Personal Computing
U n t e t h e r e d : WiFi to the M A X WiMAX hopes to bring broadband to rural communities and developing markets When humankind expanded from occupying the ground to taking up the airwaves, there was a paradigm shift in the way things were done. Information was as close and accessible as the nearest radio and
the range o f wireless Internet access exponentially, making i t a potential solution for rural communities where broadband access is often not available. Leveraging existing infrastructure, a WiMAX station can be installed on a TV or radio tower or other high point on the landscape.
later, television would share the airspace bringing images to accompany
Here's where things get interesting.
the voices.
With line-of-sight to the structure housing the WiMAX station, houses can
Today, wireless is often perceived as the way to go with wireless
pull in a strong signal from up to 50 km away, proponents say. Without
networks at home and in the office, cordless and cellular phones,
line-of-sight, the range is diminished. However, the true range of WiMAX
Bluetooth and other wireless device-to-device connection methods.
has yet to be practically tested in real-world scenarios.
WiMAX is one standard for wide reaching wireless Internet access that
The Associated Press recently spoke of a remote village school outside
hopes to extend connectivity beyond the limited range of existing WiFi
Buenos Aires where choking dial-up connections were replaced with
(802.11a/b/g) technology.
broadband-speed WiMAX access in a carefully scripted media event,
While direct access to WiMAX signals by end•users is a way off, the standard is getting attention as a possible solution for rural communities as a "last mile" link to the rest of the world.
driving home the potential benefit to remote communities and schools. The technology allows for a shared bandwidth o f 70 Mbit/sec that, according to WiMAX cheerleaders, is enough to offer traditional broadband speed to over a thousand home users.
A new standard? Fredericton, New Brunswick was the first Canadian city t o offer publicly funded blanket wireless Internet access to area business, residents and visitors.
Up in the air? Whether WiMAX will - or even has the potential to - displace the current duopoly of broadband access (cable and direct subscriber line (DSL)) is
In places like Texas, the debate is ongoing as to whether public WiFi is a
much debated. For now at least, the focus is on the rural area angle where
fair government offering in a market economy [how are private 15Ps to
the only real options are costly satellite access with sometimes-
compete with "free" Internet access, after all) or whether it's reasonable to
unbearable uplink latency or excruciatingly slow dial-up access.
use tax money to fund such a project.
As WiMAX rolls out, the first products will likely be aimed at business and
Fredericton used the existing and common 802.11 WiFi standard, with a
government applications, though consumer applications are expected to
range of only a few hundred feet and a lower effective throughput, this
come on the tail. Wireless metropolitan area networks (WMAN) where users can roam
would require a great many repeaters and nodes to truly blanket even a small city.
around the city with full WiMAX coverage, accessing the Internet and web
Today, we're staring down the barrel of a potential new standard in
services at will might sound like something of a pipe dream but are not
wireless broadband Internet access. It's called WiMAX (Worldwide
entirely far-fetched. Currently, there are a few cities testing WiMAX coverage within their
Interoperability for Microwave Access) and as the acronymic name suggests, it's WiFi to the next level. Wireless standard 80216, in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE, www.ieee.org) book o f codes and standards pushes
borders. Notably, the city council for Brighton in the UK is running a pilot program in collaboration Sussex University and local company Metranet, the eGov Monitor (www.egovmonitorcom) reports. The idea is to give students and schools always-on access to the Net, blanketing 90 per cent of the city in WiMAX coverage while simultaneously laying the infrastructure to communicate cheaply and effectively with city employees in the field. Intel is a major supporter of WiMAX, stating that we'll start to see notebooks incorporating the technology in 2006. WiMAX does not spell the end of WiFi, however. The two standards are in fact complementary. A coffee shop offering wireless Internet access to customers could, for example, install a WiMAX receiver station that would then route to an existing 802.11a/b/g station t o allow customers to connect in the usual way using existing technology. Will we be walking around major cities, blanketed in always-on wireless similar to cell phone coverage? Time will tell, but with the current popularity of VolP and the recent release of wireless VolP handsets, it seems consumers are ready now. By Andrew Moore-Crispin
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H U B : Digital Living - J a n u a r y 2 0 0 6
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