| WiMAX delayed.. for a good cause
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| Written by HiVoltage |
Sunday, 23 April 2006
Last Friday, 21st April, MCA (Malta Communications Authority) issued a statement of proposed decision regarding the extension of deployment timeframes. As most of you probably already know, last October / November, 3 licenses for Broadband Wireless Access (wireless Internet) were granted in the 5GHz band. The 3 companies that got the license were Cellcom (a consortium of a number of ISPs including NextGen, Euroweb, etc.), Mobisle (Go Mobile), and Vodafone. Cellcom and Vodafone were obliged of having 50% coverage of the whole Maltese territory by next October, while Mobisle was supposed to offer 39% coverage by the same date. All these companies were supposed to use the WiMax protocols.
Since the time when the licenses were granted, however, there were some important developments in the market. The standards that were available at that time were 802.16, 802.16a and 802.16c, the latter two being slight amendments to the original standard. The weak point of these standards is that line of sight to the base station - or almost is required, meaning that most probably a roof antenna is required to get a signal. That is very far from the ultimate dream of going round with a laptop having reception everywhere. However, in December 2005, a new standard has been ratified. We're talking about 802.16e which was so highly marketed in last month's CeBIT technology fair in Germany. This new standard seeks to eliminate the line of sight requirement, meaning it is aiming for true mobility. In fact, you might have not heared the name 802.16e but have heared the name "Mobile WiMAX", which is only a more descriptive name for the same thing.
As the new standard has only been ratified last December, devices supporting it are not yet available, but should be by the end of this year. With the original timeframes that the operators were tied to, it would have been therefore impossible to make use of this standard, and the operators would have to build their networks using a soon-to-be obsolete technology. The 3 concerned companies therefore made a request to be given an extension to the original timelines so they can wait for the new devices to become available and start using it from the start. MCA has welcomed this request and proposed a 6 month extension to all the timelines. This is not a final decision yet, but MCA is inviting comments from the public regarding this matter. This consultation period ends on Friday 5th May.
We highly believe this is the right decision. Sometimes it is much wiser to wait rather than to jump the gun and end up offering a service of lower quality. On a similar cause, we are also hoping that MCA and the company owning digital radio (DAB) transmission rights, Digi B Network, decide that they should not start offering the service now, but wait for DABv2 which is coming soon and is much, much better regarding both audio quality and efficiency. We'll wait and see.
You may download the MCA proposal document here.
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 23 April 2006 ) |
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Posted By Anonymous on 12-Sep-2010, 09:54 PM
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