why does irish wimax suck?

bealtine

Spotted this while surfing around thought it might be of interest to readers of this forum.

http://www.novanetworks.ie/?strFrame=/residential/index.asp?

Why Does Irish WiMAX Suck So Badly?

Our MD tells you why....

Unless you live under a rock, you will by now have heard about the new "craze" that is spreading across the nation.

I am here to tell you why it is making people so "crazy".

First, please take a look at the reviews at RateMyISP.ie (warning:adult language). I really feel for those poor people who were woo'd by the glossy advertising. The promise of "Faster, Cheaper, Better" has become more like "Grief, Grief and More Grief". The reasons for this failed wireless broadband roll-out are:

1) Bad choice of radio spectrum band. 3.5GHz sucks for indoor coverage
If you look at the "dial" on an old manually tuned FM car radio, you will see it goes from 88 up to 108. 2FM hangs out around 90-92. TodayFM hangs out around the 100-104 mark. Everyone gets their slice of the airwaves.

Mobile (dongle) or Nomadic (window modem) WiMAX around the world usually hangs out at the 2500 mark (2.5GHz). At this "slice", radio waves can (kind of) see around corners, through walls, etc. Therefore they can get good indoor coverage. BUT in Ireland, UPC use this for the MMDS TV service, so it is not available.

The current WiMAX rollout in Ireland uses 3500 (3.5GHz) on the radio dial. At these frequencies, radio waves are pretty poor at seeing around corners, through walls, etc, so indoor coverage is rubbish.

Bad choice, guys, your whole roll-out is based on a fundamental flaw from the start!

2) Oversubscription of the service
Do you know ANYONE who reckons their mobile broadband is as good as fixed line or fixed wireless? Neither do I. With wild promises of speed, all you really get is a couple of meg at best.

Picture this: A mobile/nomadic broadband company, whether using 3G or WiMAX, put up a base station in suburb X. The base station can give good service to one user, reasonable service to say 100 users, rubbish service to any more than that. But the problem is, as it is mobile/nomadic, they have NO way of predicting how loaded that base station will become. 300 users could turn up as they buy dongles or window modems as the sales people blindly load orders up on the system, desperately chasing targets.

By contrast, fixed line broadband has X number of lines capacity, full stop. Our fixed wireless service is installed by us at each home/business, so we can predict exact loading and never overload our sectors.

Does your WiMAX suck? How many neighbours are using it? Probably more than your provider expected.

3) A provider believing glossy spec-sheets from vendors
Believe me, I've seen it all. Big-name (and small-name) equipment vendors promise the earth, moon and stars on spec-sheets for base stations and subscriber units. My rule is to halve each value. If they say it has a range of 20Km, take it as 10Km. If they say it will do 50Mb, take it as 25Mb. Unfortunately for the company involved in the failed WiMAX rollout, the promise of the economics of self-install customers is so attractive that the figures quoted by the equipment vendors must have been taken as achievable in the real world - they never are. So YOUR service from them is based on something that can never be.

Does that sound like faster OR better OR cheaper to you?

Dave Mc Donald
MD of Nova Networks.

PogMoThoin

Title should be changed to "why does Imagine wimax suck?", some providers are doing fine with their fixed WiMax

bealtine

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Title should be changed to "why does Imagine wimax suck?", some providers are doing fine with their fixed WiMax

Fair point and very true...

lucernarian

I think the title should be left as it is or else put within inverted commas as it is the actual title of the article by the MD of Nova Networks. Adding " - Article from Nova Networks" is also fine with me.

He could do worse things than to send it to the so-called Next Generation task force chaired by Pat Rabbitte TD.

watty

Nothing that hasn't been said before

bealtine

watty wrote: »

Nothing that hasn't been said before

True but it's no harm to keep it in the forefront:)

paulm17781

watty wrote: »

Nothing that hasn't been said before

His is really nicely polished to non-techies, I reckon my mother would understand that.

PogMoThoin

Where are the Imagine shills that were flat out posting their praises when their WiMax launched?

watty

Suing their supplier.

Intel has essentially swung behind LTE now instead of Mobile WiMax. Infineon.