Introduction
In recent years, Broadband technology has rapidly become an established, global commodity required by a high percentage of the population. The demand has risen rapidly, with a worldwide installed base of 57 million lines in 2002 rising to an estimated 80 million lines by the end of 2003. This healthy growth curve is expected to continue steadily over the next few years and reach the 200 million mark by 2006. DSL operators, who initially focused their deployments in densely-populated urban and metropolitan areas, are now challenged to provide broadband services in suburban and rural areas where new markets are quickly taking root. Governments are prioritizing broadband as a key political objective for all citizens to overcome the "broadband gap" also known as "digital divide".
Abstract
WiMAX is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL. WiMAX will provide fixed nomadic, portable and, eventually, mobile wireless broadband connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight with a base station. In a typical cell radius deployment of three to ten kilometers, WiMAX Forum Certified™ systems can be expected to deliver capacity of up to 40 Mbps per channel, for fixed and portable access applications. This is enough bandwidth to simultaneously support hundreds of businesses with T-1 speed connectivity and thousands of residences with DSL speed connectivity. Mobile network deployments are expected to provide up to 15 Mbps of capacity within a typical cell radius deployment of up to three kilometers. It is expected that WiMAX technology will be incorporated in notebook computers and PDAs in 2006, allowing for urban areas and cities to become “Metro Zones” for portable outdoor broadband wireless access.
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There are several ways to get a fast Internet connection to the middle of nowhere. Until not too long ago, the only answer would have been "cable" - that is, laying lines. Cable TV companies, who would be the ones to do this, had been weighing the costs and benefits. However this would have taken years for the investment to pay off. So while cable companies might be leading the market for broadband access to most people (of the 41% of Americans who have high-speed Internet access, almost two-thirds get it from their cable company), they don't do as well to rural areas. And governments that try to require cable companies to lay the wires find themselves battling to force the companies to take new customers. Would DSL be a means of achieving this requisite of broadband and bridging the digital divide?
WiMAX
WiMax delivers broadband to a large area via towers, just like cell phones. This enables your laptop to have high-speed access in any of the hot spots. Instead of yet another cable coming to your home, there would be yet another antenna on the cell-phone tower. This is definitely a point towards broadband service in rural areas.
Wi-Fi
The WiMAX Forum is keen to present 802.16 as complementary to the local area IEEE standard, 802.11 or Wi-Fi. In many ways, this is right—802.16a, as we have seen, provides a low cost way to backhaul Wi-Fi hotspots and WLAN points in businesses and homes, and as uptake of Wi-Fi increases, the requirement for this backhaul will grow too.
Extended Wi-Fi
Some companies are still sticking with Wi-Fi rather than WiMAX as a metro area wireless standard. There are various approaches to extending Wi-Fi's range and capacity, but all are based on proprietary extensions. Their supporters take the view that they can offer a solution now, particularly to the enterprise, but with the speed of development of WiMAX, this argument will not hold weight for very long.
Other Wi-Fi extenders take the approach of fiddling with the media access control layer rather than directing beams in a more efficient way, Vivato's approach and that of many BWA specialists too. Some of these have got prices down to less than initial WiMAX equipment is likely to be, around $300 per subscriber (though WiMAX, starting around $500, is sure to drop to this level rapidly). However, given that these are proprietary technologies from start-ups and still have some limitations compared to WiMAX, it seems unlikely that many operators will choose them rather than waiting 6-9 months for 802.16.
Mobile-Fi
Standards battles are normally conducted in dusty committees and arouse little interest among technology purchasers until the vendors move the specifications into real products and real marketing wars. The IEEE's wireless standards are proving an exception to this.
Conclusion
WiMAX will become the dominant solution in China, the world's largest potential market for broadband users. The standard has already been adopted by the government and will fill in many of the gaps in the sketchy 3G coverage. The hype around Wi-Fi will die down and 802.11 will return to its rightful place as a useful but limited local area technology, fully integrated with WiMAX at the backhaul. WiMAX will be the most significant technology to date in making wireless access ubiquitous and, as more free spectrum is opened up, in creating a major shake-up of the traditional shape of the wireless and mobile communications sector.
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