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Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology as "miserable failure"
Australia’s first WiMAX operator, Hervey Bay’s Buzz Broadband, has closed its network, with the CEO labeling the technology as a “disaster” that “failed miserably.”
In an astonishing tirade to an international WiMAX conference audience in Bangkok yesterday afternoon, CEO Garth Freeman slammed the technology, saying its non-line of sight performance was “non-existent” beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, indoor performance decayed at just 400m and that latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP, which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to shed their use of incumbent services.
Freeman highlighted his presentation with a warning to delegates, saying “WiMAX may not work.” He said that the technology was still “mired in opportunistic hype,” pointing to the fact most deployments were still in trials, that it was largely used by start-up carriers and was supported by “second-tier vendors”, which he contrasted with HSPA with 154 commercial networks already in operation and support from top tier vendors.
What made Freeman’s presentation most extraordinary was that just 12 months ago he fronted the same event with a generally positive appraisal of the platform which at that stage he had deployed just a few months before. At the time, Freeman said that his company had signed 10% of its 55,000 user target market in just two months, a market share that rose to 25%, on the back of an advertising campaign that highlighted value VoIP prices.
He did acknowledge at the time that the technology had indoor coverage issues, which he yesterday said had earned him a quick and negative reaction at the time from his supplier, Airspan. Other early WiMAX adopters have also reported issues with indoor coverage: VSNL in India reported indoor loss at just 200m from the base station at an IEEE conference last year.
HORSES FOR COURSES: Freeman says Buzz has now abandoned WiMAX in favour of a “horses for courses” policy. This includes use of the TD-CDMA standard at 1.9GHz—used by operators such as New Zealand’s Woosh Wireless—and a platform he described as wireless DOCSIS– a relatively little known technology that takes HFC plant and extends its capabilities via wireless mesh. He said wireless DOCSIS operates at up to 38Mbps in the 3.5GHz spectrum and its customer premises equipment supported two voice ports for under $A70 while it boasted “huge cell coverage.” He also was employing more conventional wireless mesh platforms at 2.4GHz that support up to 10Mbps with CPE voice ports costing less than A$80.
Despite his problems with WiMAX, Freeman is a believer that competitors should operate their own infrastructure and not depend on Telstra unbundled or wholesale offerings. Prior to Buzz he was involved in the rollout of regional Victorian HFC networks as an executive with Neighborhood Cable. He says the use of wireless is essential in Hervey Bay, because ADSL is blocked to 80% of the population because of Telstra’s use of pairgain and RIMs, while what ADSL ports are available are now largely exhausted. But years of successive government policies had weakened the case for standalone infrastructure, beginning with restrictive policies in the pay television market which he said undermined independent HFC deployments.
“I’m against government micromanagement of the market. Government should start to provide a conducive investment environment.”
Not all WiMAX operators are unhappy.
Internode says an Airspan-supplied network is providing consistent average speeds of 6Mbps at distances up to 30km, with CEO Simon Hackett describing the platform as “proven.”
Freeman’s frank words left many at the WiMAX event looking uncomfortable but none more so than his co-panelist Adrian de Brenni representing Opel Networks. De Brenni, standing in for an absent Jason Horley, said little new about Opel that hasn’t already been discussed, except to state that QoS would be a product feature of the future Opel wholesale offering “including voice.”
by Grahame Lynch
Coverage of Wimax
I was reading this article and it mention that the coverage of Wimax is expected to be 32 kilometers...what type of installation was set up to achieve this coverage...as far as I know the netowrk should be like a wireless system (CDMA, GSM, etc.)...and what frequency are you using?...32 kms ..how many cell sites are you using...the 32 km sounds coverage from a broadcast station? (FM, AM?). Thanks.
I will be taking pre orders
I will be taking pre orders for CLEAR on Monday the 17th of November. This is a wimax beta networ that in speed is about 2 times faster than what clearwiress is offering currently.
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Other early WiMAX adopters
Other early WiMAX adopters have also reported issues with indoor coverage: VSNL in India reported indoor loss at just 200m from the base station at an IEEE conference last year.
regards,
re:Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology.....
They should have taken backup from a third party service , not to loose the market.
Despite his problems with
Despite his problems with WiMAX, Freeman is a believer that competitors should operate their own infrastructure and not depend on Telstra unbundled or wholesale offerings. It is a good step.
Reply
VSNL in India reported indoor loss at just 200m from the base station at an IEEE conference last year.
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Know that there were
Know that there were significant under-provisioning issues in the core network which connected the Airspan equipment to the Internet. Very early in the relationship, Airspan technical services determined that Buzz’ backhaul network was considerably under-dimensioned (again to save cost) and lacked sufficient QoS, and that these factors were the direct cause of VoIP quality issues in the network. Airspan even went so far as to offer to fund a third-party analysis to help Buzz understand these issues. Both Airspan’s help and third party assistance were refused by Mr. Freeman.
At Airspan, we pride ourselves on our customer services...
Every technology has their
Every technology has their naysayers. Ask Earthlink and all the other muni-wireless disaters. I know Airspan is supplier form many WiMAX deployments globally with a much better success rate.
I too am against government
I too am against government micromanagement of the market. The government should definitely start to providing a conducive investment environment. Otherwise we're going to continue in the same economic climate.
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I remember when a bunch of
I remember when a bunch of wireless guys got invited down to Intel for a private overview three or four years ago and we spent most of the couple hours trashing most of their basic assumptions about the technology. Their major response was, "well by the time it is deployed we will have figured it out" WIMAX isn't going to be the success that it should be because I think it was driven more by marketing than technology. I'm going to fiddle my fingers until they have a few more disasters till they get it working. In the meantime mesh will definitely deflate the momentum WIMAX needs right now.
Airspan released this today
Airspan released this today in defense of Buzz Broadband CEO's attack on WiMAX.
Marketing Release
Date: 3/24/2008
Re: Buzz Broadband
Public Statements Concerning WiMAX and Airspan by the CEO of Australian WISP, Buzz Broadband
This week, at a WiMAX conference in Thailand, the CEO Buzz Broadband of Australia railed at the audience that WiMAX was a “disaster”. CEO Garth Freeman made several disparaging remarks about the range of WiMAX systems and their ability to carry VoIP traffic.
Buzz Broadband deployed Airspan MicroMAXd, ProST, and EasyST equipment to around 200 users, the same equipment that is installed in many of the 100 or so other Airspan WiMAX deployments. In addition to broadband services, Buzz Broadband intended also to offer VoIP services to its subscribers. Mr. Freeman’s recent statements highlighted two complaints: the range of the solution, and the quality of service (QoS) capabilities for voice traffic.
With regard to range, although Airspan offers both micro-cell and macro-cell base station solutions, Buzz Broadband opted to go with the less-expensive micro-cell base stations in order to reduce cost. This was a well understood tradeoff of cost vs. range. In support of larger cell radii, particularly in support of indoor desktop CPE devices, Airspan offers the HiperMAX base station, which offers the best link budget in the industry for an 802.16d-2004 solution.
Regarding QoS for VoIP, MicroMAX certainly offers appropriate QoS for wire-line quality voice support, but, as an access technology, can only do so for the portion of the link between the user device and the base station. In the case of Buzz Broadband, we know that there were significant under-provisioning issues in the core network which connected the Airspan equipment to the Internet. Very early in the relationship, Airspan technical services determined that Buzz’ backhaul network was considerably under-dimensioned (again to save cost) and lacked sufficient QoS, and that these factors were the direct cause of VoIP quality issues in the network. Airspan even went so far as to offer to fund a third-party analysis to help Buzz understand these issues. Both Airspan’s help and third party assistance were refused by Mr. Freeman.
At Airspan, we pride ourselves on our customer service and excellent products. In the case of Mr. Freeman’s company Buzz Broadband, we exhausted all avenues to help this customer re-engineer their core network and resolve these service issues. In the end, with Mr. Freeman rejecting help from the outside, the technical and financial resources of Buzz Broadband were not sufficient to deploy a functioning network to the satisfaction of its customers. We regret the distress caused by Buzz’ poor network architecture decisions to the customers in need of Broadband Internet access and VoIP services.
It is unfortunate that Mr. Freeman felt the need to broadcast his difficulties in such a public fashion. WiMAX has proven to be enormously successful from a technical standpoint, and Buzz’ allegations, even when so easily dismissed, are a distraction to the WiMAX industry and ultimately a disservice to the millions of satisfied broadband wireless access consumers worldwide.
If you should have any questions regarding this or any other concern, please don’t hesitate to contact me at Airspan on 561 893-8643 or dbyrne@airspan.com.
Best Regards,
Declan Byrne Chief Marketing Officer Airspan Networks, Inc.