Aussies Pull Broadband out of Air – users roam up to nine miles away from the base station and still get a speedy connection.

An Australian company launched a wireless broadband service in Sydney this week that lets laptop and PDA users roam up to nine miles away from the base station and still get a speedy connection.

The technology, called iBurst, fits in a potentially lucrative niche. It can transmit data at broadband speeds much farther than Wi-Fi can, and it can transmit data faster than cellular or GPRS services.

By Patrick Gray

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62684,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

(We hope you can join Sen. Burns and others on March 27th in Missoula when we talk about this and other new communications technologies http://www.matr.net/article-10161.html – Russ)

The company launching the network, Personal Broadband Australia, or PBA, plans to cover 75 percent of the Australian population and 95 percent of Australian businesses by 2005. It’s even considering deploying the technology in rural areas — if PBA drops the maximum connection speed by about 30 percent, the company claims iBurst’s range will be increased to around 55 miles.

The service is based on "adaptive antennas" developed by ArrayComm in the United States. Unlike a traditional antenna that blasts radio signals in all directions, adaptive antennas calculate the optimum signal phase and strength for each user based on where the user is in the coverage area. This amplifies the signal at each customer’s particular location.

PBA’s rollout is an experiment. If the service becomes popular, the technology will be introduced in other parts of the world, including the United States.

"The inventors of the technology wanted to find a market where they could commercially demonstrate the technology," said Jonathan Withers, PBA’s chief technical officer. They came to Australia because they could buy the radio spectrum relatively cheaply, for AU$9.5 million.

"We always like to talk about how Australia is a very good test market," Withers said.

The Australian government auctioned off parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in 2000. It did so to promote wireless alternatives to the copper phone network, which is owned by the country’s telecommunications provider, Telstra. Because Telstra owns the so-called last mile of telephone lines to people’s homes and businesses, other telecommunications concerns and Internet service providers accuse it of anticompetitive behavior. Technology like iBurst could level the field.

In addition to PBA, other wireless telecom providers, like Unwired Australia, plan to launch similar services.

While the technology may take awhile to become accessible to the average user, high-end business users are already subscribing to iBurst. Peter Langmaid, a Sydney-based director for Boston Consulting Group, has bought eight modems and subscriptions following a trial of the technology. The main advantage, he said, is not having to deal with technological bureaucracy when trying to get access to a broadband connection.

"We need to get teams of varying sizes into our client’s site and working as soon as possible," he said. "Before we had iBurst we either tried to get a broadband connection in to our client, which had a lead time of 20 days, or our consulting staff used telephone lines."

There’s also the cool factor.

"I have a manager who did the ultimate test," Langmaid said. "He jumped on the bus and used his laptop all the way home without interruption."

The service isn’t cheap. The PC cards that receive the signal cost about AU$500, with a monthly subscription of AU$150. Per-megabyte fees apply to downloads in excess of 500 MB.