WiMax: The saviour of rural broadband?

One of the strongest selling points of WiMax over other broadband access technologies is its scalability -- one base station can support thousands of subscribers without lowering performance. With a Wi-Fi network, administrators usually notice a drop in performance if more than 10 people access the Internet simultaneously. WiMax supporters also say that the technology is more flexible than the alternatives -- service providers can offer multi-megabit broadband services to rural underserved markets at distances of up to 70 kilometres and WiMax doesn't depend on a line-of-sight to provide service.

Costs have held WiMax back
The underlying technology of WiMax has been around for several years, in various forms. WiMax is a user-friendly name associated with the IEEE 802.16 standard. 802.16 is designed to support last mile BWA (broadband wireless access) -- the wireless connection from a major trunk line to a business or residential user. While vendors have been providing proprietary solutions for many years now, it's only recently that suppliers have agreed on standards for wireless broadband access, and the WiMax Forum was created. WiMax promises to standardise the equipment, making it interoperable and more affordable.

The involvement of Intel has helped to further push standards, which has reduced the cost of WiMax kit enormously, Dineen says: "One of the reasons this technology hasn't succeeded so far has been cost --- base stations and related infrastructure costs could total upwards of $25,000," he says. "WiMax is still expensive compared to DSL or Wi-Fi, but it's getting less so."

Internet virtually anywhere
WiMax kit should be widely available by the end of 2005, letting people access the Internet virtually anywhere. Analysts expect prices of WiMax technology to fall even further once Intel incorporates WiMax into laptops and PCs in the same way it currently builds in Centrino for Wi-Fi connectivity.

Whereas first generation WiMax suppliers charged as much as $1,200 for every customer site, this year's WiMax base stations cost around $500. Thanks to standardisation, prices should plunge even further in the future, to less than $200 for the gear that sits at the customer's site. Then, when WiMax migrates into laptops, the cost to buy into it will edge toward zero.