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Mesh WiFi Project in Rural Vietnam will not use any WiMAX (not even for backhaul)
At the November 8th SCU Technology Benefiting Humanity: Taking Innovation to the Next Stage, Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute spoke about an innovative mesh WiFi project in rural Vietnam. The project uses mesh WiFi equipment, VoIP switch, and a new Intel WiFi backhaul product (RCP) to provide VoIP over WiFi phone service, as well as Internet service over a 1km coverage area. The local population served -6K to 7K households- resides in 3 adjacent communes (clusters of Vietnamese villages are administratively organized in communes). VoWiFi phones, costing approximately $100 each, are distributed free to the local people who would otherwise not have phone service. It is expected that Internet service will be available from notebook PCs used in local cafe's, in schools, and in hospitals.
The total cost of this project is said to be only 1/5 the cost of an equivalent coverage cell phone network -plus Internet access is
provided at no additional charge. Could this be the new model for providing low cost cell phone and Internet service to rural areas in developing countries? It sure seems so. This project is an example of providing low cost, scalable technology solutions to a developing country.
For more information on this project, please contact Allen Hammond allen@wri.org, He is cc'd on this mail. Also see: http://www.nextbillion.net/blogs/2006/11/08/wireless-mesh-as-a-transforming-tool
Also see the home page: www.nextbillion.net
There you will find an interesting article titled: Ericsson's Plan: Rural Connectivity for the Millennium Villages
Closing Comment: It seems there is no place for WiMAX in rural wireless connectivity or in U.S. Municipal Wireless network access. With the scuttling of the SPRINT-Clearwire WiMAX agreement, the future of that technology is in doubt. Several companies have invested a lot of money in the hoped-for success of WiMax. The biggest of which include Intel, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung. All of them will take it on the chin a bit if Sprint and Cleariwre's WiMax plans fall apart completely.
Closing Comment: It seems there is no place for WiMAX in rural wireless connectivity or in U.S. Municipal Wireless network access. With the scuttling of the SPRINT-Clearwire WiMAX agreement, the future of that technology is in doubt. Several companies have invested a lot of money in the hoped-for success of WiMax. The biggest of which include Intel, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung. All of them will take it on the chin a bit if Sprint and Cleariwre's WiMax plans fall apart completely.
Comment
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Comment by Alan J Weissberger on November 17, 2007 at 8:16pm
- I was suprised that WiFi is being offered as a backhaul technology by Intel, who is the world's WiMAX cheerleader and evangelist. I guess it is because of the much lower costs.
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Comment by Rubens Kuhl on November 17, 2007 at 7:44pm
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Not using WiMAX for the backhaul shouldn't be a surprise; using PMP (Point-Multi-Point) for backhaul is not a good design choice, no mater what PMP technology it is. Although P2P is quoted as WiMAX profile at above 10 GHz, this doesn't seem to be happening soon. I know many wireless presentations quote WiMAX as back-haul to WiMesh, but slides accept anything.
About whether this deployment works or not, it depends a lot on a low usage and low radius scenario.
1) Wi-Fi Access-Points can be easily saturated by competition between clientes; more than 5 active clientes can easily make a Wi-Fi network crawl. If each Wi-Mesh node serves a low number of clients, it should be fine.
2) Wi-Mesh networks have bad fairness characteristics. Performance halves at each hop, so a user that is five hops have 32x less performance... in a network with users at 1,2,3,4 hops, that user will have little to none effective performance.
3) Wi-Fi devices have low pps performance (most of them at near 1 kpps), which is a severe limitation to a VoIP network.
If this network is built with a backhaul at each AP (in which case Mesh support will only provide roaming and backup, not main connectivity) and a low usage profile, it can run fine... but I wouldn't count on this architeture to be reference design for low income countries.
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