Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Apples And Oranges: Flarion vs. EV-DO

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 01:37:41 -0400

Apples And Oranges: Flarion vs. EV-DO

 Contributed by derek on Fri, Apr 16 2004

Testing done by RBC Capital on the Nextel trial BWA (Broadband Wireless
Access) network has so far been positive. Earlier, Mike reported that
Nextel is pleased with the performance of the Flarion technology, and is
widening the scope of the trial to test the market viability as well as
the technology. But in a recent article on the trial, some errors were
made with respect to comparing unlike services. RCR Wireless News seems
to conclude that since Flash-OFDM has higher throughput, it's superior
to the EV-DO, EDGE, 1xRTT, and GPRS that other carriers are offering.
Although this may be true, it is an argument of limited value, since
Flash-OFDM is designed exclusively as a BWA technology, and the others
are adjunct cellular phone technologies designed to provide data on a
predominantly voice network.  The F-OFDM requires a whole new network
layover, where the others are often network upgrades. In fact, most
cellular 2.5G and 3G alternatives have efficiency benefits on both the
voice and data side, and were not designed simply to optimize data
throughput. Similarly, one could say that a laser printer is better than
a multi-function print/copy/fax/scan machine because the laser prints
faster, but that's not the whole story. I'm not saying that either
F-OFDM or EV-DO is better or worse, but that analysts need to be very
clear when comparing cellular evolution technologies and BWA
technologies.

www.techdirt.com

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