How long will wifi be used?

[et101]

Hi everyone,

As you all can see I am a newbie who needs all the ADSL masters help.

I want to start a small wireless isp in my town. I have the prices of all my equipment and found out that it is rather expensive. I also realised that WiMax is getting big all around.

My question to you guys is if you think wifi will still be used three years down the road or is WiMax a better option for the long run?

 

[PeekNPoke]

The question is actual cost. WiMax installation will probably be in the line of a 100 grand per pop. Your base equipment and client equipment will also be very expensive. You also need a license for WiMax, currently only Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, IS and a few other have it. So, this basically leaves you with WiFi, except it is illegal to use.

 

[et101]

So what do you think the longevity of WiFi is? Do you think it is worth starting something like this or is it going to dissapear?

 

[andres101]

IMO, wifi is going to be around for at least another 5-10 years. manufacturers are not going to discontinue wifi support just because wimax is available. intel (and most vendors, i think) will sell dual-chips (wifi/wimax).

wifi is a cheap, offers enough bandwidth for most network applications and is widely used. why use something else?

wimax does sound like a great product, but I think they spent more on marketing than on development... there is a massive wimax hype, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. until wimax is cheap and easy to set up, there is no competition for wifi.

 

[skydog]

Hi everyone,

As you all can see I am a newbie who needs all the ADSL masters help.

I want to start a small wireless isp in my town. I have the prices of all my equipment and found out that it is rather expensive. I also realised that WiMax is getting big all around.

My question to you guys is if you think wifi will still be used three years down the road or is WiMax a better option for the long run?

Welcome to the forum.
Wifi will be around for awhile and as long as Telkom is high priced wifi will be even more popular.
There are improvements on wifi in the pipeline and I'm sure will be for a while

There are many reasons why i think wifi will be be around Especially in Africa

but I would search this forum for previous threads on starting up WISPs and then start making decisions.

Good luck

 

[et101]

Thanks for the advise.

I will go through the other threads and bother you guys with questions.

 

[WISPMAN]

Hi everyone,

As you all can see I am a newbie who needs all the ADSL masters help.

I want to start a small wireless isp in my town. I have the prices of all my equipment and found out that it is rather expensive. I also realised that WiMax is getting big all around.

My question to you guys is if you think wifi will still be used three years down the road or is WiMax a better option for the long run?

ONE WORD, 802.11a. Use WRAP boards or RB511 (or the new RB100's) with Atheros CM9 cards, 5.8GHz grids and sectors, and purchase level 4E licenses from Mikrotik for about R70. On 802.11b/g theres only 3 non-overlapping channels. IE, not only are you taking a risk (with regards to loosing signal to clients when someone else gets the same idea as you) but also, your signal will interfere with other exsiting companies. On 802.11a (5.8GHz), theres about 8 non overlapping channels, and with extra licenses (level 4e), theres about 200 non overlapping channels. 5.8GHz is MUCH more directional, does NOT penetrate trees as good as 2.4 (Which you should NEVER do anyway), but, on 2.4GHz you normally get 300ms pings underload, whereas 5.8GHz gives you about 1-4ms pings even under load. From home, my pings are 5ms to the backbone, and that is after crossing 4HOBS (High Sites/Repeater sites). I even have a VoIP phone at home connecting to the Asterisk VoIP PABX at the office, and it has a smaller delay than my cellphone to a telkom line.

In case you were wondering, no, the additional licenses does not mean you can obtain an license, and it is completely illegal to use it. It's illegal to cross public boundaries on any ISM band (unless 300m apart), but it's completely illegal to use additional licenses.

wispman AT webmail DOT co DOT za