RSSCould an Aussie WiMAX 'disaster' have been prevented?
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published March 25, 2008, 4:59 PM
Although an Australian WiMAX operator publicly branded his experience a "disaster" at a WiMAX conference in Thailand, its hardware partner, Airspan, is blaming the WiMAX problems on the operator's unwillingness to invest enough money or to bring in outside expertise.
Buzz Broadband CEO Garth Freeman stunned an international WiMAX conference in Thailand this week with complaints about network delays and jitter on VoIP and other Internet applications, along with poor wireless coverage range for the 3.5 GHz WiMAX link both indoors and in non-line-of-sight outdoor transmissions.
But Airspan, the Australian ISP's partner in WiMAX, maintains that it could have avoided the coverage range problems by choosing more costly macro-cell devices instead of cheaper micro-cell units, and that quality of service (QoS) issues could have been resolved if Buzz had accepted Airspan's invitation to pay for an independent QoS analysis.
In an interview today with BetaNews, Airspan CMO Declan Byrne acknowledged that wireless links in the 500 to 700 MHz spectrum can also provide a much wider range of coverage than those in the 3.5 GHz band.
But Byrne told BetaNews that, while Airspan plans to provide 500 to 700 MHz WiMAX when a "standard" WiMAX profile becomes available for that range, at the moment, Airspan only offers "proprietary" wireless networking technology in that lower frequency range. Generally speaking, the 700 MHz band is seen as offering advantages in terms of wider coverage range and greater ability to penetrate tree coverage and other obstacles, although services running in the higher bands can carry much more data.
The WiMAX Forum is currently working on a 700 MHz profile for the WiMAX standard, according to Robert Sypuda, a senior analyst at Maravedis, a Montreal-based market research and analysis firm focusin on the telecom industry.
Outside of the 3.5 GHz and 500 to 700 MHz bands, Airspan also sells WiMAX and proprietary wireless technologies in a variety of other frequencies.
As detailed in the Austalian publication Commsday, Buzz Broadband's Freeman told conference-goers in Thailand this week that indoor performance of Buzz's WiMAX 3.5 GHz network degraded past 400 meters, and that non-line-of-sight outdoor performance was "non-existent" past two kilometers.
But according to Byrne, Buzz used Airspan's MicroMaxd, POST, and EasyST, the same equipment which is installed in many of Airspan's roughly 100 other WiMAX deployments.
"With regard to range, although Airspan offers both micro-cell and macro-cell base station solutions, Buzz Broadband opted to go with the less expensive micro-cell base stations in order to reduce cost. This was a well understand tradeoff of cost vs. range," according to Airspan's CMO.
In terms of QoS, Byrne cited "significant under-provisioning issues" in the core network connecting Airspan's WiMAX equipment to the Internet.
"Very early in the relationship, Airspan technical services determined that Buzz' backhaul network was considerably under-dimensioned (again to save cost) and lacked sufficient QoS, and that these factors were the direct cause of the VoIP quality issues in the network," Byrne said in a statement. "Airspan even went to far as to offer to fund a third-party analysis to help Buzz understand these issues. Both Airspan's help and third-party assistance were refused by Mr. Freeman."
For his part, Freeman said that Buzz has now abandoned its WiMAX network, which served about 200 customers, in favor of technology that includes TD-CDMA 1.9 GHz -- used by operators such as Woosh Wireless of New Zealand -- along with a solution called wireless DOCSIS, which extends the capabilities of an HFC plant through wireless mesh.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Airspan announced the Isle of Wight as its latest WiMAX customer.
"At Airspan, we pride ourselves on our customer service and our excellent products," according to Byrne. "WiMAX has proven to be enormously successful from a technical standpoint, and Buzz' allegations, even when so easily dismissed, are a distraction to the WiMAX industry and ultimately a disservice to the millions of satisfied wireless access customers worldwide."
This all goes to prove that no matter how capable a technology, there is always someone around who will try to cut corners and who will subsequently blame the technology for their incompetence and lack of adequate planning.
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Mobile WiMAX falls short of expectations?
Betanews has reported about the dispute which has erupted over bad WiMax performance based on the report by an Australian WiMAX operator. The report cites of loss of service with direct connectivity beyond 2 Km and inbuilding coverage of only a few hundred meters from the base station.
WiMAX technology has proved itself in more than 300 trials and a number of commercial launches. Some of the recent ones are the QMAX harbour area WiMAX in Singapore, Wateen telecom in Pakistan, Tata Indicom in India and a number of operators in Latin America.
A network can not defy the laws of physics and the link performances need to be built in. First of all, the higher frequency ranges used in Australia ( nearing the extended c-band at 3.6 GHz are no help as the loss increases with square of frequency as well as distance. Secondly WiMAX base stations come in different versions such as carrier grade, Micro base stations and Pico base stations. These are with different power levels and can not deliver more than their scheduled range.
http://www.wimax-home.com
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Well, in rural West Virginia, and that's just about as rural as it gets, Sprint has better "coverage" than anyone. The downside is that their signal degrades greatly indoors compared to other carriers. I say this as an AT&T customer with friends who have Sprint and Verizon. Since WiMAX is really targeted at those not served by terrestrial broadband, area of coverage will naturally be the #1 priority. A simple exterior antenna/repeater will fix any problems with structure penetration (Sprint already offers this, btw). People who have never lived in the sticks don't understand what a "fat pipe" would be for those trapped with 26.4 dial-up.
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Yes, sprint should have thought of what they were doing to there customers by completely ignoring them before they put all there effort into this. I mean were in the world can you find signal for sprint.
www.talkprice.net
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Would you get out of here with your spam posts?
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