Politicians drowning in WiMAX alphabet soup

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 21 June 2007 13:06

Opinion and Analysis

Close reading of speech shows that Conroy was really bemoaning the high cost of backhaul but that was not totally clear.

Anyhow, soon it was the ALP's turn to have a go at Coonan, who was brave enough to pretend she understood the distinctions between the two flavours of WiMAX: the older, well established 'fixed' WiMAX IEEE802.16d and the new, as yet not commercially available let alone commercially deployed 'mobile' WiMAX, IEEE802.16e.

The ALP was quick to attack: "In claiming that the government's 802.11d wireless broadband network will be compatible with the new range of 802.11e wireless chipsets, Senator Coonan has demonstrated that she does not understand the technology in which the government has just invested almost a billion dollars of taxpayers' money...Senator Coonan's dubious claims this week include: Stating that the government would deliver 'a minimum of 12mbps' to '100 percent of Australia' (a claim that was subsequently doctored on the Minister's website); stating that an 802.16d wireless broadband network operating in shared spectrum and broadcasting at low power could provide network coverage up to 50kms from the base station (despite the fact that the Opel press release only claims coverage of 20kms and some experts have suggested that actual coverage may be as little as 1.5kms...

The ALP has coined a wonderful term for this latest phase in what it said was "a systematic campaign of spin and deception [by the Coalition] in trying to sell its election year broadband bandaid network": ':Lie-MAX'.

I like Lie-MAX. However I don't think we have seen Lie-MAX yet. Like mobile WiMAX, the peak of spin and deception is someway off. In the coming days and weeks there will be an avalanche of misinformation on every aspect of WiMAX and its capabilities. And by the way, as there are yet to large scale mobile WiMAX networks in operation there remain quite few unknowns. Watch this space!