WiMax World: Vendors point to speed, lower costs

Computerworld - BOSTON -- Vendors of WiMax wireless technology and services predicted this week at WiMax World here that the emerging technology will vastly enhanced wireless bandwidth at a fraction of the current cost.

But some IT managers and analysts, while enthralled with higher wireless bandwidth potential, said the costs of WiMax-type service to business users remain murky, even as some vendors at the show said the expense to carriers will be a fraction of today's cellular wireless costs.

WiMax actually involves two approved wireless standards: one for fixed use and one for mobile use. The nonprofit WiMax Forum has predicted on its Web site that the technology will offer throughput of between 15Mbit/sec. and 40Mbit/sec. over a range of six miles. By comparison, today's best cellular EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) networks max out at 700Kbit/sec.

In August, Sprint Nextel Corp. announced a $3 billion investment in WiMax in coming years, and Sprint Chief Technology Officer Barry West this week said at the conference that WiMax will yield a tenfold improvement in cost and performance per megabit/second compared with the cost of infrastructure and operations for its EVDO network. Sprint has not revealed what it expects to charge businesses or consumers for WiMax services, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Nortel Networks Corp. showcased a cellular base station transceiver for mobile wireless that it plans to sell to carriers next year. The display included a promotional sign promising "three times the speed of current wireless networks at one-third the cost."

WiMax World, while overwhelmingly focused on equipment makers and service providers, attracted a few IT professionals from user companies. Roy Russell, founding CTO of Zipcar Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., welcomed WiMax as a potential way of adding bandwidth to the company's fleet of 2,000 cars for Zipcar drivers.

Zipcar rents cars over the Internet in the downtowns of some North American cities. Its members can use a membership card that they scan on a card reader when they pick up the car to unlock it. Membership information and car status are transmitted wirelessly from Zipcar over Cingular Wireless' General Packet Radio Service to each car, Russell said.

With added WiMax bandwidth, Zipcar might be able to install a Wi-Fi access point in each car to allow a user to access the Internet via a handheld or laptop. "The broadband wireless user is our customer," Russell said in a brief interview.

But he predicted that any decision to tap into WiMax service is a "long, long ways away." And Russell, like many others, was unsure who would provide the service and how much it would cost.