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Unwired struggling to deliver WiMAX

by on27 January 2009

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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.
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