WiMax - The lastest wave in connectivity
Friday, March 30th, 2007News Article: WiMAX was the belle of the CTIA ball
Sprint is deploying WiMAX, others carriers are considering it
One day I was sipping drinks at a very push martini (or was it a sushi) bar in downtown Toronto sometime back in ‘94/’95 (could have been ‘97 but my memory escapes me).
I’ll never forget this conversation because a good friend of mine (programmer) was debating the technical limitations he felt existed in phone lines, stating it was an engineering impossibility for DSL to be as fast as what this investor was claiming. This investor wasn’t a complete slouch in the technology department but he was more of a money man than he was a tech guru. At least, given how often he slurred his words, that’s certainly what I thought of him. He made an impact when he told my programming buddy that they already had a DSL testing market in Ottawa.
From then on, I was hooked. At that point, my only access to highspeed internet was at work. In 1995 we were connected by an ISDN line (for speed references we’re talking about a 1/4 - 1/8 speed of the average DSL line to individual homes). The ISDN line served 50 workstations. Before long, we bumped up to a T1. But highspeed for consumers? That didn’t exist on a large scale until 1997. That was the pivotal year. When I later moved to Nova Scotia, things had advanced so quickly, I made the jump in my thinking that Nova Scotia must be so advanced in delivering DSL to a higher population percentage than what was happening in Toronto. The reality is: DSL along with highspeed cable internet access simply just took off.
The drunken investor knew what he was talking about.
In 2001, my ex girlfriend and I won some points from an affiliate program we were promoting, and we promptly made the jump from wired router to WIFI. This was practically unheard of at the time, especially in a small town in a small province. I rigged up all the Linksys components and within a few hours the three of us (including her computer addicted 9 year old son) were connected to the internet without the need for anymore cables ever again.
There days, friends from back east tell me that if they take their trusty laptops into town, they can usually pick up 3-5 WIFI connections from their friend’s places. *cough* not that I’m encouraging anyone to go “war driving” anytime soon.
After reading an article on WiMax in an obscure free Toronto newspaper back in February of last year, I made the prediction that WiMAX could become the next wave in internet connectivity within a 2-5 year window.
It looks like my prediction might start to come true.
WiMAX was the belle of the CTIA ball
Sprint is deploying WiMAX, others carriers are considering it
So I have a hope of course. It is my dream that I will one day ditch my cantenna device (a tube attached to my network card to boost wifi signals for better reception), ditch Wifi, and adopt WiMAX, and hopefully stay connected in real time on road at all times. I am amused that I once chatted with a friend on MSN while my wife was driving the car in and around Victoria, BC (that’s how many wifi connections there were in the city core).
Imagine not having to hop from one connection to another like that anymore. Imagine just *being* connected. Anywhere.
That’s my hope for WiMAX. It’s the next phase people. We all want it, we’re craving it. It’s time.
