Laptops, cards, dongles deliver WiMAX performance to Baltimore users
Sprint’s Xohm network in Baltimore shows consistent, and unprecedented, broadband wireless download speeds ranging from 3.7M to 5Mbps on the downlink and 1.8M to 2.6Mbps on the uplink.
The gleaming black shuttle van slams down into a pothole, jolts and shudders over construction-scarred streets in downtown Baltimore, slows for late morning traffic and speeds up again, rattling over cobblestones.
But inside a handful of WiMAX-equipped notebook computers remain linked to Sprint’s Xohm (“zome”) network, showing consistent, and unprecedented, broadband wireless download speeds ranging from 3.7M to 5Mbps on the downlink and 1.8M to 2.6Mbps on the uplink.
On a flat-panel screen mounted at the rear of the van, the movie “Men in Black” streams from the Hulu.com video site without a flicker or blur, even as the van cruises through multiple handoffs between some of the 182 (and counting) WiMAX towers now blanketing about 75% of the city.
As a demonstration of what WiMAX and Xohm, the first large-scale mobile WiMAX network in the United States, is delivering, the van ride is dramatic.
In a nearby townhouse, a laptop plugs via Ethernet cable into a XyXEL WiMAX router, coupled with a massive Samsung flat-panel screen showing Internet news sites and streaming video in the living room. In the kitchen overlooking part of Baltimore harbor, two other laptops show a side-by-side speed-test comparison of Sprint’s 3G network and Xohm: 678Kbps down, 520kbps up for 3G; 4.2Mbps down, 1.3 Mbps up for WiMAX.
Xohm’s target
As dramatic as the van ride was, it’s the combination of residential wireless Internet access and nomadic laptop-based computing that will likely be the initial attraction for Xohm, which executives billed as the first 4G network in the United States.
“Xohm targets both segments [nomadic and fixed residential], and that’s a powerful differentiator for WiMAX, because you cannot do this in a scalable way with 3G,” says Monica Paolini, president of Senza Fili Consulting, a wireless consultancy. “Xohm basically supports what subscribers perceive as two services, primary, fixed home broadband and nomadic/mobile access, within a single network and, for subscribers, a single contract.”
That target was underscored during a press conference on Wednesday, which featured a variant of the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony: Barry West, Xohm president and CTO, posed with a two-handed lopping shears to cut through a blue Ethernet cable, as camera’s flashed. “How about a special one for Verizon?” he joked, to another round of camera flashes, and then snipped through the cable.
The network itself, with Samsung base stations, officially went live on Sept. 29.
Eventually, the network will have just over 300 base stations, with picocells to fill in outdoor coverage holes, according to Atish Gude, Sprint senior vice president for mobile broadband operations. Each cell has been portioned into three sectors, with enough spectrum available to create three non-overlapping channels, which minimize interference.
(For the Baltimore press event, Sprint set up a WiMAX “cell site on wheels” on a nearby rooftop. A spokesman said it was standard procedure for special events drawing additional users and traffic.)
Cultivating client devices
But this week, Sprint focused on the devices, and their users, that this network will support. On stage with West were Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, Intel Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney, and ranking executives from nearly a dozen device makers, covering PCMCIA cards, customer-premises gear, four notebook makers (Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and Toshiba, all showing models with embedded WiMAX radios), and Nokia, which was featuring the WiMAX edition of its N810 Internet Tablet. (Compare WiMAX products.)
But this first crop of devices, and the demonstrations designed around them, shows Sprint’s initial focus on marketing Xohm as an all-IP data network that you can access anywhere there’s coverage. “Xohm will extend your home and office [computing] environment, wherever you are,” West said. “It will change the way the Internet is accessed.”
Eventually, maybe. But Xohm’s whole network, and much of its marketing, currently is aimed at trading on the familiar way nomadic laptop users today access the Internet: sitting down in range of a radio, opening their laptop, and finding a signal.
What’s new is being able, eventually, to do this anywhere in Baltimore. But until a new crop of mobile devices emerge, if they emerge, Xohm’s mobile WiMAX remains a service for nomadic users and fixed applications.
Nokia‘s N810 Internet Tablet is part of the emerging class of mobile Internet devices, which are smaller, lighter and easier to use on the go than conventional laptops, and most of all, much cheaper. The WiMAX version, available this month, will cost under $500, a slight premium over the original device. But Nokia has no definite plans at this point for future WiMAX-enabled products, either as part of the tablet family or other product lines. “It’s still being looked at in terms of other form factors,” says Pamela Ryan, director of business development, for Nokia’s customer and market operations group.
One key development in user adoption may be the availability of ZTE‘s Xohm-branded TU25 USB WiMAX modem later this year, which could connect any device with a USB port to Xohm (ZTE and ZyXEL also offer WiMAX customer premises equipment). Studies have shown the vast majority of users have a very strong preference for USB-based connectivity compared to more traditional PCMCIA cards, according to Sprint’s Atish Gude.
Technology as cost-cutter
Beyond connectivity, Xohm’s WiMAX infrastructure has another purpose: to dramatically lower the cost of providing service, and provisioning subscribers. “We’re taking out costs to make wireless broadband affordable,” said West. “3G showed that customers want [mobile] broadband. But they want it as a price they can afford.”
West reiterated his long-standing argument that WiMAX enables broadband wireless for a faction of the cost of 3G cellular technologies. “Your racks, towers and all the rest are the same [in cost], but now you’re pumping 10 times the bits through them,” he said. He again confidently predicted that WiMAX chipsets will shortly reach the $3-to-$15 range, only slight more expensive than Wi-Fi chipsets today. That’s important because equipment makers can embed WiMAX into a growing range of equipment for only a relatively small additional cost.
Coupled with this is Xohm’s provisioning model for subscribers, using a variety of channels but relying heavily on the Web. At every point, the company has tried to squeeze out costs. Xohm doesn’t have mandatory service contracts or cancellation fees. According to the company, you can buy any WiMAX-enabled device, connect to the Xohm Web site, select a plan, charge it to your credit card and get online.
Xohm offers home wireless Internet access for $25 a month; a mobile access service (“on-the-go”) for $30 a month; and a $50 monthly service that lets you use two WiMAX clients on one account. A day-pass plan charges $10 for 24 hours of access, which Xohm sees as a way for users to try out the network.
“I was actually quite impressed by the novelty of pricing plans for Xohm if you take into account the fact that Sprint is after all an incumbent cellular operator,” says consultant Paolini. “They have really tried to understand what subscribers want and have been bold enough to try it in the marketplace. We will see in the next months how subscribers will react.”
