This does not surprise me. I have never thought that any type of indoor
CPE
business plan would do well for wireless internet. There are just too many
unknown factors when it comes to placing a low power CPE without an external
antenna in the hands of customers. They do not understand the limitations of
wireless. Things like aluminum siding and stucco with wire mesh are just a
couple of the big problems that you will run in to. Other items like
metallic mirror film on windows and too many interior walls between the CPE
and tower site are others. From an RF perspective it is always preferable to
be above all of that (i.e. Rooftop) with the radio/antenna. If most of the
buildings in the neighborhood are of the same height, building losses are a
non-issue because you are now above them. The only thing left to worry about
is the trees. Using outdoor antenna/CPE combinations should also allow you
higher EIRP since the maximum permissible exposure rules would change with
the unit being away from the general public.
While you can make the case for customer self installs, you would need
to
have many more base stations so that you would have plenty of signal to
overcome the building losses. This may work in a densely populated area
where you can justify the numbers (but you also have more competition). In
rural markets I would suggest to anyone making a business plan, figure on
doing fixed outdoor CPE installations. With a properly equipped WIMAX base
station costing around $40,000, a small WISP would be able to conduct many
truck rolls for that price. The low housing density markets just don't
justify the cost of a properly engineered indoor CPE wireless network
(meaning it would take many more towers to work correctly). There would
never be the return on the invested dollar.
That is just my opinion, I am sure others will disagree with me. If you
want a good way to think about it, how many times have you run around a
building with your cell phone in a weak coverage area to keep a good call
going? WIMAX indoor CPE's will be no different. The bigger problem will be
that the customer will not want to move their computer in the house just to
get a better broadband signal. This will easily create an unhappy consumer,
and then an unhappy investor (and also clueless management). I read some
commissioned market studies (can't tell you where, but they were good ones)
about the average customer expectation of how and where wireless internet
should work. The scary thing was that they honestly believed that they
should be able to run around the house ANYWHERE with their laptop and their
broadband should just work. This was how they perceived "wireless internet"
working and they did not believe that they would have to install their own
wireless AP in the house to achieve this. This basic perception by the
consumer is far different than we all understand these networks to work. It
sets a business up to get a black eye in the minds of users (which will also
stress out the folks who sold the idea to investors).
Bottom line to me is, you can't ignore the laws of physics.........no
matter how many times the sales rep tells you it will work.......It's all in
the math.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Behalf Of Matt Liotta
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 3:35 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: [WISPA] Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology as
"miserablefailure"
http://www.commsday.com/node/228
Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology as "miserable failure"
March 20th, 2008
Australia’s first WiMAX operator, Hervey Bay’s Buzz Broadband, has
closed its network, with the CEO labeling the technology as a
“disaster” that “failed miserably.”
In an astonishing tirade to an international WiMAX conference audience
in Bangkok yesterday afternoon, CEO Garth Freeman slammed the
technology, saying its non-line of sight performance was “non-
existent” beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, indoor
performance decayed at just 400m and that latency rates reached as
high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it
unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP,
which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to
shed their use of incumbent services.
Freeman highlighted his presentation with a warning to delegates,
saying “WiMAX may not work.” He said that the technology was still
“mired in opportunistic hype,” pointing to the fact most deployments
were still in trials, that it was largely used by start-up carriers
and was supported by “second-tier vendors”, which he contrasted with
HSPA with 154 commercial networks already in operation and support
from top tier vendors.
What made Freeman’s presentation most extraordinary was that just 12
months ago he fronted the same event with a generally positive
appraisal of the platform which at that stage he had deployed just a
few months before. At the time, Freeman said that his company had
signed 10% of its 55,000 user target market in just two months, a
market share that rose to 25%, on the back of an advertising campaign
that highlighted value VoIP prices.
He did acknowledge at the time that the technology had indoor coverage
issues, which he yesterday said had earned him a quick and negative
reaction at the time from his supplier, Airspan. Other early WiMAX
adopters have also reported issues with indoor coverage: VSNL in India
reported indoor loss at just 200m from the base station at an IEEE
conference last year.
HORSES FOR COURSES: Freeman says Buzz has now abandoned WiMAX in
favour of a “horses for courses” policy. This includes use of the TD-
CDMA standard at 1.9GHz—used by operators such as New Zealand’s Woosh
Wireless—and a platform he described as wireless DOCSIS– a relatively
little known technology that takes HFC plant and extends its
capabilities via wireless mesh. He said wireless DOCSIS operates at up
to 38Mbps in the 3.5GHz spectrum and its customer premises equipment
supported two voice ports for under $A70 while it boasted “huge cell
coverage.” He also was employing more conventional wireless mesh
platforms at 2.4GHz that support up to 10Mbps with CPE voice ports
costing less than A$80.
Despite his problems with WiMAX, Freeman is a believer that
competitors should operate their own infrastructure and not depend on
Telstra unbundled or wholesale offerings. Prior to Buzz he was
involved in the rollout of regional Victorian HFC networks as an
executive with Neighborhood Cable. He says the use of wireless is
essential in Hervey Bay, because ADSL is blocked to 80% of the
population because of Telstra’s use of pairgain and RIMs, while what
ADSL ports are available are now largely exhausted. But years of
successive government policies had weakened the case for standalone
infrastructure, beginning with restrictive policies in the pay
television market which he said undermined independent HFC deployments.
“I’m against government micromanagement of the market. Government
should start to provide a conducive investment environment.”
Not all WiMAX operators are unhappy.
Internode says an Airspan-supplied network is providing consistent
average speeds of 6Mbps at distances up to 30km, with CEO Simon
Hackett describing the platform as “proven.”
Freeman’s frank words left many at the WiMAX event looking
uncomfortable but none more so than his co-panelist Adrian de Brenni
representing Opel Networks. De Brenni, standing in for an absent Jason
Horley, said little new about Opel that hasn’t already been discussed,
except to state that QoS would be a product feature of the future Opel
wholesale offering “including voice.”
by Grahame Lynch
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