Vividwireless chairman Ryan Stokes has announced that the company expects to have 4G WiMax services operating in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Canberra in the next 12 months. This comes after the company has rolled out their 4G WiMax network in Perth, with it expected that it will launch to customers in March.
4G WiMax technology as rolled out by Vividwireless will allow download speeds of up to 20Mbps which is on par with a high end ADSL2+ fixed line connection, this is already slower than the theoretical maximum of the Telstra Next G network which can achieve speeds of 42Mbps with compatible devices. Vividwireless however can, as the WiMax hardware matures and more devices become available, upgrade it’s network to take advantage of the full 144Mbps theoretically possible within the WiMax specification.
Speaking to the Communications Alliance’s Broadband and Beyond 2010 conference yesterday, Stokes believed the national demand for a 4G WiMax service to be around 1.25Million customers. With the service to launch initially in and around university campuses in the cities where it is deployed. This is seen as a response to student needs for fast broadband services, who are unable to take advantage of fixed line services due to renting apartments and frequently moving as a result of their lifestyle.
Because the Vividwireless network will be data only, not sharing bandwidth with mobile phone users, it is believed that the real world performance of the 4G spectrum will be closer to it’s theoretical maximum than that of traditional 3/3.5G mobile networks such as Telstra Next G which in reality has only achieved a maximum real world speed of 36Mbps compared to it’s 42Mbps maximum.
