Wireless, high-speed networks are fast becoming commonplace in Utah, connecting everything from computers and printers to hybrid telephones and PDAs.
Wi-Fi "hot spots" - or access points - abound in homes, businesses and public squares, giving tech-savvy workers a park bench or coffee shop stool alternative to the office cubicle. But on the cyber-horizon is a new technology that, simply put, will be Wi-Fi on steroids.
WiMax is powerful enough to transmit broadband signals five miles compared to the typical 100-yard range of the current Wi-Fi technology. Equally important, it is being supported by Intel, AT&T and other tech companies
Though industry observers don't think WiMax will truly supplant Wi-Fi for another two to three years, Utah's tech executives already are making plans.
"We're investigating what it would take," says Pete Ashdown, president of Internet service provider Xmission, based in Salt Lake City. "We are
currently rolling out [Wi-Fi] wireless in cooperation with the city on Main Street, in Pioneer Park and Liberty Park."
While Xmission's Wi-Fi hot spots rely on the established 802.11b/g standards - broadband speeds rated between 11 and 54 megabits per second, or roughly a dozen to 70 times faster than dialup - the Salt Lake City hot spots will pale compared to the future's WiMax networks.
Emerging WiMax gear, using the 802.16 standard, currently is rated around 70 megabits per second; its much bigger broadcasting range also will eliminate the need for myriad islands of Wi-Fi hot spots in order to offer access over larger areas.
WiMax already has made a successful, though tentative debut in Utah during this past January's Sundance Film Festival, says Ian Calderon, digital initiatives director for the parent Sundance Institute.
Working with WiMax leader and festival sponsor Intel, Calderon oversaw the first wireless delivery of a fully theater-quality
film at the annual Park City event. The documentary "Rize," chronicling central Los Angeles' dance culture, was translated to a digital format in Vancouver, Canada; stored on an Intel server in Hillsboro, Ore.; transmitted to Salt Lake City, and then sent over the Internet via a secure "point-to-point" network.
"The motive was to give our audience a glimpse of the future, of the technology that is moving at such a rapid pace," Calderon says.
There are no plans to repeat the experiment at the 2006 film festival, but Calderon says there is no doubt WiMax has joined "the creative tools becoming available for people in filmmaking."
Chad Lake, computer administrator at the University of Utah's Merrill Engineering Building, also is intrigued by WiMax. For now, though, he and other administrators of the many campus Wi-Fi hot spots are just hoping to create one campuswide wireless access service.
"By fall is the goal," Lake says of the envisioned network. "There's
nothing like that here right now. We're in a transitional phase with each department providing access. . . . The School of Computing has one, and the [Marriott] library runs its own network, then there's a hodgepodge of [hot spots] elsewhere."
There are hurdles. Engineers, still hashing out WiMax's technical details, estimate they are about six months behind. That means certified WiMax products probably won't appear until the end of the year. WiMax service providers also must work out interference problems.
But Lake and others know WiMax is coming. Intel introduced its first chip this week that will allow computers and peripherals to use WiMax - and more than 20 other companies, including Qwest, Siemens, Texas Instruments and British Telecom, are backing the Intel technology.
That corporate support is a big endorsement for the still-emerging technology, which probably won't become common until 2007, tech analysts say.
Support from Intel
and other giants ''is the big reason that [WiMax] is the real thing,'' says Internet analyst David Willis of researcher Gartner.
Meanwhile, Qwest has run preliminary WiMax trials in downtown Denver and Rio Rancho, N.M., but no customers were involved. "This was an internal-use-only test," says spokesman Vince Hancock.
He estimates it will be at least 18 months before Qwest offers its customers WiMax services. Qwest is particularly interested in how the technology could reduce its current costs in providing traditional, wired broadband products.
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USA Today contributed to this story.
What the WiMax advantage offers users
A single WiMax antenna can beam high-speed Internet to entire neighborhoods. That means it could:
* Bring high-speed Internet to hard-to-reach areas. It's expensive to run broadband cable to homes and businesses in rural areas.
WiMax can be an alternative.
* Give a wired broadband alternative. TowerStream has already set up WiMax networks in a few cities for business-grade Internet access. AT&T is testing it as a backup for companies.
* Offer access on the go.
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