The future of Internet access is now. The idea of connecting cables to a computer to enable a connection will soon seem as archaic as manually cranking the engine of an automobile. Ed Dawson samples a cross-section of bleeding-edge wireless broadband services and cuts through the hype.
The Cool Factor
The essential appeal of wireless broadband is easy to understand. Wherever you take your notebook computer, the Internet goes with you. From the cool sands of a metropolitan beach to a wilderness retreat, escaping the office environment is a goal for many people, mentally compatible with telecommuting and ‘downshifting’. While it’s nice to take broadband with you on holidays, increasingly for some professionals, access on the road is becoming a necessity. For those users, an inability to download a large file is a showstopper, unresponsive Internet access is a time waster and a connection that constantly drops out is simply nightmarish.
Option Paralysis
Understanding mobile broadband is quite a task. Many people are generally aware that the services exist, but judging the shape and quality of those services, or making fine judgements between them, it’s hard. And they're far too expensive to justify testing each one for yourself. Gaining a clear view of the current services isn’t helped by the jostling competition between emerging technology standards invented by the telecommunications companies, which collectively oppose the blue sky thinking of the WiMAX proponents such as UnWired, which in turn want an all-new pie-in-the-sky infrastructure for wireless broadband, based on altruistic open standards.
The very idea of wireless broadband seems to suggest that you could abandon your home broadband connection altogether, simply accessing the Internet via the airwaves wherever you are, whenever required. Is this a realistic proposition? Can wireless broadband truly deliver fast and reliable performance? Considering the patchy performance of mobile phone services, potential users would do well to consider the merits of wireless broadband with a sceptical eye.
After all, if the outrageous claims that you can literally stroll around with high-powered broadband Internet access in your pocket are true, then people across the country may well be tempted to discard their wired connections and cancel their other Internet service accounts. And no doubt some people will, after reading this article. It’s an incredibly exciting idea, a disruptive technology that creates an exciting new landscape of Internet plans and access philosophies.
Speed on Tap
The good news is that wireless broadband is available now, but it’s still early days for the infrastructure. Within the boundaries of capital cities, it’s fantastic being able to access broadband on the run with an effortless mouse-click. But users who sampled early-generation General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) access will be understandably wary. GPRS offered predictably awful service, despite carriers’ claims of providing a better connection than an average dial-up 56Kb/s connection. Connections would time out, drop out and fail to complete regular mundane tasks that were standard for wired broadband connections of all stripes. This despite outrageous costs per megabyte. WiMAX services like UnWired and high-speed 3G access are generally only available within the inner-city latte-belts. Will they soon roll out to locations like Coober Pedy? In a country the size of Australia, don’t hold your breath.
Leaving the coverage issue aside, is wireless broadband truly fast enough yet? This is the key question we’ve attended to. Inside the known coverage area, we’ve performance-tested each service for average connection speed when downloading, the likelihood of sudden, reliable bursts of data with VoIP, as well as a test of the true ‘mobile’ functionality, when moving at speed in a vehicle, noting the services’ ability to maintain a reasonably continuous connection under a mild load, hopping from station to station.
Sampling the wireless broadband service in the home city of the PC Authority offices, we concentrated on the raw speed and performance of the services in their very heartland, where new services tend to be rolled out first. If the service isn’t fast enough in Sydney, it won’t be fast enough anywhere.