Pipex and Wimax

Pipex are running consumer trials using Wimax. It’ll be interesting to watch this one as they’re one of only 2 companies to hold licenses that Wimax will be certified on. I thought that they might hold on to the licence ready to sell it off to another wimax provider but it looks as though they’re going for it themselves. The technical trials with Airspan in August 2005 must have gone well. They’ll be able to offer a better QoS than those using Wimax in the unrestricted spectrum. PCCW, the other company holding the licence have rolled out a service using UMTS TDD but are more cautious on Wimax, although they did trial it in 2004.

VoIP Silos

Om Malik at the CES 2006 has valid points on the lack of interoperability of VoIP handsets between different VoIP services. Standardisation enables a unit to be mass produced more easily as it can be used in more situations. Mass production means lower production costs which means cheaper units. Having these VoIP silos will inevitably mean that handsets will be more expensive for a service who’s chief selling point (at the moment) is the cheap cost of calls. How long would it take for the cheaper calls to pay for the handset?

This story mirrors the current WiMAX certification process where vendors have standardised the fixed and mobile WiMAX standards in effort to reduce CPE costs.

WiFi in the street

Interesting idea to distibute wifi in Scotland. While the pilot might work technically can the council use public money to provide broadband access in areas where it’s already being provided by the market place? Cardiff Council & BT had a similar venture in 2004 so I guess there must be a way of doing it. Although I live in Cardiff I’ve never taken my laptop into town to try it.
The Cloud and BT have a similar idea but using BT payphones instead. Don’t see many of those around outside of town centres these days but maybe the business traveller (who doesn’t want to go to Starbucks) in the town centre is who their aiming it at. This concept might work for WiFi enabled phones although I suspect hotspots will be too patchy for it to be that useful.
Internet lampposts to be trialled
BT & The Cloud