Delivery of WiMAX will be a struggle for Unwired

The initial cost projections made by Unwired for the deployment of its new WiMAX network is likely to be a struggle for the Australian wireless service provider according to experts.

The rollout of a WiMAX network that would cover most of the cities in Australia had originally been expected to cost around $200 million, although now, due to the current global recession, it is expected to cost between 10 and 15 percent more than expected.

Many of the critics of this new WiMAX network will now have further reason to complain with this latest issue adding to the various delays in the commercial rollout of the WiMAX service, which has already been in planning stages for the last five years.

An announcement was made back in 2005 of Unwired’s intention to create a WiMAX network, with the current networks in Sydney and Melbourne to be the first to get the WiMAX upgrade and once complete most of the other Australian cities would then get the new service. A proprietary fixed wireless system on the 3.5GHz bandwidth is currently used by Unwired.

In order to speed up the adoption of WiMAX throughout Australia an agreement was signed with Intel, which invested $37 million in Unwired in late August 2005. The only problem with this was that the expectation had been for most laptop to ship with internal WiMAX chipsets in the same ways that most laptops have Wi-Fi built-in, which unfortunately for Unwired and Intel did not occur.

The most likely reason for this is that Telstra now has a Next-G network that covers 98 percent of Australia, which is more than the WiMAX network from unwired would achieve even when complete, and this meant that a large number of laptop began shipping with 3G capabilities instead, with carriers like Optus and Vodafone also affecting the decision of laptop manufacturers due to their use of wireless technology like HSDPA.

Source – Good Gear Guide