Rob, WiMax would be good for RoamAD to step past Telecom New Zealand and other backhaul providers by hooking a RoamAD network, say at Auckland University Tamaki campus, which is about 6 kilometres away, back to an Auckland University Princes Street RoamAD network which would hook up to a contiguous downtown coverage zone and into the RoamAD main drain into fibre and cyberspace.
Auckland University staff and students would then have coverage of most of the places they spend their days. Plus downtown, which is where a lot of them go.
But there is probably fibre around the Tamaki campus, so that is probably the cheapest and fastest option for backhaul from a RoamAD network out there.
On mesh networks, for years I've wondered whether such dynamic subscriber-supplied networks might not be the way to enable widespread cyberspace. But an engineered network has advantages to. At present, I think engineered networks are probably the best solution to maximize capacity, coverage, reduce costs, interference and keep speed up.
Maybe Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law will change that as subscriber device power goes up and costs come down. But right now, the market's ready to rumble, so waiting for nirvana isn't good enough.
Mqurice |
