Sam Churchhill at DailyWireless.org makes an impassioned plea for WiMAX as a cost effective alternative to Wi-Fi.Sam Churchhill at DailyWireless.org accompanied the announcement of Los Angeles’ plans to build a city-wide muni wireless network this week with an impassioned plea for WiMAX as a cost effective alternative to Wi-Fi.
Churchill makes a strong case but WiMax remains largely unproven in the field. Are communities attracted by the economies it promises or spooked by the fact that it’s not been widely implemented? I’d like to see some healthy comments to this post about the points Sam raises:
(1) That the issue for cities is not “
(2) That WiMAX is much more cost effective than Wi-Fi. “Today. With cheap $25/mo Mobile WiMax riding on the “city cloud”, mounting a hotspot anywhere should be a snap. The infrastructure would be faster, cheaper and less risky.WiMax was designed for low-cost, city-wide access. Use it.‚Äö?Ѭ?Hundreds (or thousands) of WiFi nodes would be costly to build and maintain. It just seems too expensive. City clouds costing $75,000 a square mile? Oh, please. It should be $10,000-$25,000.
(3) That, although WiMAX should be tried, tested and given a chance. “WiMax is no slam dunk. It is largely unproven and untested. But engineers have done a commendable job, wringing out every last ounce of performance from this platform. Let’s see what she’ll do.”
Click here to read the full column.
The government is there to serve the citizens. How does $100 APs and $100 interface cards and $40 per month service serve the citizens? How does that “bridge the digital divide”? How does locking the entire city into a single service provider (licensed to use that spectrum) serve the community better?
Incredibly naive point of view…
I agree with whatupwireless, I think it a bit premature to suggest rolling out Muni-WiMax. It may well be that in 12-18months time, WiMax will play a role in the Muni-Wireless rollouts, however at this point and time it’s just to early…