On 2009-01-08, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:
> http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=5986
>
> Someone pointed me to this, so just to make the fruitphoners drool I'll
> post it for ya. As I understand it, Portland's Wimax is different than the
> Xohm flavor installed in Baltimore, pre-Clearwire. Not sure how. There's
> also a worldwide dispute as to what BAND the Wimax should be on....to
> standardize the planet, JUST THIS ONCE!

There are two WiMax standards, 802.16d and 802.16e. The 16d version
is for fixed links and is essentially a DSL replacement (this was WiMax's
original purpose), the 16e version has mobility tacked on.

All of the original Clearwire's 40-something city deployments were 16d.
Portland also had a 16d deployment, by Freewire Broadband. Xohm in
Baltimore is 16e, as is the new Clearwire service in Portland (the latter
was only announced on Monday!), and, despite many announcements by other
operators, these two cities are the only places I know of in the US where
16e service is actually being sold.

Since a WiMax-equipped N810 clearly only makes sense if there is 16e
service for it to use, I'll bet Nokia didn't sell to many of them. 3G
service for the iPhone to use does exist, even if it is AT&T's.

I also notice that the WiMax laptop interfaces have given in and
gone massively multi-band, e.g.

http://www.airspan.com/products_wima...rem_mimax.aspx

Given the frequency range it covers I'll bet the antennas are not
very effective.

Dennis Ferguson