WiMAX is a wireless service that has created a lot of buzz promising broadband speeds without needing to run wires. While WiMAX networks here in America have not yet begun to take off, WiMAX is in use in several locations abroad.

Buzz Broadband was the first operator of a WiMAX network in Australia. Buzz CEO Garth Freeman slammed WiMAX at a conference on WiMAX in Bangkok on March 19. Buzz was using WiMAX equipment form Airspan and CommsDay reports that Freeman told the audience at the conference that the non-line of sight performance for the equipment was “non-existent” outside of 2km.

Freeman went on in his reported tirade to say that indoor performance decayed only 400m from the base station and that latency rates hit as much as 1000 milliseconds. A latency rate that high made it impossible to use VOIP service, which was one of the main selling points Buzz was using to lure customers away from existing Internet providers.

CommsDay says the highlight of Freeman’s presentation was that WiMAX may not work.  Buzz abandoned its WiMAX plans for a policy called “Horses for Courses” that includes the use of TD-CDMA at 1.9GHz and a wireless platform called DOCSIS.

Other WiMAX operators do not mention the issues that Buzz had with its service. A rival company called Internode reports that its equipment sourced from Airspan provides consistent coverage at speeds up to 6Mbps at distances of up to 30km. Internode further describes the platform as “proven.”

With an outright tirade at a conference to promote WiMAX service, it was a given that Airspan would issue a comment of some type relating to Buzz’s complaints. Airspan chief marketing officer Declan Byrne issued a statement saying:

Buzz Broadband deployed Airspan MicroMAXd, ProST, and EasyST equipment to around 200 users, the same equipment that is installed in many of the 100 or so other Airspan WiMAX deployments. In addition to broadband services, Buzz Broadband intended also to offer VoIP services to its subscribers. Mr. Freeman’s recent statements highlighted two complaints: the range of the solution, and the quality of service (QoS) capabilities for voice traffic.

With regard to range, although Airspan offers both micro-cell and macro-cell base station solutions, Buzz Broadband opted to go with the less-expensive micro-cell base stations in order to reduce cost. This was a well understood tradeoff of cost vs. range. In support of larger cell radii, particularly in support of indoor desktop CPE devices, Airspan offers the HiperMAX base station, which offers the best link budget in the industry for an 802.16d-2004 solution.

Airspan goes on to say that Buzz and Freeman rejected offered for help from the outside and that Buzz simply lacked the technical and financial resources to roll out a functional WiMAX network using Airspan equipment.

Sprint's WiMAX service in America, dubbed XOHM, has been cut back and will have a soft launch in a few large markets this year.