Interesting. I don't read such details in the newspaper here.

Mind the snarky remark about the defintion of broadband. With such asymetric speeds and overbooking you cannot call it broadband. Some have the guts to count a cheap subscription with high overbooking, low download/upload speed, bandwidth limit or vague FUP, high latency, restricted ports, illegal to connect more than 1 device or heavy QoS / packet mangling 'broadband' or 'Internet connectivity'. Its been reduced to a meaningless definition, a marketing term, much like calling MSN or AOL a connection to the Internet, or thinking the 'world wide web' is the Internet. Furthermore, such defintion is abused in statistics showing market penetration of 'broadband' while in reality many of these subscriptions are not; they're a cheap bang for a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but don't call it broadband then -- IMO. We'll have to see what the quality of the Internet connectivity in rural areas is going to be.

On a longer term you can expect communication to/from government going via Internet, giving all the advantages as well as disadvantages of such infrastructure. The Dutch government is working on this as well; they've rolled out DigID which is some kind of 'digital passport' used to communicate with the government (but not some kind of authentication like GPG), and develop web portals for communication. I see this kind of subsidizing elsewhere, too. An example is Belgium where yet again 'broadband' is a relative defintion; limited amount of traffic a month of around 10-20 GB, bad speeds, heavy capping, monopoly positions of cable and DSL providers. However, poor families get a free computer from the government. And why not? In a few years, when your current tablet is so out of date you will not be using it anymore ever there are still tons of people who would be very happy with such a device, and many who would make good use of it as well. In the Netherlands, until a few years ago, one could buy a computer once every 3 years without paying VAT; to stimulate IT adoption among the citizens. Now this option is abolished because penetration is high enough. Makes sense IMO. Penetration is high, and if you cannot pay a new one, buy a second hand. Legio of those. They even ported the income tax calculator to MacOSX and Linux/x86. Hence, the way I see it, governments are only adopting IT as part of our daily life and its in their advantage to apply IT to make our as well as their lives easier. For the kind of examples provided in this post, a huge pipe isn't necessary, and low overbooking isn't either. So...

With 3G there is a similar definition problem as with broadband. ITU defines EDGE as 3G (commonly referred to as 2.5G or 2.75G). ITU defines WiMAX as 3G as well (although some, e.g. WiMAX network providers, call it 4G ). HSPA+ is also 3G (although commonly referred to as 3.5G). LTE is an example of 4G (but not 'the 4G'), and current infrastructure can be used to roll LTE out. Once again definitions understood commonly among the crowd computing differ from official defintions. For good or worse.

In that regard I wonder if the WiMAX networks you tested with N810WME were also tested on heavy usage of network (related to overbooking)? I mean, I'm wondering what the overbooking was but understand that such is confidential. Still, was such considered during testing?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I didn't get to officially test the networks. My experiences were ad hoc.

So I actually missed this article and did not know there was anything going on with the N810 Wimax Edition, until this afternoon. I was near the Nokia Flagship store in NY today and thought I would take a look at the wimax tablet even though I have the original n810. Of course, it was nowhere to be found so I asked one of the Nokia reps why there wasn't a display model. Apparently, the wimax edition is on hold for selling and not gone just yet. Nokia is taking precautions because the Sprint-Clearwire merger is going to put wimax in temporary limbo. The rumor inside Nokia is that the frequency for wimax may be changed whenever this merger is completed and so they do not want to sell this product to consumers until they know for sure. When I got home I checked anyway and of course it's still available for purchase on Nokia's website, go figure....

Not sure if any of this is true or if it was already discussed here or in a news article, but I just thought I'd pass it along in case.

The Clearwire deal is completed, although the ramifications have yet to play out. There are technical/network changes being considered. Don't read too much into the website, it's sometimes inconsistent with other things.

My own thoughts on the matter, in response to many IMs, emails, and posts over the past 2 weeks...



http://www.latheofdreams.com/?p=675

I, too, could have loved WiMAX, if I had only been given the chance....

I loved the idea of WiMAX ... but

• until it's deployed in a region I actually spend ANY time in, it's still vaporware, IMO
• until there's more than one nationwide carrier that's using it, I find it difficult to believe in its long term viability ... it's even more of a narrow field than CDMA, basically

For the second one, without regard to the quality and purity of the technology, LTE seems a lot more promising to me. The other 3 nationwide carriers are going with LTE over WiMAX, leaving me to believe that LTE will be more successful and available. But, that's still vaporware. Any WWAN device that gets delivered, before LTE or WiMAX is actually nationwide, needs to be on a WWAN platform that isn't vaporware. And, IMO, that's EDGE+HSPA or 1xRTT+EVDO. That, or a hybrid (like the Russian HTC 4G device which is HSPA+WiMAX), so that real customers can actually use it with existing and legacy infrastructure, and niche and future customers will be able to take full advantage of the WiMAX potential.

WiMAX isn't yet fully baked, and thus the N810WME was poorly conceived, from a product/marketing point of view.

You're not the first to express this thought. I find it fascinating. I also wish to warn those of you who think you spend time and money at Fry's, Kroger, Walgreens, or A&W that you're suffering from psychosis.

We should all just drag along multi mile ethernet cables.