Inside WiMAX

Compass Communications announced last month it will deploy WiMAX broadband to customers in 15 towns and cities around New Zealand. The deployment uses the licensed 3.5GHz spectrum band and the equipment from Alvarion complies with IEEE 802.16 standards. Compass wireless champion Mike Lancaster is pictured here at the company’s first site to deploy WiMAX – the Otahuhu power substation in Auckland. The cabinet is situated beneath a power pylon, bolted to which is the transmission dish which sends the signal back to Compass’s network. There are also two oblong panels near the top of the pylon which receive the WiMAX signal from the 50 customers that are currently connected.Inside the cabinet, on the right-hand side, is the power supply equipment with the bottom half comprising battery back-up of about 24 hours. A close-up of the left-hand side of the cabinet shows three pieces of equipment. The bottom layer is Alvarion’s BreezeMAX box in which the customer’s signal is received. The middle box is the switch which aggregates the traffic. The top box is the digital microwave radio link which sends the signal to the transmission dish at the top of the tower.Lancaster says the base station can “comfortably” service hundreds of customers within a 20km radius, with broadband speeds of up to 10Mbps.