Telecoms firm Pipex, in a joint venture with Intel, will blanket parts of Milton Keynes in the UK with WiMax. It is expected to announce the launch plans in around four weeks.
“Milton Keynes will be probably the first place for a major proving roll-out of WiMax in the UK,” Steven Jewell, head of IT for Milton Keynes, told Reuters. Airspan Networks will provide the base stations for the Pipex-funded project.
Milton Keynes is famed in Britain for the black and white concrete cow statues which planners added when building the town in the 1970s. The city, roughly 95 kilometres north west of London, lags behind most UK cities in terms of high-speed Internet access. WiMax is seen as a way around the problem, giving its 220,000 inhabitants broadband access.
Pipex has said it plans to roll out WiMax in eight UK cities by 2008, led by networks in London and Manchester. It has declined to say how much the total project is expected to cost.
Speeds of 10Mbps down and 9Mbps up have been achieved to external antennas at the test house at 1.2km from the base station in a Stratford-upon-Avon trail, with indoor speeds in excess of 2Mbps achieved at a range of 1.2km from the base station with no direct line of sight.
Many mobile firms are having to write off their huge 3G costs, after spending more than 100 billion euros ($128 billion) some six years ago for 3G spectrum. Now they are attempting to thwart WiMax in the hope of forcing people to use their 3G services.
The GSM Association is particularly concerned about the fate of the 3G extension bands (2.5 – 2.690 GHz), which it believes must be reserved for the IMT2000 (3G) technologies. The UK will likely use the 3.5 GHz band for WiMAX.
Pipex holds the national license for 3.5GHz spectrum but, to date, hasn’t used the asset, leaving the PCCW-owned UK Broadband the only significant player in licensed broadband wireless services with its nationwide 3.4GHz holdings.
UK Broadband’s owner is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong telecoms giant, Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW), which currently owns all 15 licenses for the 3.4GHz UK band. Perhaps that implies that BBC Broadband, BT and others will go with the unlicensed (5.8 GH) band.
The UK’s Broadband Stakeholder Group is the government’s key advisory group on Broadband. It provides advice on the Government strategy to meet its target for the UK to have the most extensive and competitive Broadband market in the G7. The UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), equivalent to the U.S. FCC, proposess to streamline the licensing of private radio communications, open the 71-76GHz and 81-86GHz bands and the 28 GHz band for licensed use.
Eircom currently has around 480 WiFi hotspots located around Ireland. That figure is expected to rise to more than 900 in the next year. The initiative is expected to provide broadband access to over 500,000 businesses and residents across 18 Irish counties with between 20 and 30 wireless hotspots installed per town.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Euro Fight for 2 Dot 5, UK: Free For All, Kent WiMaxes at 10Mbps, GlasgowNet, Stratford-on-WiMax, Spectrum War in Europe, London Explosions & Wireless Fallout and Digital City Winners.
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