AFTER HE RETURNED from Dublin where he saw a billboard that encouraged him to Google for Wimax, a friend of mine asked if I was working for an Irish ISP because my blog appears on the front page of the results for Ireland. I told him I wasn't working for anyone new but that I was happy to handle a boost in website visitors (an extra 85 visitors a day at the moment), thanks to the billboard advertisements. I'd like to point out how Wimax works in rural Ireland but I don't have first-hand experience with it. Moreover, I have my doubts that Wimax would be able to provide me over-the-air broadband strong enough to conduct a videoconference with Online Meeting Rooms and my third level class. That's the kind of test I'd need to perform in order to give readers a quality check of Wimax in rural Ireland.
In addition to my job in Tipperary Institute, I work with rural tourism services and some of them are far removed from broadband-enabled telephone exchanges. They need fixed wireless access in order to get broadband in their rural business locations. I'm less than a mile in a line-of-sight position to a neighbour who cannot get a wireless broadband signal via HSDPA or Ice Broadband and his phone lines are too old to get eircom broadband. I'd like to see how Wimax might serve his needs.
I'd also like to see if Wimax service can be meshed through the small town centre of Cashel, allowing tourists, students and anyone on the street a free and open wifi node to the internet.
I've seen Wimax working well in situations such as in the photo (above left). Without obstructions and with a relatively clear landscape to erect towers, Wimax can reach hundreds of people in ten square mile sectors. But when you don't have access to the high ground and when your customers sit behind rock formations or deep in valleys, no commercially available radio transmission signal will work as advertised.
Previously on Inside View -- Wimax Ireland" on 24 Oct 09.
