Great info Sachin!

I wasn't enthused about Wi Max either. Specially when Indian Telecom firms and Indian media started taking active interest in promoting "Wi Max". Heck, I don't fancy WiFi either; it's too insecure.

Wireless hasn't come off age. Why not stop calling this as a "killer app" and make everything else work?

More details on UMTS Sachin? You seem to be involved with the Engg. firms designing this kind of stuff....

Great info Sachin!

I wasn't enthused about Wi Max either. Specially when Indian Telecom firms and Indian media started taking active interest in promoting "Wi Max". Heck, I don't fancy WiFi either; it's too insecure.

Wireless hasn't come off age. Why not stop calling this as a "killer app" and make everything else work?

More details on UMTS Sachin? You seem to be involved with the Engg. firms designing this kind of stuff....

i've done a couple of serious studies on WiMax myself. but to my discontent its a flawed technology for everything except the idea. for one thing its backed by the big butt intel. and secondly, wimax is more of a distance implementation compared to wifi. so the key goal is to have sustained bandwidth topologies at much greater distances compared to wifi. i've even worked on a small project that tried encapsulating this tech, but it wasnt for our small startup. the idea is(was) great. but with intel's hungry pigs, it might pour our from their vaults as a plague.

and about gprs, its gruesome SLOW. some will argue that its good enough for browsing. they can fancy themselves with that piece of tech. UMTS seems very promising for me as a telecom engg. more open than wimax and well implemented by a dozen chip makers. the drawback is that it sits tightly on cellular and cdma protocols and in its present form, its highly integrated on the hardware thus causing an array of dependencies. all that will change for sure.

i've done a couple of serious studies on WiMax myself. but to my discontent its a flawed technology for everything except the idea. for one thing its backed by the big butt intel. and secondly, wimax is more of a distance implementation compared to wifi. so the key goal is to have sustained bandwidth topologies at much greater distances compared to wifi. i've even worked on a small project that tried encapsulating this tech, but it wasnt for our small startup. the idea is(was) great. but with intel's hungry pigs, it might pour our from their vaults as a plague.

and about gprs, its gruesome SLOW. some will argue that its good enough for browsing. they can fancy themselves with that piece of tech. UMTS seems very promising for me as a telecom engg. more open than wimax and well implemented by a dozen chip makers. the drawback is that it sits tightly on cellular and cdma protocols and in its present form, its highly integrated on the hardware thus causing an array of dependencies. all that will change for sure.

"Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope."

I bet there are more mobile owners than landline owners in the country !!

In the same way if WiMax offers similar advantages, this may be the way to expand internet coverage whereas it would have been economically unfeasible in the past (we don't see enough ROI). But its a very big IF.

The better speeds/preformance will continue to be over wired connections, but 56k or 128k might be good enough for ppl that want to browse.

"Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope."

I bet there are more mobile owners than landline owners in the country !!

In the same way if WiMax offers similar advantages, this may be the way to expand internet coverage whereas it would have been economically unfeasible in the past (we don't see enough ROI). But its a very big IF.

The better speeds/preformance will continue to be over wired connections, but 56k or 128k might be good enough for ppl that want to browse.

Frankly, I have no idea whether it's Wimax or something esle. For most of us, it's hard to believe that Wi Max would debut in the barren lands of Africa; for that matter can you imagine a state of the art gigabit ethernet in Bihar?

Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope. As blr_p rightly pointed out, unless Wimax comes with faster speeds, the end user experience maybe frustrated. But then again, its looking from our own prism. In the good old days, getting 3k from my dia up meant that my internet is top of the world! Now I bitch about lousy 256k but nevertheless working internet connection for all practical purposes.

As for the cell phone OSS, I believe Linux is "embedded". Again, I am not enthused by the overt media hype about the whole thing being hunky dory. Let's wait and watch and see how things fare up.

Frankly, I have no idea whether it's Wimax or something esle. For most of us, it's hard to believe that Wi Max would debut in the barren lands of Africa; for that matter can you imagine a state of the art gigabit ethernet in Bihar?

Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope. As blr_p rightly pointed out, unless Wimax comes with faster speeds, the end user experience maybe frustrated. But then again, its looking from our own prism. In the good old days, getting 3k from my dia up meant that my internet is top of the world! Now I bitch about lousy 256k but nevertheless working internet connection for all practical purposes.

As for the cell phone OSS, I believe Linux is "embedded". Again, I am not enthused by the overt media hype about the whole thing being hunky dory. Let's wait and watch and see how things fare up.

Is WiMax the wireless tech they are referring to here ?

It's early days still but it sounds promising. The problem with it is that as usual it will be oversubscribed to, to increase profits naturally, so the effective speed won't be any faster than dialup- unless you pay much more. But then you could still get connectivity without a cable being installed.

There might be other WiMax installations with faster throughput, but as a way to connect more ppl to the net this might be the only feasible way.

The other idea, cellphone with GPRS, thing is what is the fastest you can get ith it now ? I would think this might be a better way since we are told that 70million ppl have cellphones in this country already. I'm talking as cellphone for internet not internet+computer. Heh that would take some serious tech in the form factor of a cellphone. But its an interesting idea nevertheless. If they can install WinCE on it then its only a matter of time before youc an install some OSS on it too.

Is WiMax the wireless tech they are referring to here ?

It's early days still but it sounds promising. The problem with it is that as usual it will be oversubscribed to, to increase profits naturally, so the effective speed won't be any faster than dialup- unless you pay much more. But then you could still get connectivity without a cable being installed.

There might be other WiMax installations with faster throughput, but as a way to connect more ppl to the net this might be the only feasible way.

The other idea, cellphone with GPRS, thing is what is the fastest you can get ith it now ? I would think this might be a better way since we are told that 70million ppl have cellphones in this country already. I'm talking as cellphone for internet not internet+computer. Heh that would take some serious tech in the form factor of a cellphone. But its an interesting idea nevertheless. If they can install WinCE on it then its only a matter of time before youc an install some OSS on it too.