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WiMax Needed Here – and Soon !
by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast
Closing out the week of family vacation, and getting ready for the trip back to the midwest.
After a weeks worth of chasing WiFi hotspots in small towns and rural locations, keeping the PublicVPN connection when I could, I am at the same time encouraged and discouraged by the experience.
I’ve been using networks provideed by Hilton / Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Panera Bread, Flying J, SBC, tMobile and Truckstops of America.
The main frustration has been the variability. At times gmail connections and FTP uploads sailed through – and other times, pages would refuse to load and uploads would slow to a crawl.
Of course, there are all sorts of variables that need to be considered – radio path, signal strengths being not the least of these. The bottom line, though – this is just too hard. You move quickly from the amazement that it works at all, to the amazement and then irritation when you move quickly into that region known as “not for fun”.
Business Week Online has an article called A Wake-Up Call From Craig McCaw.
Clearwire’s plan to create a mobile broadband network could make waves for existing carriers – and according to the article, build out a nationwide WIMAX network within the next three years. Clearwire got a big boost on July 5, when Intel Corp. (INTC ) and Motorola Inc. (MOT ) pumped nearly $900 million into the company. The article continues ” What’s more, because WiMAX infrastructure is so much cheaper to build than traditional networks, Clearwire can likely afford to offer a nationwide mobile service for as little as $25 a month.” That $60 per month for a Verizon EVDO and a mandatory 2 year parallel lock in on cellphone service to boot looks pretty non-competitive.
Clearwire will not be making any friends: Verizon is spending $20 billion to $40 billion to roll out fiber-optic lines to homes over the next 10 or so years. Meanwhile, the cellular carriers have spent comparable amounts on so-called 3rd Generation networks. But the WIMAX installation cost is but a fraction of that, permitting lower pricing and a slowing of availability of those alternatives. Totally disruptive.
Clearwire is going to find a ready market. Just like the two men being chased by the bear, you don’t have to be the fastest runner, able to outrun the bear – just faster than the other guy.
Based on this weeks WiFi field experiences, it looks like that’s going to be pretty easy going, if Clearwire delivers anything close to the hype for users like me.
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