‘Australia Connected’ sounds pretty good – now what?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Page 2 of 3 WIMAX technology promises to enable high-speed wireless broadband over very large areas, both in cities and in regional and rural areas, with Intel long promoting the technology as the “next-generation”, calling it 4G in an attempt to outdo the providers of 3G and 3.5G wireless technologies. WIMAX networks are now being built in different parts of the US, Europe and Asia, with Intel hoping it becomes as global and accepted a format as Wi-Fi, theoretically doing what Wi-Fi couldn’t, which is to provide wireless broadband access in any city or area that has WIMAX towers set up. Once constructed, the network will no doubt need tuning with user feedback to eliminate black spots and get maximum coverage, but then that’s true of any wireless network. The Government and OPEL aren’t building WIMAX in metropolitan areas – companies like Unwired are already promising to do that. But they will build it in rural and regional areas, theoretically ensuring that a WIMAX equipped notebook, either with an add-in card or in the notebooks that Intel will be selling in 2008, will be able to log in to the Internet wirelessly in the bush. Of course, laptop and notebook users already have access to 3G and 3.5G wireless broadband cards that already give Australia-wide access, with Telstra’s Next-G cards offering speeds of 550kbps to 1.5Mbps in coverage areas 100 times larger than competing 3G phone networks. Telstra says the Next-G network is already ‘up-to’ 14.4Mbps speeds enabled, but devices reaching this speed aren’t on sale yet. The speculation is that Telstra will start selling ‘up-to’ 7.2Mbps capable 3.5G data cards and USB devices in a month or so, with some of today’s ‘up-to’ 3.6Mbps devices able to be firmware upgraded to support the 7.2Mbps standard. Telstra have made their opposition to the plan clear at their corporate blog, Now We Are Talking, saying that the infrastructure is already available with Next-G and is being needlessly duplicated, with $1 billion of government money going to ‘Singapore’. Telstra also claims that WIMAX is an unproven technology that might only deliver 256kbps of speed reliably over the air due to a ‘high frequency spectrum and low coverage range’. Unfortunately, Intel say the exact opposite, branding WIMAX a great technology for long range wireless broadband. In researching this article, we spoke to a Telstra representative who suggested we speak to Telstra CTO Dr Hugh Bradlow about the claims of WIMAX’s shortcomings which we will try to do tomorrow (Tuesday 19th). Given that WIMAX is being promoted as a reliable wireless broadband technology and is being installed by Sprint and Nextel in the US, and in other countries, and will be built into 2008 model notebooks, it will be interesting to hear more detail of Telstra’s reasoning, but they do have a trump card: the Next-G network works today, and already covers 98.8% of the population. Despite Telstra’s claims the money is ‘going to Singapore’, the money will be used to build a network, and the equipment, installation and servicing needed is expensive. Yes, it might duplicate a lot of what Telstra already covers with Next-G. But if the network is built as planned, and also connects to the FTTN network that either Telstra or the G9 will build, it will provide more than duplication. It will provide competition, and redundancy – and neither is bad, on the contrary, we need them. So, what is wrong with Telstra's Next-G network, especially considering it is the fastest and biggest wireless network in Australia today? For the conclusion, please read onto page 3 now. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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