My first Wimax installation

3.4 1 Mbit/s wireless Internet access in the centre of Copenhagen.

When you work in the wireless industry like I do, you have an incredible urge to try all new types of technologies as soon as they are unavailable. The first time I tried Wimax in my flat was a totally fantastic experience.

It was the fifth of December 2004 and at that time Wimax was not very well known, in fact the final industry standards had not been agreed upon. My experience was great – I received any box from Dansk Telecom that I plugged into the mains, plugged another wire into my PC and voilà – it was working. It is probably the easiest plug and play experience I have had so far on my PC – extremely easy and no problems at all.

Having gone online with my Wimax installation in the heart of Copenhagen, I couldn’t wait to test the speed and quality. In my apartment, that does not even have “line of sight” to the antenna on the roof of www.DanskeTelecom.com that is some 2.5 kilometres away, I had an excellent 3.41 Mbit/s downstream speed according to http://www.internetkvalitetsguide.dk/StreamSpeed_Download.asp

Compared to the 512 kbit/s TDC ADSL line that I had at the time at home, this was a completely new world that is difficult to describe. When you look at the business case, it is a serious competitor to my fixed line supplier TDC and their copper wires and also to the electricity companies in Denmark that have chosen to invest 9.5 billion kroner in regional and national fibre networks. The box that receives the signal sits on my windowsill and is the same size as my ADSL box and can be easily and simply delivered by mail – and without needing to be installed by a service technician. The box costs around 1000 kroner – which is quite cheap compared to TDC’s 1400 kroner per visit for a service technician every time one of their wholesale customers like e.g. Tele2 wants an ADSL customer connected to the Internet. With Wimax there is both time and money to be saved for both the Internet provider and the customer.

With my Wimax connection I can choose to drop my copper line – a saving of 110 kroner a month and I can drop my 512 kbit/s ADSL at 359 kroner a month. I can run my telephony using either an IP provider or alternatively via www.skype.com . One relevant question is whether my Wimax provider in the longer term will charge all the 469 kroner I am saving a month – or whether they will give me a rebate, or offer me a higher bandwidth? One thing is certain the price for accessing broadband Internet will fall significantly.

My first experience of Wimax was not just good, it was impressive and a serious alternative to all those that are focusing on any type of cable…

You can find much more information about Wimax here: http://www.wimaxforum.org/home

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