Thread: WiMAX

If you're looking to get involved then the licensed 5G frequencies are perhaps more the place to look - think of it as wifi on steroids, but with a higher permitted power output and no clutter from 'domestic' services.

Potentially a good earner, especially if you happen to own a big shed with lots of bandwidth in it, surrounded by lots of businesses/ 'pro' domestic users who want quality voip or more than 256k upload.

Happy to discuss by pm or here with anyone interested.

PS The cost of a license? £1 per site !! (minimum i think of 500)

I'm fairly certain Wimax is licensed like mobile phones - you buy/ bid for a chunk of frequencies within the band that are yours alone, so we're talking £millions, not £few hundred. The 5G stuff i referred to above will still do 10 miles line of sight (ie you can see you chimney from the data centre roof), or you can start to do clever things putting aerials on a nearby lamp post (your own or others with permission!) and run a special class of BT fibre to put 100M on the lamp post for about £3k a year.

Maybe its just me but the idea of a local lamp post with 100M symetric bandwidth on it gets me a little excited, in an entirely 'think of the possibilities' sort of way!

I believe wimax is licensed like mobile phones - auctions were held for groups of frequencies in the allocated band, so basically if you dont already have a licence you arent allowed to play. The 5G wireless can achieve much the same at a much lower cost entry point - especially if you have the physical headend premises/ bandwidth/ transit issues already sorted.

5.4 can be used for end users, there are a number of commercial and licensed companies doing so - for example vfast.co.uk and orbital.net locally to me. They have to use the 'C' block of frequencies though (the one block of three that is licensed) as the endpoints are not 'nomadic' but fixed.

Loads more info at ofcom.gov.uk

The 100M to the lamp post (or a street cabinet) is a BT product called "Street Access" - it costs roughly £3k per year per lampost as a sort of leased line. The slight issue is that the 'other end' has to be a local phone exchange, not (for example) your local data centre. For that you need another link from the phone exchange back. As a one off to put 100M to your house rather expensive, but if you a few dozen lamp posts dotted around a city and a shared line back to that data centre the figures start to add up (20 subscribers per lamppost at £25 a month = £6k and pretty much covers it?).

Clever bit might be to mesh from the connected lamp post to others to extend your reach, lowering your unit costs.

Thats my back of an envelope worths anyway!