Wi-Max and EV-DO are just two high-speed wireless services that service providers and gear makers are touting. Here are others in the works:
Wi-Max and EV-DO are just two high-speed wireless services that service providers and gear makers are touting. Here are others in the works
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)
Providers: AT&T Wireless and Cingular
Description: Also known as WCDMA, this wireless broadband service offers 3G speeds of 220K to 320K bit/sec. However, providers have announced they will upgrade to the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access Network, which will boost those speeds to 14.4M bit/sec.
Availability: Launched in July in Detroit, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle, the service is available with a $300 handset or a $150 modem. Rollouts are expected by year-end in San Diego and Dallas.
Nextel Wireless Broadband is based on Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (Flash OFDM)
Providers: Nextel and Flarion Technologies
Description: Nextel earlier this year announced a partnership with Flarion Technologies to offer wireless broadband service. Touting average downlink speeds of 1.5M bit/sec and burst rates of 3M bit/sec, the service is targeted at the cable and DSL markets.
Availability: This Nextel service is available to customers in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. The company says its partners Cisco, IBM and Nortel are using the high-speed network in that area. Nextel has not announced an expansion of the offering and acknowledges it is testing other approaches to high-speed wireless.
