WiMax pricing comparison

[daffy]

VC/iBurst is 802.16e (so called mobile) but deployed in a fixed fashion. CPE connected to fixed roof-mounted directional grid antenna. For all intents and purposes pretty much the same as Telkom, just using 16e at 2.5 GHz TDD instead of 16d at 3.5 GHz FDD.

Well that seems a bit silly. I'd imagine they're building this 802.16e network with the intention of actually going full mobile when they're happy with it.
That would explain the higher pricing, as going down the Mobile IP path isn't a cheap way to do things.

Am I correct in assuming some of the network is Alvarion 4Motion based?

 

[Roman4604]

Well that seems a bit silly.

Not really, 16e does fixed as good as, if not better than 16d, as the lower freq. and more adv. modulation schemes give it better range and NLOS capability (reason why I call it so called mobile).

I'd imagine they're building this 802.16e network with the intention of actually going full mobile when they're happy with it.

Nope VC have 3G/HSDPA and iBurst have, well iBurst.

That would explain the higher pricing, as going down the Mobile IP path isn't a cheap way to do things.

In this country, choice of which spec. to use is purely driven by spectrum resources granted;

Telkom & Neotel use 16d cause they have 3.5 GHz allocation
VC & iBurst use 16e cause they have 2.5 GHz allocation

Am I correct in assuming some of the network is Alvarion 4Motion based?

Nope, Huawei & Alcatel BTS and various CPEs, mine is a Seowon Intech 4-port router with integrated 802.16e modem (connected to external 24dBi external grid antenna)

 

[Lord-Nikon]

How stable is WIMAX in comparison to ADSL? Looks to me like almost the entire Joburg area is covered, which means our area is covered.

If you didn't know that you were using WiMax (hypothetically) you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between ADSL and WiMax. Having a 512kbps WiMax and a 512kbps ADSL connection you honestly won't be able to tell them apart.

When it comes to stability, my personal opinion, WiMax is more stable. No cable theft, haven't really experienced any down time, weather has no effect and (touch wood) no overloading of base stations as of yet!