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Lots from TechDirt Wireless Today! |
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Written by Kory Mohr
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Wednesday, 18 May 2005 |
 TechDirt Wireless is on a rampage today! <grin> Lots of info about Verizon EVDO, the U.S. attack of an Australian WiFi patent and "non-WiMax" providers.
In the last year or so, we've been seeing a lot of companies come up with random patents that they claim are violated
by various WiFi implementations. One of the holders of such patents is
the Australian government science organization CSIRO, who recently sued
a Japanese owned firm in the US for violating those patents.
Ever since Verizon Wireless launched their EV-DO offering, folks in the
San Francisco Bay Area have been wondering how come they were passed
over. After all, the Bay Area is full of early adopters who probably
wouldn't mind shelling out $80/month for the service. The answer
(though Verizon Wireless never liked to admit it) was that the company
just didn't have enough spectrum to offer EV-DO here. Instead, they
kept expanding in a variety of cities all over the country, while using
any and every opportunity available to buy up spectrum from whoever was
selling. Back in March we noted that the company was buying a bunch of licenses from MetroPCS in the Bay Area,
and that this likely meant EV-DO wouldn't be far behind. It's looking
like that's exactly what's happening. While Verizon Wireless still
hasn't made any official announcements, multiple customers in the Bay
Area have started noticing EV-DO availability around the Bay Area.
It's not particularly new
to point out that technologies like Flash-OFDM from Flarion and
UMTS-TDD from IPWireless both exist now, are mobile and offer some
advantages over a still-in-process WiMax standard. While many in the
press seem to have been sucked in by the belief that all wireless broadband is WiMax or that WiMax will definitely succeed -- some are recognizing that there are still challenges. Nancy Gohring, writing for Wireless Week points to Europe where both Flash-OFDM and UMTS-TDD are getting some attention. |
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