switch/wireless intranet access point to your network.

Does this limit the applications? Maybe. But if the price is right, its a lot easier to set up than the last mile of cable, and dealing with some of the local telcos who promise one thing, but fail to deliver.

If you want VoIP, then sure maybe WiMax isn't what you want. But if you need a T1 for an office internet connection... maybe it is. We won't know until you do a price comparison. Also, if you are changing locations... You can always move the equipment. You can't do that easily with a T1.

No?

The flame because articles on the failings of a technology when its misused is not a good thing.

And if reception still isn't good keep moving the antenna a little closer to the base station... in fact why not run a wire all the way. Just look at it as a wave guide. It's still wireless, just the wireless waves are kind of directed to you personally - very elegant solution actually. Just wait, someone's marketing department will latch on to this idea...

So they rolled out an entire network only to find it doesn't work?

Mountainous Spain with well-distributed communities has an excellent record on WiMax. My house uses a link perhaps 15 kms from the base station; I have a square microwave directional antenna on the roof and a four pair cable ethernet connection from that to my PC. The only time the link goes down is during extreme weather conditions such as torrential rain. I would not change it for the world and especially would not replace it with a broadband connection via the hopeless Telefonica phone company.

One company that didn't do things right to start with is reason to say WiMax is useless?

Yeah right.

Now if OPEL's rollout winds up flaky and useless then I'll conclude that, but until 2009 we won't know.

There isn't any technology that will do decent indoor coverage at 3.5Ghz. Just compare how much worse 2.1Ghz 3G is indoor than 900MHz GSM. A basestsion on 3.5GHz that gives 15km range on chimney aerial is unlikely to do even 2km indoor, unless your room has a big window with LOS to mast.

It's the frequency & expectation that is wrong. I'd not be surprised if Airspan did warn Buzz, but people hear what they want to hear.

'Customer' opted to go with the less-expensive 'None working' version of our product.

HAHA HAAHA whos the real fool here...

clue: its the one employing the salesperson!

Incidently I do frequent runs to see what speed I'm getting from Iberbanda S.A., my Spanish provider. I only signed up for 512Kb (WiMax in Spain is more expensive than via Telefonica's phone lines so I took the lowest speed to save money) but I consistantly get over 500Kb both up and downlink.

My friends on Telefonica's broadband-over-telephone wires who have signed up for a 1Mg connection ran the same test and found on average they were getting 300Kb up and 600Kb down. Their perception of my 512Kb connection is that it's faster than their 1Mg connection. Kind of obvious......

well, at present it seems to do so in Italy, <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/bts.asp>

the root address at www.eolo.it (only in Italian, sorry) explains how you can get up to 12megs via an external 5GHz antenna. My friends use the 2 meg service and only complain that their 600 euros per year unlimited data contact has to be paid up-front when signing the contract. Of course this almost WiMax wouldn't be needed if T*l*com It*lia would actually deliver DSL to non-metropolitan customers.

in keeping with El'Reg's excellent technical hive knowledge I will reveal that the Eolo network uses about 8500 client Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL LOS/NLOS dishes with wideband OFDM at 5,4-5,7 GHz point to point to 62 usually mountain-top Motorola BTS with fibre connectivity at 10Gbit/s to the NGI backbone via Cisco 12410 routers with 4Gbit/s to the Internet. All allegedly independent of Telecom Italia.

for those who like Antenna Pr0n, try <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/fotogallery/images/bts_campodeifiori/3.JPG>

1.JPG, 2.JPG & 4.JPG for images of Italian pre-alps, lakes and yes, Antennas!

I just experimented with ping times on both 3G and EDGE connections.

Huawei 3.6mbps 3G USB modem on the 3 network (the software claims 2 of 4 available signal bars) had ping times to 66.249.91.99 (a Google IP address) at 134ms, 134ms, 133ms and 133ms. A HTC device using USB internet sharing on the O2 EDGE network (the phone claims 4 of 4 available signal bars) had ping times of 886ms, 675ms, 832ms and 730ms.

I don't know what explanation there is for that, be it technological differences, backhaul or what, but that's a pretty marked difference.

"Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL" is a product that uses a modified Wi-Fi MAC - there's not a trace of WiMAX in it.

There is no "5.4-5.7GHz" frequency profile in WiMAX

What do the "Motorola BTSs" do in this network? They certainly won't talk to Alvarion clients.

How do they get 10Gbit/s fibre to the top of mountains?

I'm guessing it's actually an Alvarion access network with Motorola backhaul connections at a few 10s of Mbit/s.

There is a world of difference technologically between a low density rural network serving clients with external directional antennas and a high density urban network serving clients with low gain antennas usually mounted indoors, although I would say that both have to be executed very effectively to make money.

So our friends in Spain and Italy get good results from fixed, outdoor, line-of-sight connections. This is basically the same as proven established microwave link technology, albeit carrying IP network traffic and using a fancy modulation scheme.

What remains to be seen is whether WiMax works for mobile and in-building coverage.