WiMax service hits Seattle

May 15, 2005

An antenna plunked atop Seattle's Space Needle will soon enable business-class, point-to-multipoint WiMax-class services throughout the rainy city's dense urban core.

The provider of the service, Speakeasy, said last week that it is taking business customer orders for wireless broadband services that range from $500 per month for 3 Mbit/s services to $700 per month for 6 Mbit/s services with an annual contract. Commercial services are set to go live in June.

The carrier indicated that Seattle is the first among several major cities in which it will roll out its fixed wireless broadband service for businesses. It is using Alvarion pre-WiMax base stations, as well as Alvarion end-user hardware that is based on Intel's recently announced standards-based 802.16-2004 WiMax CPE system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Seattle's challenging weather, terrain and dense architecture were among the reasons Speakeasy chose the city as the maiden site for its WiMax-class service deployment, according to the carrier. Speakeasy indicated that these factors make it one of the most difficult geographies for wireless communications in the country; the "if it can work here, it can work anywhere" theory.

Full Story by Joanie Wexler: WiMax service hits Seattle (Techworld).