« Nortel Says They'll Deploy Fixed WiMax in UK with Mobile Equipment | Main | Clearwire Space Needle Launch Reminds Reporter of Last Year »

October 24, 2006

Skype over WiBro on the 19th Floor

By Glenn Fleishman

Monica Paolini files a report on trying WiBro in Seoul: Paolini, who runs the analysis firm Senza Fili Consulting, was able to get 500 Kbps to 2 Mbps performance down and 250 Kbps to 500 Kbps up within the coverage area. She could even make Skype calls on the 19th floor of her hotel, despite Korea Telecom promising only coverage up to the fourth floor. The network was quite busy with other users similarly testing the network in the same location. This is first-generation WiBro with single input and output antennas. Paolini predicts better performance when MIMO is added.

Paolini identifies a more salient factor in why Asian telecoms get such huge uptake on data services in general: KT is pushing user-to-user operations, such as messaging and video calls. They’re not stressing high-download, walled-garden passive content.

WiBro uses the 2.3 GHz band with an 8.75 MHz channel, which Paolini notes was developed as a Mobile WiMax profile for the Korean market.

Posted by Glennf at October 24, 2006 1:53 PM

Categories: 2.3 GHz, WiBro, international

Comments

Post a comment