Cost overruns
Australia's first
crack at installing WiMAX is turning out more expensive than
planned.
Australian wireless Internet provider Unwired has admitted that $200
million for a roll out into most Australian cities is not enough and it will
probably cost 10 or 15 per cent more. The problem is not the technology,
Unwired insists, it is just that the global economic crisis has jacked the
prices up.
The WiMAX project has been five years in the making and been
delayed several times already. Unwired wanted to to convert current Sydney
and Melbourne networks to the WiMAX standard, then roll out the service to most
of the other capital cities. To do that it had to sign an agreement with Intel
to speed the adoption of WiMAX in Australia. Intel invested $37 million in
Unwired.
Intel expected that most of the notebooks that were being shipped by
2007 could handle WiMAX and it turned out they couldn't. Instead they are all
shipping with 3G wireless broadband (usually HSDPA) through carriers like
Vodafone and Optus.