Thursday, January 10. 2008LTE versus WiFi versus WiMaxJohn Linton As part of the ongoing attempt to find a truly usable and cost/effective alternative to wire line based data services I read all that I can find about the developments towards LTE, progress on deploying WiMax and WiFi implementations in the USA and in Europe. I'd have liked to have attended CES this year (and not just so I could indulge my addiction to playing craps with real craps devotees) but have had to content myself with getting the daily updates via email and sporadic phone call contact with a business friend based in the USA who was giving one of the presentations and with whom we may do business at some later date. If you follow the bits and pieces reported in the Australian and US telecommunications journals you will have realised that there are now many very seriously large communications companies betting their corporate futures on one of these three methods of providing 'wire less' data services and the progress/number of end users and speed of data transfer has made a tenfold increase since CES last year. I referenced the Nokia/Siemens live testing in Germany in a previous posting here and Intel's Paul Otellini's key note address on WiMAX and Intel's investments in its development has been widely reported in the Australian industry 'press'. The presentation yesterday by Broadcom on new developments in WiFi was similarly impressive in terms of how far WiFi has come over the past 12 months. I certainly don't have anything like enough knowledge to begin to 'pick a winner' between these three competing technologies but I'm immensely encouraged that so much real, and apparent, progress is being reported by so many large and influential development companies in both Europe and in the USA. This contrasts to the almost deafening silence from the huge wire line carriers (not unexpected) and the not quite as muted but less than fully enthusiastic statements from the mobile network owners - whom, I would have thought, have the most to gain from wire less data developments. If you add all the projected numbers up that are contained in the various presentations you get to a prediction that over 1 billion end users will use WiMAx/WiFi/LTE by mid 2009 for their main data communications services with all of those services also being used for VoIP voice calls. If anything remotely like that actually becomes a reality then most of the world, with the possible exception of Australia, Japan and Korea looks like moving to a 'full replacement' of wire line voice call and data communications services within 5 years. Undoubtedly a lot of things will change over the next 18 months but I'm definitely going to book to go to CES next January as I think it will be a defining moment in deciding what most small companies such as Exetel should aim at doing in the future. By that time the array of end user equipment and the likely connectivity requirements for a small company should be pretty fully defined. Meanwhile we will proceed with offering business users Ethernet type data services over WiFi within the next few weeks which will be the start of a gradual move away from wire line based data services, at least for business users, and will give our small company's limited engineering resources the practical experience we will need in the future if the current 'promises' become realities. It continues to look like 2008 will be a very, very interesting year. Trackbacks
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I think you will find Japan is leading the way in wireless data delivery to the point it has displaced the pc with smart phones.
Pity the system is incompatible with Australia for the most part although Telstra's nextG network is sourced from there as I understand it "More than 50 percent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. The same survey found that 30 percent of people with e-mail on their phones used PC-based e-mail less, including 4 percent who said they had stopped sending e-mails from PCs completely." http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071105a6.html Comment (1)
In Hong Kong, there is a service called Netvigator Everywhere that allows you to access three wireless technologies (HSDPA, 3G/4G and WiFi) along with software that chooses the best one depending on your location for a flat monthly fee.
My estimate is that Australia will get something similar to this around 2020. The rest of the world will probably have wireless gigabit+ access. Comment (1)
The NextG network has more in common with Verizon's network in the US. Both are 850 MHz W-CDMA networks.
When I was working with some guys involved in the initial NextG rollout, all of them had test handsets, and all of them were VerizonWireless phones. Comments (2)
There are two events that make me hope that your guess about Australia getting a similar service, although completely understandable, is way off:
Optus and Vodafone have announced agressive, accelerated nation-wide 3G rollouts Optus, Vodafone and Three have released data products that make all previous offerings in this country look absolutely terrible (and Telstra's current offerings belong in that second category). Seven Network's investment in Unwired and iBurst's tinkering surely bode well for the market too. Comments (2)
Yes, that's correct - but the current speeds of data (and the download allowances included in those plans)over 3G will not be sufficient for the widespread use that i was referring to.
What is happening in Australia is very welcome and it should point the way to the current 'government' in not providing money for yet another wire line network as the desired 21st century communications network for a country like Australia. If, and it remains an 'if', HTE etc actually deliver high speed (20 mbps +) data communications for an economical cost then it would be highly desirable to make that the way forward as it eliminates any reliance on the Telstra monopoly. As far as I can see the ONLY way the 'government' could otherwise invest in infrastructure would be to split the current Telstra in to the logical components that should have been done in the first place - all infrastructure owned by a 'wholesale' company and Telstra 'Retail' left to compete on its merits by buying services from the wholesale operation. While that is a position consistently put forward by the Labour Party over the past 12 years it isn't the most likely option based on the ongoing retraction of all previous 'promises' and 'positions' apparently espoused prior to winning the recent election. ("We'll change everything once we get elected" - is proving to be an exact description of what has already happened and will happen). "We should comply with 'Kyoto'" - transpired in to signing a piece of paper that committing to targets that had already been met and refusing to sign for the next level of commitment. "We should treat boat refugees with respect and sympathy" transpired to having the first of such boats intercepted and the people immediately returned to Indonesia without allowing them on to Australian soil. "In office we would never approve environmentally disastrous projects such as this" transpired as rubber stamping a radically altered proposal to dredge Port Phillip Bay (to a depth of 5 metres instead of the 2 meters) with the failed POP singer not even bothering to read the proposal and mistaking Western Port Bay for Port Phillip Bay. I have every confidence that something that IS sensible like splitting Telstra and heavily promoted by the Labour Party for 12 years prior to the election will go the same way as the first three "key" commitments. Comments (2)
For those of us who do not frequent the executive stratosphere could you indicate what HTE stands for, even Google can only offer a dull High Tech Equipment.
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Sorry, I've updated HTE to LTE - my mistake in using my own acronyms carelessly.
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If you follow the bits and pieces reported.....
Don't forget to divide all the hype by 10 to 100, preferably with help from someone with a deep enough engineering background to respect the laws of physics. I certainly don't have anything like enough knowledge to begin to 'pick a winner' between these three competing technologies.... Well not quite competing, WiFi is only intended for single building coverage, WiMax(Mobile) and LTE are competing wide area networks to support a portable multifunction data device but with different politics. LTE is designed to endorse the position of existing Telcos and provide backward compatibility of existing mobile networks. WiMax is a clean sheet design with a data neutral Internet background. The engineering result will be much the same with WiMax better value for the customer, but politics will probably decide the result. If you add all the projected numbers up that.... This is where the hype problem gets in the way. Whilst all the wireless vendors quote projected high speeds they do not mention the speed-distance compromise and neglect to explain that the speed ends up shared between a number of customers. While wireless will provide many innovative mobile applications and connections in rural areas or developing countries with poor infrastructure there is no way it has the capacity to make a significant impression on the data volumes required for 'full replacement' in developed countries. The only foreseeable technology is FTTH, consider the capacity to provide several HD VoD streams the Linton household, then multiply by the rest of the community. Meanwhile we will proceed with offering business users... If you want to do your own bit of 'Telco Busting' on more than a few local business customers then consider the forum discussion on Community Wireless a few months back and the carrier hardware/software products from this company. http://meraki.com Comments (2)
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