AustinTX wrote:
Charbax wrote:
...I've been asking all the Wi-Max chip manufacturers if they could put the Mobile Wi-Max chip inside of a Fon router to broadcast not only a Wi-Fi Fonspot but also a Mobile Wi-Max Fonspot, this way cutting out the Wi-Max ISP having monopoly on Mobile Wi-Max deployment, and rather having a free wireless broadand for all.
It is my understanding that consumer Wi-Max equipment will be client endpoints, much like a cellphone is to the cellular network, or a cable modem is to the cable network. In other words, two people might have Wi-Max devices, but they will not be able to communicate directly. They will depend on an intermediary station, controlled by an ISP which charges a fee for access. It will be necessary to aquire and license expensive host equipment in order to *provide* Wi-Max service, or to relay/mesh Wi-Max stations.
The Wi-Max link would be the WAN/Internet connection for the Fon AP. The public hotspot would be conventional 802.11b/g.
Martin Varsavsky has actually blogged last year, that Fon is in fact designing a Wi-Max/Wi-Fi AP, but he has not commented on it since. :idea:
Well that's the thing I am trying to figure out. If for sure Wi-Max is impossible to be "provided" by such small base stations of the size of a Wi-Fi router thus to be "provided" using a future Wi-Max providing Fonero, or if this strategy would be technologically or/and legally impossible.
What I am wondering is if it is only regulation that would be preventing a community like Fon to provide Mobile Wi-Max in a region using the Fon approach of distributing cheap Wi-Max providing base-stations to all users.
All base-stations thus I am wondering if at all they can function in a box the size and price of a Fonera, thus it might provide lower ranger than a huge and expensive infrastructure base stations that large ISPs are deploying to control the Wi-Max network (and thus charge people for wireless broadband as a limited and controlled service) with the 6 sectors per base station of up to 18mbit/s per sector.
So the question is does Wi-Max technology make small consumer-installed-at-home base stations possible, even if those have lower range. Also I wonder about the bandwidth and interference management, if it would be possible to manage that 20 Foneras might be broadcasting Fon Mobile Wi-Max from the same building, some with different amount of available bandwidth, so users connecting in the range of those 20 Wi-Max base-stations should automatically get the best amount of available bandwidth, maybe even using several base stations as the same time to boost the Internet connectivity signal in certain multi-threaded download situations. And also the interference has to be managed among all those base-stations that would thus be installed in peoples homes and thus them not being evenly distributed, thus interference and choice of radio frequency used should somehow maybe be remotely coordinated by the Fon system.
Ross wrote:
I can tell you wimax is still on our radar. Some of my co-workers are attending a conference about it later this year too. I don't have any specifics as to how it will be rolled out.
Sure enough fixed Wi-Max could provide interesting way of broadening the Fon network by just plugging more cheap Fon Wi-Max to Wi-Fi routers just on the electrical outlets at many more locations, but I'd say it would be greatest to "provide" Mobile Wi-Max from Fon routers using the many ADSL, Ethernet, Fiberoptic, Cable and other broadband wired internet connections which people get into their homes already. I'd much prefer to be able to have good, free and unlimited bandwidth for a pocket wireless broadband product like a VOIP, Email, IM, Video and Music, and for it have free city-wide access to wireless broadband on Mobile Wi-Max and Wi-Fi, and I would find it a secondary necessity to use a fixed Wi-Max to Wi-Fi Fonera.
what ? 
by Fon, in order to save the costs associated with supporting multiple types of hardware. This coming from Fon, which should not propose to be in the hardware business, anyway.
