WiMAX: Who Needs Metro Wi-Fi Anymore?

WiMAX is just a baby of a technology but it has big eyes on the future and Intel is pushing it like nobody’s business And Intel is one company with the power to make things happen at the desktop. Can you say Centrino? 

They’ve made Wi-Fi a household word and expectation.  Now it seems they want to do the same with WiMAX. Meanwhile legislators are pushing to “open” (read unlicense) some of the WiMAX spectrum such as the 700 MHz band. Where does this leave metro Wi-Fi?

Metro-scale broadband Wi-Fi networks have a huge head start and are being installed like gangbusters from Oklahoma City to San Francisco, Anaheim to Philadelphia with no end in site. Earthlink just jumped into the market in a big way, too, and Google is expected to follow, and is currently deploying a free-access metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh network in Mountain View, California.

The big benefactors of this wave are companies like Tropos Networks and Strix Systems. They build specialized outdoor Wi-Fi access points (often attached to poles) that literally blanket an entire city with a Wi-Fi signal and use very fancy routing software (at least Tropos does) to move traffic from one node to the next over the air.  Tropos has arguably defined, and now clearly dominates, what could be a massive market (and we’re not just saying that because they have our favorites - former FCC Chairman Reed Hunt on their board and Congressman Jack Kemp as an advisor).

But many people think that WiMAX, due to its longer range and higher capacity, will effectively kill metro-scale Wi-Fi and those who sell metro Wi-Fi gear.  Naaaaaaaah.  It’s actually just the opposite.  In fact, it probably means an even bigger positive impact on the valuations of equipment providers in this nascent yet quickly burgeoning market ("burgeoning" was a suggestion by one of our MIT-like RF engineers and not our PR people...can you believe it?).

Think about it.  First of all there are almost 200 million Wi-Fi client devices out there today, and about zero WiMAX client devices.  And Wi-Fi has become (or is becoming) the defacto edge connection technology of choice.  But more important, whether Wi-Fi or WiMAX, to support relatively low powered client devices, such as laptops and handhelds, the “wireless” base stations must be positioned close to the user (or you’d better have a hell of a good device in the home that can listen, and more importantly shout, better and farther).

This points to putting wireless nodes (most likely Wi-Fi at the edge but it could be WiMAX) everywhere. The industry spew for this is “dense cell architecture.” So it really doesn’t really make economic or logistical sense to run a wired IP backhaul connection to each node or to all the cells (backhaul in this context means a single wired connection used to aggregate traffic from other wireless connections in order to provide a route to the Internet or other IP network). Using the RF spectrum to route traffic from node to node to create a redundant mesh is the best way to go. This is really what companies like Tropos are all about - they’ve perfected mesh routing and have chosen 802.11 because it’s by far the most pervasive, simple and low-cost standard.  The best use of WiMAX looks to be providing wireless backhaul from the mesh to the IP network.  Ergo their technology only becomes MORE valuable, not less.

To do this right, carriers will need to make sure subscribers can get on these broadband wireless networks more predictably.  New technology now exists to do just this.  Customer premise equipment that can actually listen farther in a specific direction and listen around interference will help carriers and consumers get on the Internet from their homes without wires.

Now imagine a day when you won’t have ANY lines coming into your home but you’re still completely connected.  The broadband line is now a wireless broadband connection to metro-scale Wi-Fi network.  Over this connection will come digital TV, voice and conventional Internet data services.  And to move all this stuff throughout your house, you’ll use smart Wi-Fi to get signals to your TVs, laptops and refrigerators.  Look Ma, no wires!