PCMag.com editor in chief Lance Ulanoff and I are in Korea for the week, and I spent much of the day talking about and testing WiMAX – what the Koreans call WiBro (wireless broadband.) The Korean technology is exactly what Clearwire is currently installing in cities like Baltimore, Portland, and Atlanta, albeit on a different frequency.
WiBro launched in April 2007, and it’s available across the Seoul metropolitan area. That’s only one city, but it’s half the Korean population. KT, the service provider, said they have about 300,000 subscribers for a range of plans priced at $10/month for 1GB, $20/month for 30GB or $27/month for 50GB of usage.
The WiBro experience in Seoul shows what true, high-speed wireless could feel like if it’s done right. Deep in the Seoul subway system, Samsung hooked us up with adorable, candy-colored N310 netbooks with AnyCall USB WiBro modems. We pulled down fearsome speeds: 4.3 megabits down and 1.5 megabits up while sitting still in a station, and 4.1 megabits down and 900 kilobits up while zooming along on a train. Streaming video was a snap.
The experience reminded me: it’s not the technology, it’s the buildout. In recent WiMAX tests in Baltimore, I got a fraction of the speed I got in the Seoul subway. WiMAX requires a solid network of well-placed transmitters with plenty of backhaul to work well. If you go cheap on the buildout, you end up with lousy speeds.
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