Profile: RedKite’s Graham McLean on why WiMax holds little hope for rural ‘not-spots’

By Sean Hargrave
Published: November 20th, 2009

WiMax will not be the wireless broadband saviour for the digital have-nots, according to CI-Net Managing Director Graham McLean.

The ISP has recently expanded its RedKite WiMax service but at £3000 per year, it is targeted at businesses which require a stable back up option to fixed line connections. It has been operational for four years but was this month upgraded to allow companies with a 2Mb service to enjoy ‘bursts’ of up to 20Mbps when needed, so long as they average 2Mb across the month.

Far from being a rural not-spot filler, though, the service is offered in London, Croydon, Oxford, Hemel Hempstead, Birmingham and Exeter and may be arriving in Norwich soon.

“People have often talked about WiMax helping to bring broadband to smaller market towns and villages but I really don’t see that happening,” McLean says.

“It could do, but the economics just aren’t there. People want to get a fast wireless connection to the net but then they expect it to come in at around the same sort of price as ADSL. It just can’t do that, the economics aren’t there unless there are many thousands of subscribers and, of course, you’re only going to get that in a city. I’m afraid that people in the Highlands hoping to get broadband through WiMax for £20 a month are going to be disappointed.

“If people can get ADSL in a rural community, they’re obviously far better off with that and if there are businesses in rural areas that want to get a faster connection my advice would be to go for bonded ADSL connections so they can double up with two lines and get twice the speed. It will still be much, much cheaper than WiMax.”

Business continuity

The RedKite service, to which McLean has signed up around 100 customers, requires a direct line of sight between a roof top base station and the client’s receiver, normally also positioned on a rooftop. Hence, it is not a viable option for a company in a low building surrounded by taller office blocks. For those who can get a direct line of sight, though, McLean believes a Wi-Max connection can be a lifeline should they suffer an outage on their fixed line.

“We did very good business in Hemel Hempstead when the Buncefield oil plant had a fire,” he says.

“It’s this kind of situation where Wi-Max comes in to its own. When you lose fixed connections you can be stranded but if you have the back of wireless access you can keep on performing as normal. It’s because we’re not used all year round, but normally when a company needs a back-up connection, that we decided to allow people to operate above their normal connection speeds temporarily. We might sound like an expensive option but when you compare us to a fixed, leased line it’s comparable and, of course, it has the benefit of being a different route to fixed so it’s even better for business continuity.”

So, it would appear the wireless’s ability to go beyond offering companies a back up line and link communities to the web will be limited to projects backed by public money, such as Swindon’s announcement of a Wi-Fi mesh this week. Even then, though, such a public private initiative would only appear viable in a large town which already has ADSL widely available.

It underlines the need for people in not-spot areas who believe wireless is their best option to get organised and install a shared connection themselves rather than wait for a company to find a business case to provide it for them.