A speedy wireless online service called WiMax — which allows notebooks and other mobile gadgets to download data as fast as home-based broadband connections — will be commercially available in Silicon Valley sometime next year, according to the company offering the service.
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The cities and total area to be covered by the system is still being worked out, said Todd Lewellen, market-launch director for Clearwire, the Kirkland, Wash., company that will provide the so-called WiMax service. But he said details about that should be made public in a few months.
A single WiMax tower can provide Internet connections across a 30-mile radius or more, compared with 100 yards or so for many Wi-Fi towers. And the WiMax network boasts speeds comparable to wired broadband connections, which its backers say is faster than most traditional Wi-Fi data services.
Once hooked up to the service, "you can be on a bus, your kids can be in the back seat of a car watching their favorite video, there are just a lot of cool things you can do," Lewellen said.
Although the cost of the service in Silicon Valley hasn't been determined, he said it probably would be comparable to what people pay in Portland, Ore., where basic mobile service costs $30 a month.
Because the service uses different technology than traditional Wi-Fi, WiMax customers will need to buy a $49.95 network connector, which fits into a UBS port on their notebook or other gadget, unless their device has WiMax capabilities already installed.
WiMax has been partly bankrolled by Intel and Google. And in an effort to jumpstart WiMax in Silicon Valley, the Intel and Google corporate campuses will get access to a limited version of the system covering about 20 square miles beginning in late summer, Lewellen said.
"We're excited to see it happen" in Silicon Valley, said Google spokesman Andrew Pederson. "Anything that allows more people to connect to the Internet is good for the Internet and good for Google."
Lewellen said Clearwire also is considering providing the service to a local university, which he declined to name. In addition, Silicon Valley software developers are being encouraged to use the initial phase of the network this year so they can create intriguing video or other features to work on the network. The developers will be given free access to the system, but must buy the WiMax connecting device or a mobile gadget already equipped to run on WiMax.
Silicon Valley might seem a natural first choice to test such a network, given its importance as a technology center and home to Intel and Google.
But Lewellen said Baltimore and Portland were picked first because the Sprint Nextel unit that offered the service in Baltimore was based in that city and Intel, which has been testing WiMax for a couple of years, has a large corporate presence near Portland. In addition, he said, Portland has many hills, which provide a challenging test bed for a new broadband network.
Besides adding the service in Silicon Valley, Clearwire expects to have WiMax operating in a number of other U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle by the end of next year.
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BY Steve Johnson
Source：Mercury News
Copyright © 2009 - San Jose Mercury News.
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