It’s a WiMAX world, and we only live in it. Or so it would seem with the plethora of press announcements, standards proposals and virgin sacrifices made at the altar of all-things WiMAX-the Ginsu Knife of wireless technologies.
I rarely give a second glance to such hyperbole, especially self-generated, but the constant drone of the wonders of WiMAX from a variety of media has pushed me too far. I can’t take one more half-researched story touting how WiMAX is not only going to change the industry, but actually make the world a better place.
So, instead of continuing to vent my misdirected anger at colleagues (which they seem to just shrug off anyway) I did a quick bit of research. What I found is that while WiMAX has a multitude of potential technological benefits, including an all-IP structure and a relatively open-standards architecture, many of the claimed coverage and speed advantages over current technologies have been hyped to Cold Play proportions.
The WiMAX Forum, which is acting as the de facto voice for the technology, notes on its Web site that statements touting 30 miles of range from a single WiMAX base station might be true in a purely technical sense, but in the real world are “wildly overstated,” and that the average cell range for most networks will be in the 4- to 5-mile range. Range claims also seem to discount spectrum propagation, which makes lower frequencies more valuable for providing coverage but deficient in supporting faster data speeds.
The forum also notes that while the 75-megabit-per-second speeds bandied about in reports are also technically and theoretically possible, real-world performance will top out at around 45 Mbps based on a 20-megahertz channel and optimum settings. Speed claims are always good for copy, but having witnessed the speed claims of EV-DO and UMTS plummet once the networks are deployed, I’ll believe the WiMAX claims when I see them.
The WiMAX hype will only grow louder in coming months in anticipation of Sprint Nextel Corp.’s expected announcement about what it plans to do with its substantial 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. The carrier was expected to announce its plans before the end of the second quarter, but has since pushed it off until sometime this summer, a delay some industry observers think is to give WiMAX more time to prove itself outside the labs.
All I can hope is that once WiMAX hits the airwaves, it does so with a clean sheet of expectations, which-if history is any indication-is unlikely.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to take a few deep breathes.
