Peter Jarich on WiMax and WiFi Mesh
Wireless Week published the transcript of a panel discussion with Peter Jarich, principal analyst for wireless infrastructure at Current Analysis. Topics include WiMax and 802.11 mesh networks primarily.
The WiMAX Forum has been certifying initial WiMAX products since the start of the year; 802.11 mesh networks have been launched across the globe. Meanwhile, vendors are promising 802.16e-2005 and multi-radio products (refer to Nokia, Motorola, Intel [pdf] etc.).
Wireless standards are certainly not strangers to exaggerated claims and repeated failures to live up to expectations. In spite of all the hype, Jarich remains sceptical about real-world performance of WiMax and he doesn’t see WiMax competing head-on with 3G in the near term (didn’t I hear Capgemini say something along the same lines recently).
From the article:
We hear about all the deployments taking place. We hear about all the ambitious network plans. What we don’t hear about is performance under load. In part, it’s because we haven’t seen too many widescale deployments with heavily loaded nodes and contention between users, enterprise WiFi, hotspots, home APs, etc. I’m just waiting for the headlines: “Philly WiFi offers user speeds on par with dial-up.” In the meantime, I’m waiting for vendors to release some case studies showing that they can provide real broadband to lots of users in interference-laden markets.
(More WiMax news: Motorola announced a new carrier-class 802.16e WiMax base station, joining the previously announced MOTOwi4 Ultra Light Access Point (launched at WiMax World Europe, interworking with a data card incorporating an 802.16e chipset from Beceem Communications. Expected to ship into trials by the end of 2006, the carrier-class base station incorporates MIMO and software-defined radio features and will support 2.5 and 3.5 GHz spectrum. Motorola also announced a contract for a nationwide wireless broadband voice and data network in Pakistan, with initial deployment to be completed by the second half of 2006, which is ahead of any plans for USA coverage I believe.)
