[LINK] Yearly Predictions

Stewart Fist stewart_fist at optusnet.com.au
Thu Dec 7 11:27:41 AEDT 2006


€ I think WiMax Mobile (802.16e) is looking better than I thought it would,
but I'd doubt that the average user will ever get much better data rates
than 2Mb/s, despite the 40Mb/s claims.

It will probably be used by the cellular carriers to provide a medium rate
data and PDA TV service, but they will have bandwidth problems and be forced
to use frequencies which won't work too well, except line-of-sight in cities
and suburbs, and not at all well in rural areas.

Unwired, Austar and the WLL operators will do better with their 2.5-3.5MHz
frequencies and wider bandwidths (100 MHz), so the current fixed wireless
services will be faster and become nomadic. They will provide city and
regional coverage.

 These operators won't make much impact in the area of voice, however:
handoff problems, location registers, and the need for interconnection
agreements, numbering systems, etc. would increase complexity and raise
costs too much - and defeat the WLL advantage.

€ Fibre in the suburbs - This is currently a borderline decision between
Fibre to the Node systems and direct Fibre to the Home/Office.  So Telstra's
dummy-spitting delay might be a boon because full FTTH costs will drop, and
we'll be able to standardise on a better system, through late introduction.

This will give the privatised monopoly of Telstra an enormous boost in the
share-market, until the ACCC forces them to open the bandwidth to their
competitors.  With a bit of luck the new Labor Government will have the guts
to force them to split (or opt out of content provision) and make them a
highly-regulated, price controlled bandwidth provider.

-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458





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