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June 7, 2005

Odd Claims from Supercomm

By Nancy Gohring

Redline, IBM, and TowerStream are demonstrating a broadband network at Supercomm: The problem is, they are claiming this is the “world’s first live, ‘over the air’ demonstration of equipment that is compliant to the IEE 802.16-2004 standard.” It’s unclear to me what these companies are claiming is a “first” here. Certainly not that they are demonstrating IEEE 802.16-2004 compliant equipment. Since no one has claimed the authority to check whether a piece of equipment is compliant to the 802.16-2004 standard, that’s not really an exciting claim. Loads of vendors have built equipment to the standard. The important piece is complying with the definition described by the WiMax Forum, which has yet to officially certify anything.

With that potential “first” out of the way, I’m baffled about the claim. The demonstration will stream video feeds from cameras on a building. I sincerely doubt this will be the first time someone has streamed live video over broadband wireless equipment.

Not only have there been countless demonstrations of gear that is to be submitted for WiMax certification, there are also plenty of live networks using such gear. Looks like typical trade show hype.

Posted by nancyg at June 7, 2005 5:10 PM

Categories: hype

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