Wireless Internet on Sterorids

Wireless internet access is great. It can allow you to check your email from a coffee shop, or an airport, or even out in your own backyard. In fact, a friend of mine is taking a trans-Atlantic sailing trip and he paid dearly to have satellite internet access hooked up on his boat.

But short of this satellite internet access, wireless connections are only good for about 150 feet - at least for now. WiMAX is going to change all that. WiMAX is also known as 802.16. It is a group of wireless communications standards developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It is also the name of a wireless industry advocacy group composed of representatives from AT&T, Siemens, Intel and Alcatel. The purpose of the group is to "actively promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of devices based on the 802.16 specification, and to develop such devices for the marketplace," according to Harry Newton's Telecom Dictionary, 20th edition.

Using WiMAX, Laptops will be able to communicate with base stations up to about 30 miles away. Each WiMax provider will have a network of base stations, similar to a mobile phone network. These base stations will be able to handle bandwidth of at least 70 megabits per second, according to New Scientist, April 14, 2004.

By early next year you should be able to buy a modem with an external rooftop antenna that will communicate with a base station. This will allow high-speed internet access to homes in Europe and the US who cannot get broadband because they are too far away from the local phone company point-of-presence (POP). WiMAX will also provide a wireless alternative to T-1 lines connecting offices to each other, and the internet.

Today, the equipment is too bulky, and expensive to be portable, but that will change. The backing of companies like Intel will help. They are expecting that by the end of 2006 they will have built the modem and antenna into their Centrino chip set. These chip sets power many of today's laptops.

These new WiMAX networks will eventually provide coverage similar to today's cellular networks. They will allow people to use laptops while on the move, easily switching from one transmitter to another. Some proponents believe WiMAX might even be able to handle phone calls. If so, it might put a dent in the 3G business, but that may be a premature speculation.

Until then, I will keep writing my articles on my old faithful laptop with 3 old wires coming out of the back of it and transmitting them over my pokey old 100mbs DSL. Even at that, I have come a long way since my high school typing class.