Intel backing 802.16a, Fixed-Wireless-Access
Posted 7/14/2003 - 1:10PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher
With ubiquitous WiFi promising to be the Next Big Thing, everyone's watching the next-gen battles brew in the distance to see where we're headed. In general, competing standards all represent different permutations of a few possibilities: a) compatible to current technologies or not, and b) long-range with slow-throughput or short-range with fast-throughput (a tad simplistic, to be sure). More importantly, can a WiFi standard break the chains of physical connection in a wide-area network? The future became a little more clear today as we learn that Intel has announced that they will be developing for 802.16a, aka Fixed-Wireless-Access (FWA, for short).
The IEEE in January finalized the 802.16a standard for FWA in the 2- to 11-GHz bands, complete with advanced quality of service and non-line-of-sight coverage. The standard encompasses single-carrier and multicarrier orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modes with up to 256-QAM modulation, enabling bit rates as high as 74 Mbits/second in a 20-MHz channel over distances of up to 50 km.
Intel joins Fujitsu in the FWA push, as both companies take lowering the cost of the technology as their immediate goal. Implementation of FWA in major coverage areas is cost prohibitive. Still, the technology is seen by many as the answer to the challenges of "broadband for everyone:" FWA interest is high in Europe, where cable and DSL have not had much success luring customers, partly owing to the relatively high number of satellite users as compared to land-line types, plus the age of the telecom system. Still, not everyone has high hopes for FWA. Some analysts claim that the technology is simply too expensive, and providers would be fools not to attempt to piggy back on networks that are already available, such as CDMA. Such networks don't carry the implementation costs of solutions such as FWA, at least as it stands now. It will be interesting to see what we end up with: a new technology built from the ground-up to serve mobile networking needs, or an improvised technology riding on the back of a "proven" wireless carrier service.
arstechnica.com |
