Hi Rob, Peter - At some point will someone, somewhere make this happen?
Though nobody has publicly stated the facts, there must be reasons why Cisco has withdrawn from Broadband FWA with VOFDM.
Similarly, there must be reasons why Wi-LAN's penetration of W-OFDM has, so far been invisible.
OFDM is not moving into mainstream usage, and despite the press, I see no reason to believe it will, soon.
I don't want to revisit the old Cisco/Wi-LAN rivalry; no point.
The failure of these two companies (among others) to get anywhere with their proprietary FWA OFDM offerings is something we can only guess the reasons for. Here are my guesses:
1 - High price points on ASICs and CPE: insurmountable for consumer usage. Relates to economies of scale, and unfrozen design.
2 - Plug 'n' play functionality only now arriving: inability to make hardware/software combination that masks complexity.
3 - Infrastructure costs and barriers high: especially, public resistance to new towers/repeaters.
4 - As predicted a year ago, 802.11b is proving to be a barrier to advanced forms of modulation. Cost wins.
Cisco has apparently taken the view that the real OFDM market lies in 802.11X - and I'm inclined to agree. It seems doubtful, to me, that OFDM will be able to surmount the costs of proprietary systems; the success of 802.11X and the resultant infrastructure will create another barrier to the further construction of (proprietary) infrastructure.
JMO, FWIW, YMMV,
Jim |
