Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes the technology as “a miserable failure”
Uzair Ahmed
Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes the technology as "a miserable failure"
20/03/2008 09:37:00 - by Martyn Warwick & Commsday
One of the world's first WiMAX operators, Hervey Bay, of Australia's Buzz Broadband, has closed the network, with the CEO labeling the technology as a "disaster" that has "failed miserably."
http://www.commsday.com/node/228
In an astonishing outburst before the audience at an international WiMAX conference audience in Bangkok, Thailand, CEO Garth Freeman slammed the technology, saying its non-line of sight performance was "non-existent" beyond two kilometres from the base station, that indoor performance decayed at a mere 400 metres and that latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds.
Mr. Freeman said poor latency and jitter made the technology unsuitable and unacceptable for many Internet applications in general and for VoIP in particular. Buzz used to extol the virtues of VoIP, hyping it as a main selling point as it sought to persuade people to sign-up for the new service and dump old ones supplied by the incumbent .
Garth Freeman told delegates, "WiMAX may not work," adding that the technology remains "mired in opportunistic hype." The CEO also emphasised that most WiMAX deployments are still in the trials stage and that the technology is attractive to and used by used by "start-up carriers" and is only supported by "second-tier vendors".
He then contrasted WiMAX with HSPA and pointed out that there are already 154 commercial networks in operation and that the technology has the full backing of top tier vendors.
What made Freeman's tirade all the more extraordinary was that just 12 months ago he fronted the same event and gave an upbeat and overwhelmingly positive appraisal of the platform – a platform that he had deployed just a few months before.
At the time, Garth Freeman said his company had signed 10 per cent of its 55,000 user target market in just two months, a market share that quickly rose to 25 per cent on the back of an advertising campaign that highlighted cheap VoIP prices.
But back then, Mr. Freeman also acknowledge dthat WiMAX technology has indoor coverage issues. Indeed, at this week's Bangkok meeting, the CEO revealed that his frankness last year had resulted in a sharp reprimand from his supplier, Airspan. The company was unhappy that its equipment had been implicitly criticised.
Elsewhere, other early WiMAX adopters have also reported issues with indoor coverage. Late last year VSNL of India said at an IEEE conference that indoor signal loss occurs just 200 metres from a base station.
Garth Freeman says Buzz has now abandoned WiMAX and will pursue a 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 describes as wireless DOCSIS. This a relatively little-known technology that takes HFC plant and extends its capabilities via wireless mesh.
Mr. Freeman says wireless DOCSIS operates at up to 38Mbps in the 3.5GHz spectrum and its customer premises equipment supports two voice ports for under $A70 while it boasts "huge cell coverage." He added that he will also deploy more conventional wireless mesh platforms at 2.4GHz that support up to 10Mbps with CPE voice ports costing less than A$80.
Mustafa Rana
http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=42866&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&page=1
Haris Shamsi
Haris Shamsi
Related Stories
Buzz Broadband began rolling out its WiMAX service last year and quickly began running into trouble with it, according the company's CEO, Garth Freeman. In his remarks to conference attendees, he faulted WiMAX for a number of deficiencies he said his company had experienced. Subscribers reportedly suffered from latencies of 1,000ms and higher, indoor performance was problematic at distances of over 400m, and, without clear line of sight, the signal dropped at distances of over 2km from the base station.
The fact that a single vendor has had problems with WiMAX isn't that surprising to Miguel Myhrer, a senior executive in Accenture's North American wireless network practice. "WiMAX will have spectacular failures going forward, and if it doesn't, I'd be surprised," Myhrer told Ars. But that's par for the course for any new wireless technology, he argues. "CDMA had problems in Korea when it was first deployed, but it's now [an established], problem-free technology."
Nortel, which is one of the major manufacturers of WiMAX chips, is unfazed by Buzz's experience. "Nortel continues to see strong opportunities for WiMAX," a company spokesperson told Ars. "In particular, WiMAX is an ideal technology that addresses the needs of today's underserved communities bringing high-speed wireless Internet to fixed and mobile subscribers, some of whom have never before had any sort of network connection available to them."
In the US, that's where Sprint comes in. Its $5 billion-plus Xohm WiMAX network has already seen a soft launch, with the company and selected partners stress testing it in advance of its public debut later this spring. When asked about Buzz's WiMAX ills, a company spokesperson pointed Ars to comments from an analyst at Yankee Group. "We do not believe Buzz's failure in WiMAX implies the failure of WiMAX itself," Yankee Group VP of Asia-Pacific Research X.J. Wang told WiMAX trends.
Sprint believes that the problems encountered by Buzz Broadband are specific to that company and its choice of vendors. The wireless provider points to the example of WiBro's successful WiMAX deployment in Korea as evidence that WiMAX has a bright future in front of it.
Buzz Broadband's problems are indicative of the challenges that new technologies face as they are rolled out, rather than of a fatal flaw in the WiMAX spec. "[WiMAX] won't work as advertised on day one, but over time it will," Myhrer told Ars. It's important for Sprint to get Xohm's launch right, Myhrer believes, but the ultimate indicator of WiMAX's success will come in the "BRIC countries" (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). "If Sprint deploys WiMAX successfully, but those countries don't, it will ultimately be a niche technology," said Myhrer.
There are two other bits of data to note here. First, Buzz Broadband uses the fixed version of WiMAX, which is heavily reliant on line-of-sight. A Sprint spokesperson highlighted that as an important distinction between Buzz and Xohm, which uses the mobile flavor (Ars attended a demo of mobile WiMAX during a Chicago River cruise last year). Also, Buzz operates in the 3.5GHz spectrum, which doesn't propagate as well indoors. In contrast, Sprint and Clearwire are using 2.5GHz spectrum for their Mobile WiMAX, which will penetrate better indoors. The takeaway? Despite the problems Buzz has had in Australia, WiMAX's future—and present—still look bright.
Majid Farid
of WiMax Harris you too :) ???
/Majid
Haris Shamsi
Adnan Sadiq
http://www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017517201.html
Airspan hits back at WiMAX "disaster" claims
Garth Freeman, the CEO of Australian service provider Buzz Broadband, caused a stir last week when he openly disparaged WiMAX performance at a conference in Thailand.
Freeman reportedly said that the 802.16d WiMAX kit used by Buzz, an Australian local carrier and ISP, had been a "disaster".
More specifically, he said that NLOS (non line of sight) performance was "non-existent" beyond 2km from the base station and latency rates were as high as 1,000ms. This would make VoIP, a central plank of Buzz's service strategy, virtually unusable.
But Airspan, Buzz Broadband's supplier of WiMAX base stations and CPE kit in the licensed 3.4GHz band, has hit back at Freeman. In a statement attributed to Declan Byrne, Airspan's CMO, the performance shortcomings reported by Freeman are laid squarely at the door of Buzz.
"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," said Byrne.
In responding to Freeman's complaints about high latency times, Byrne turned the spotlight away from Airspan kit and onto Buzz Broadband's network. "We know that there were significant under-provisioning issues in the core network which connected the Airspan equipment to the internet," Byrne's statement read. "Very early in the relationship, Airspan technical services determined that Buzz's 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 claims that it even went so far as to offer funding for third-party analysis "to help Buzz understand these issues". Freeman rejected this offer.
Ahead of Freeman's outburst, Buzz is known to have only made a limited deployment of fixed WiMAX to around 200 users.
Marketing Release:
Date: 3/24/2008
Re: Buzz Broadband
Public Statements Concerning WiMAX and Airspan by the CEO of Australian WISP, Buzz BroadbandThis 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 dby...@airspan.com.
Best Regards,
Declan Byrne Chief Marketing Officer Airspan Networks, Inc.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station. Ah, now I see the problem...
(:
Adnan Sadiq
Amir
player in Australia dumped the WiMax mainly due to the performance of
the technology.
Here is another blow to WiMax, the much hyped A$600 million government
broadband contract awarded to a Consortium of SingTel and Elders
(local Telco company) terminated by the Australian Government.
The reason mentioned by Govt is the non-compliance of the contractual
terms by the SingTel and Elders but behind the curtain the reality is
new Government that sworn in last year was not satisfied with the
choice of the technology (WiMax) and they had the strong reservations
on the performance of the WiMax (based on the report provided by the
technology experts) on top of that the recent action / statement by
Buzz CEO about the WiMax technology helped Government in making this
decision.
This decision will have the big bang on the WiMax camp, as this
project was highlighted in bold words among the WiMax supporters.
It seems to me there is no immediate future of WiMax as the vastly
adopted wireless technology at least in Australia and HSDPA will rule
on the Wireless front
Majid Farid
front ;)
/Majid
Shahzad Alam
Airspan strike back at WiMAX critique: Buzz Broadband were cheap
Tuesday, Mar 25 2008 by Chris Davies
After Buzz Broadband CEO Garth Freeman trash-talked WiMAX at a recent industry conference, former hardware partner Airspan - who Freeman claims had a "quick and negative reaction" when he criticised indoor reception last year - have spoken out in defence of the wireless technology and their part in what the Buzz CEO called "a disaster". In a statement by Airspan's Chief Marketing Officer, Declan Byrne, the company suggests the Australian telco's problems with WiMAX were primarily due to insufficient investment, cost-cutting and a refusal to bring in third-party support. Challenging claims that indoor performance decayed a mere 400m from the base station and that outdoor non-line of sight performance was "non-existent" beyond 2km, Airspan claim Buzz chose cheaper micro-cell units with known range tradeoffs rather than more expensive macro-cell devices.
"[W]e 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"Declan Byrne, Chief Marketing Officer, Airspan
As for quality of service (QoS), Byrne blames Buzz Broadband's backhaul network - the core connection between the WiMAX network and the internet - which he describes as "considerably under-dimensioned"; Airspan apparently offered to pay for third-party analysis of the QoS issues this may have caused, which they claim Buzz refused.
The rebuttal comes as the third Russian WiMAX network in three months received significant VC funding, making a total of $75m invested in the wireless technology there in the past quarter.
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 dby...@airspan.com.
Best Regards,
Declan Byrne Chief Marketing Officer Airspan Networks, Inc.
--
Please reply on "sa...@redlinecommunications.com"
Shahzad Alam
Yet more on the topic from another Australian operator …
Letter: In defence of WiMAX from Internode MD Simon Hackett
March 25th, 2008 in CommsDay Australasia | add new comment | email this story
I'm move to write about your WiMAX article in CommsDay last week.
The factual assertion reported to have been made by Garth Freeman is as follows:
[WiMAX] 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.
At face value, this seems to contradict the assertions of Internode (and indeed Opel) that WiMAX technology is an effective regional broadband solution able to deliver speeds of 6-12 Megabits per second over distances of the order of 20-30kms. However, the reason for this disparity is pretty obvious when comparing the comments above, which refer to (implicitly) mobile and/or non-external antenna service installations of WiMAX.
The service being deployed by Internode, by contrast, uses fixed WiMAX deployments, and outdoor directional antennas. Hence non-line-of-sight, indoor access, and other forms of essentially itinerant connection are not being used by us. We are deploying a fixed wireless solution that provides price and performance comparable to ADSL services, across vast tracts of regional South Australia. Its here, its real, and it works.
The issue here seems to come down to one of overly generic descriptions of technology—using WiMAX as a competitor to mobile technologies is one thing (and the mobile suite of WiMAX technologies is relatively less advanced). However, the Fixed WiMAX systems Internode are using (provided by Airspan) work, and work well, for us. This really does come down to engineering a solution appropriate to the problem - we make investments in a high quality outdoor antenna/radio installation for our customers.
This costs more - and (of course) the results are accordingly better. Indeed, I'm writing this at my holiday house in Meningie, connected with WiMAX to provide my broadband and NodePhone (VoIP) service. Achieved download speeds using tools such as 'FTP' are of the order of 800 to 900 Kilobytes per second (corresponding to a payload transfer rate well over 6 Megabits per second, after TCP/IP overheads, and hence it demonstrates an underlying wireless data rate well above that level).
The voice service and the data service are basically flawless. I listen to streaming radio all day here, and it never misses a beat. The voice service is aurally indistinguishable from a conventional phone. So at the end of the day, outcomes are a function the investments made in radio and network engineering - and in our case, a function of using the very much proven 'fixed' version of WiMAX, as it was intended to be used. It works. And I look forward to seeing Internode (and OPEL) deploy a great deal more of it.
- Simon Hackett
Majid Farid
more of it"
out. The reason been limited coverage. The press release siad
following
"DBCDE performed an analysis of the detailed testing and mapping
undertaken by OPEL, and determined that the OPEL network would cover
only 72% of identified under-served premises," Senator Conroy said. "
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/019
/Majid
On Apr 2, 12:05 pm, "Shahzad Alam" <shahz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yet more on the topic from another Australian operator ...
> Letter: In defence of WiMAX from Internode MD Simon Hackett
>
> Australasia<https://mail.redlinecommunications.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http...>|
> add
> new comment<https://mail.redlinecommunications.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http...>|
> this story<https://mail.redlinecommunications.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http...>
> I'm move to write about your WiMAX article in CommsDay last week.
>
> The factual assertion reported to have been made by Garth Freeman is as
> follows:
>
> At face value, this seems to contradict the assertions of Internode (and
> indeed Opel) that WiMAX technology is an effective regional broadband
> solution able to deliver speeds of 6-12 Megabits per second over distances
> of the order of 20-30kms. However, the reason for this disparity is pretty
> obvious when comparing the comments above, which refer to (implicitly)
> mobile and/or non-external antenna service installations of WiMAX.
>
> The service being deployed by Internode, by contrast, uses fixed WiMAX
> deployments, and outdoor directional antennas. Hence non-line-of-sight,
> indoor access, and other forms of essentially itinerant connection are not
> being used by us. We are deploying a fixed wireless solution that provides
> price and performance comparable to ADSL services, across vast tracts of
> regional South Australia. Its here, its real, and it works.
>
> The issue here seems to come down to one of overly generic descriptions of