Sidecut Reports

There are some nits to pick for those of us who live and breathe WiMAX and LTE, but for the most part today’s New York Times story on Sprint’s use of WiMAX largely gets the big points right.

But there are some errors and generalizations that leave room for improvement — like claiming WiMAX was invented by Intel? Bankrolled, maybe, but last we checked it was an IEEE baby, at least in its standardized form. And we’d like to know a bit more about who the “experts” are that gave reporter Saul Hansell this tidbit:

While it is still in development, some experts say L.T.E. will be able to handle more traffic than WiMax, and the L.T.E. systems planned by AT&T and Verizon would use radio frequencies that penetrate buildings better than those used by Clearwire.

Well, according to one expert — Verizon CTO Dick Lynch, whose company will use LTE — the radio technologies are functional equivalents. Throughput will depend mainly on the available spectrum depth. (To Hansell’s credit he does note that Clearwire has more spectrum depth than AT&T and Verizon; but that leaves a reader not sure how his two points balance out.)

And while 700 MHz is better than 2.5 GHz for some tasks — like penetrating building walls — it’s not yet been proven that the frequency is better suited for urban use, since those same powerful characteristics that let it penetrate walls also make it harder to put towers close enough together to satisfy a large number of users.

It’s confusing and complex, yes. But not so hard that you can’t get it right, or talk to more than one “expert,” right? Maybe next time.

UPDATE: Hansell has just added a folow-on blog post that allows for comments, so join in the conversation if you are so moved.

With the New York Times and Businessweek both weighing in Thursday with highly favorable reviews of the Xohm WiMax service recently launched in Baltimore, it’s a safe bet there are some happy folks at Sprint and Clearwire headquarters right now. Though it’s far from champagne-popping time, you couldn’t ask for a better start to a marketing campaign than having a double-barrelled pat on your back from two mainstream publications like the Times and Businessweek.

BusinessWeek’s tech columnist Stephen Wildstrom gave the service a test run (courtesy of a Lenovo laptop with WiMax embedded inside) and found it to his liking, especially the seamless handoff between cell sites while moving. You could call him the No. 1 WiMax fanboy after reading his conclusion:

At launch, XOHM is providing faster service at lower cost than 3G networks, and it provides both mobile service and a rival to cable and phone companies for home Internet. That’s enough of a reason for all of us to cheer for WiMAX.

(Somewhere, I see Barry West sipping a scotch and smiling.)

The Times’ Bob Tedeschi also found the service to his liking, though some of his conclusions (that Wi-Fi will still dominate in rural markets — maybe he hasn’t heard that WiMax is actually making inroads in rural markets thanks to its lower cost of deployment) show that perhaps he could use a great report on the state of WiMax business in the U.S. Here’s the money quote from the Times piece:

When I visited Baltimore last week, Xohm operated at broadband speed no matter what kind of demands I put on it. I opened multiple browser windows, simultaneously streaming videos in each, without a hiccup. I ducked into alleys and hotel room corners and the connection still sped along nicely.

Reviews from the trade press were similarly enthusiastic, and in some cases with a lot more details to chew on. My favorite so far is from former colleague and Baltimore resident Nick Hoover, who is actually using WiMax as his “production network” as they say in the enterprise world — running Voice over IP for work calls, and filing stories over the broadband link. The folks over at Computerworld also gave the network a test, with favorable results.

The bottom line seems to be that Barry West and Co. did a fine job making sure the Baltimore network was up to snuff before releasing it to the public. Let’s see how the track record goes when Xohm and WiMax open up in Chicago and D.C.