Howard Beale: You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell . . . — Network!
An official at One Laptop per Child criticized the WiMAX community on Monday for mainly focusing on equipment in the licensed bands, reports EE Times.
“Try to find something in the 5.8GHz band. Forget it. It’s mostly just written about in the papers,” said Michail Bletsas, chief connectivity officer at OLPC, a non-profit group that is trying to bring $100 laptops to underprivileged children around the world.
Bletsas said he wishes the industry would spend more time on developing equipment for the unlicensed bands, a notion that was seconded by officials from some developing countries, such as Pakistan.
Who is the biggest Web host in open source? The answer, at least for the Mozilla Foundation, Debian GNU/Linux, Gentoo Linux, KernelTrap, Drupal, and many others is the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
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Developing in the 5.8GHz would require more base stations to cover an area, and that would raise costs, noted Liu Wei-tu, a product manager at Tecom Ltd. Licensed frequencies will drive down the price faster than the unlicensed spectrum, he opined.
But, according to One Laptop’s Bletsas, “WiMAX is being targeted at big operators. For innovation, we need a bottom-up approach, and right now WiMAX is moving in the opposite direction.”
The $175 One Laptop was all over Portland’s BarCamp this weekend. More than 200 cognoscenti demoed and smoozed in a fairly electric atmosphere at CubeSpace.
The work of Michael Burns and Justin Gallardo (above), volunteer software programmers for the One Laptop Per Child program at Oregon State’s Open Source Lab, led to a corporate gift of $500,000 to the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University from Real Networks.
Oregon State’s Open Source Lab is one of two universities supporting One Laptop (the other is MIT). Their Open Source data center hosts Firefox downloads as well as the development of targeted Open Software solutions in education, as well as research, government and business. The Lab works with other universities, governments and private sector business.
Universal access. Open software. Now all OLPC needs is Mobile Classware. But Microsoft claims that free software like Linux violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties.
Nokia Siemens says their Village Connection will deliver GSM access points for cellular access. The package will include a 5-meter antenna and other equipment so small villages can provide service within a range of 4 to 5 km (2.5 to 3 miles) for as little as $3 a month. Nearly three billion people live in smaller villages. An entrepreneur can provides local product support, billing and invoicing to all subscribers. It will be available in 2008.
WiMax is a better platform than mesh WiFi, to extend the coverage of the country’s national broadband backbone, say Patrick Liew, Intel’s country manager for Singapore. He noted that mesh networking was chosen to deploy the Wireless@Singapore’s network due to timeline constraints, but Mobile WiMAX is easier to manage [and cheaper to build]. ORZA’s SunMAX5800 CPE uses both Fujitsu’s WiMAX 5.8 GHz chips and Texas Instrument’s RF chip set in Singapore.
Fujitsu 5.8GHz WiMAX chips support frequencies ranging from 2 to 11GHz in both licensed and unlicensed bands. It’s now being used in commercial fixed WiMAX clients. Fujitsu chips are used in Airspan’s one-piece WiFi access point (right), for the backhaul. Fujitsu’s upcoming Mobile WiMAX chipset should extend their reach.
Sequans’ SQN1130 chip includes all MAC and PHY features required by the 802.16e Wave 2 mobile WIMAX, including full 2X2 MIMO, which may double the range. Wavesat has fixed 5.8 GHz WiMAX and Mobile WiMAX chips.
The WiMAX forum is based in Portland, Oregon, and WiMAX chairman Ron Resnick (left), likes to talk up the city as a global center of excellence for WiMAX.
If Resnick really wanted to make WiMAX happen on a global scale he might look into MILTON (Microwave Light Organized Network). It can have as many as 32 focused beams — in the unlicensed 5.8 GHz spectrum. Each MILTON beam can deliver some 50 Mbps a mile or more. Who needs fiber? VOD everywhere. The new digital translator.
The Milton system (white papers) aims to provide residential homes and businesses with broadband wireless Internet service, whether they are in an urban or suburban area using a cognitive radio network that mines spectrum.
MILTON takes fiber optic capacity and distributes it wirelessly. The CRC will help develop a WiMax-enabled MILTON platform for New Delhi, India.
India’s Center for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) and Canada’s Communication Research Center have signed an agreement to develop MILTON for cheap, fast, last-mile access that should deliver 24 beams of 25Mbps WiMax more than a mile, through heavy foliage.
Currently MILTON is using 802.16-2004 standards and a WiMAX chip from Wavesat. But imagine what it could do with MIMO and other features that are integrated into the Mobile WiMAX standard (802.16e). If not for direct laptop connections, then for hotspot backhaul.
Instead of municipal WiFi hubs every 1000 feet, 5.8GHz WiMAX hubs might be located every 5,000-10,000 feet. Kick everything up a notch; 100Mbps, unlicensed 60 Ghz mesh between the nodes and 25Mbps, 5.8GHz unlicensed distribution for the last mile. WiFi in the home. A WiFi/WiMAX hotspot using 5.8GHz backhaul may be too costly now — but not in 2-3 years.
Of course IEEE 802.16 is not standing still. IP-OFDMA (pdf), based on Mobile WiMAX, may be the sixth ITU standard adopted by IMT-2000 (pdf) for global wireless interoperability.
WiMAX has a tipping point, says Dr Ray Owen, Motorola director for Wireless Broadband, with 29 trials and 9 deployments. The cost of copper has increased threefold over the past five years while the cost of wireless technologies such as WiMax has fallen. It’s getting cheaper then any alternative.
Beats AT&T’s U-verse. No wires. Triple play.
Nothing could stop it — not even lobbyists like Michael Gallagher. Unlicensed WiMAX could be as revolutionary as unlicensed WiFi.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Classroom Software Goes Mobile, Mobile Aps Worth $66 Billion, Statewide/Nationwide Wireless Broadband and One Laptop Per Child Morphs.
