Northern Ireland is to get BT's first public wireless broadband service later this year, equipment vendor Alvarion announced on Monday.
BT has signed a £500,000 deal for Alvarion's 5.8GHz BreezeACCESS VL equipment, which will be used to provide broadband services to areas outside the reach of ADSL. "Northern Ireland is the first place to adopt radio [broadband]," BT press officer Ross Cook told ZDNet UK, "and a lot of people will be waiting to see how that goes."
The service is the result of a partnership with the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI). "With 99.6 percent of the country to be reached by DSL, wireless is not currently feasible as a stand-alone product without partnership funding," said Cook. "However, it is part of our strategy for 100 percent UK broadband coverage by the end of 2005."
Northern Ireland was one of four areas to host BT wireless broadband trials, with others in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall -- the latter two are still running and being used to investigate other technologies. The Northern Irish service is in band C of the 5.8GHz allocation, which is currently regulated due to other services still using the frequencies. By the end of the year many of these will have been moved elsewhere, freeing the band for use across the UK.
Although the current equipment is non-WiMax compliant, Alvarion says that 5.8GHz WiMax equipment is on its road map. "Come back to us next year," said a spokesperson.
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Talkback
How can BT's press officer say that Northern Ireland is the first to adopt radio broadband, and get away with it? There are more than several caveats missing from that statement to even begin to make it ring true. There are wireless broadband networks across the planet- public, private, community-run, etc.
28 Sep 04 23:14 ReplyBT is late to market with this product as it struggles to meet its own hype about 100% broadband coverage in UK by 2005. Once again, the public are being misled to suit the corporate end. Trying to purchase the word 'broadband' in the public mind with a £35million ad campaign was bad enough, and has caused untold delays in what UK Plc really needs - true broadband - because this threatens BT's very existence.
Corporate lies, even if hidden in PR blandishments, aimed at misleading the public are unforgiveable. If BT wants to own the term 'wireless broadband' it can forget it as countries such as Estonia, US, Canada, and even many small rural market towns in the UK such as Pateley Bridge, Alston, Austwick etc are light years ahead of BT on this one.
Perhaps a day trip out of his office for Mr Ross Cook to the country might be an idea to wake him up to wireless reality and the real world?
Hi
4 Jan 05 09:02 ReplyMy company runs a Wireless Broadband Network Service in the N. Ireland (County Down), we currently serve 3 towns and we are expanding the network in the next few months to cover a further 9 towns in County Down.
Check our main wireless site at: www.wirelessbroadbandireland.com and our main company site at: www.active-ware.co.uk
Many thanks
Whatever happened to BT#s rural wireless broadband programme? In 2004 it was part of their plan to cover 100% of UK by year end 2005, but I can find no news of any implementations since the pilots?
17 Jan 06 16:31 Reply