WiMax broadband debuts in WellingtonBy: The Dominion Post, 2006-11-06 Viewed: 2444 times Printed: 97 times Emailed: 80 times
WiMax wireless broadband is now available in
Wellington, courtesy of junior telco Nzwireless, which has invested more than $1
million setting up a network of base stations covering the cbd and part of Lower
Hutt.
Founder Chris Aspros says the company has stolen a "big jump" on rivals by being first to market with a commercial WiMax service. Nzwireless has been trying out WiMax for six months with dozens of customers. It is offering the service, which it will initially market to business customers, with 2 megabit per second download and upload speeds and a 10 gigabyte data cap for $80 a month, plus gst, and a $500 installation fee. A 3Mbps plan costs $125 and an extra $25 a month gets unlimited usage. The speeds are slower than some might expect from WiMax – a much- hyped new standard for wireless broadband. But Mr Aspros says Nzwireless has researched its market and it is these symmetric speeds coupled with a "telco grade" connection that customers want. "Maintaining quality is the big thing. We could quite happily do 20Mbps up and down but that is not really necessary. The advantage is the fact the WiMax network has never dropped a packet. There is no interference whatsoever." Earlier this year, Nzwireless acquired the Wellington rights to 28MHz of spectrum in the 3.5GHz band, which allows its WiMax base stations to carry 48Mbps of data traffic each way. Mr Aspros won't disclose how many customers will share a base station, or how many base stations the company has, but even a conservative "contention ratio" would let Nzwireless support more than 100 small businesses on 2Mbps plans from each site.
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