Tech - Taking your Wi-Fi Cafe with you,but not everywhere

BOB TEDESCHI


What if you could take along your strong and speedy home Wi-Fi connection wherever you go?


That’s the idea behind a new service from Sprint called Xohm, which takes Wi-Fi to its logical extreme. Fittingly, the technology behind it is called WiMax. Although it isn’t widely deployed in the United States, a test run of the service in Baltimore, where it was recently introduced, suggests that it could one day become a solid option for getting things done online and even making phone calls while on the go.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons the technology could also become a historical footnote, not the least of which is that it won’t work everywhere in a given city, much less all over the country. So-called mobile hot spot Internet services sold by cell carriers, including Sprint, have much greater range. But for those living in an area Xohm covers — the service arrives in Washington and Chicago in the coming months, with Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Fort Worth and Providence, R.I., to follow — the monthly outlay of $35 to $65 could be well worth it.

For $35, subscribers get home broadband service that they can share among multiple computers; $45 lets you connect at home or on the road with one laptop or other mobile device, and $65 broadens that to cover multiple devices. The prospect of getting speedy wireless service outside your house while also tearing up your contract with your home Internet service may appeal to many, because that combination is not available with data services from cell carriers.

Actually, most Xohm customers will have to pay something beyond that. To receive the signal, you need a Windows laptop with a WiMax chip, and only eight WiMax-ready machines are on the market. (The cheapest is a Lenovo SL500 for $570. I used a $2,560 Lenovo X301.)

If you don’t own one of those, you’ll need a wireless dongle or PC card ($60), and to set up a home network, you need a Xohm router ($80). If you’re just stopping into a Xohm city and you have the right equipment, you can buy 24-hour access for $10.

Once you are in a coverage area, the service works much like a home Wi-Fi connection, where you don’t need to type in a password each time you log on. Rather, after you sign up, the network recognizes your device whenever you’re in range of the signal.

When I visited Baltimore last week, Xohm operated at broadband speed no matter what kind of demands I put on it. I opened multiple browser windows, simultaneously streaming videos in each, without a hiccup. I ducked into alleys and hotel room corners and the connection still sped along nicely.

So how does the speed stack up against wired and unwired competitors? Time Warner, which charges about $50 a month for cable Internet service, averaged 3 megabits a second for downloading in New York on Monday, and 1 megabit a second for uploading, according to Keynote Systems, a mobile and Internet monitoring firm. Xohm’s connections can be faster than that; the company is aiming to provide 4 megabits a second for downloading and 1.5 for uploads.

Wireless Internet services from cell carriers come in various speeds, but AT&T’s Broadband Connect service, as an example, is much slower than Xohm. It averages 400 to 700 kilobits a second for downloads, and a maximum of 384 kilobits a second for uploads. That service costs $20 to $60 a month depending on data use.

Individual results, as they say in weight-loss and investing seminars, may vary. Because Xohm was turned on only last month, I shared the WiMax signal with just a handful of people. But soon the network will be carrying the load of thousands of file-swapping, video-downloading bandwidth hogs. Xohm says that once the system has more users, it will either add more transmission towers or offer tiered service, forcing some people to pay more for faster data speeds.

The type of device you use will also affect speed — and here’s where the WiMax story starts to get more interesting, or more complicated, depending on your stance. Xohm says that because WiMax chips are cheaper to produce than the communications chips in many smartphones, it expects manufacturers to introduce an array of new devices that can connect to the Web.

The first such device is the Nokia N810 WiMax Edition, a hand-held PC of sorts that went on sale last week for $493. The Nokia is a little bigger and a lot heavier than an iPhone, and it includes a big touch screen, but you can’t use it to make standard cellphone calls. Rather, you use it with Internet telephony software like Skype or Gizmo5, and simply make calls or set up video chats that way.

Video chats and phone calls over wireless Internet signals can be unstable, said Julie Ask, an analyst with Forrester Research, and it remains to be seen how reliable they’ll be on Xohm. Web surfing on the Nokia was noticeably quicker than on a 3G iPhone, but it wasn’t exactly fast. Watching NFL.com video highlights on the Nokia, I had a flashback to the days of 56k modems, when everything moved in fits and starts.

Those with an N810 may find the quality of Internet calls good enough to consider ditching their landlines. Chances are, though, if you can afford a nearly $500 gadget like this, you’re not looking to scrimp on the monthly phone bill.

Instant-messaging applications on the N810 operated smoothly. (SMS fans are out of luck, because Xohm is not plugged into a conventional cell network.)

WiMax is already operating in other parts of the world, where cities like Seoul and Amsterdam are bathed in its waves. In the United States, however, Wi-Fi dominates — so much so that analysts like Ms. Ask, from Forrester, say WiMax could have a hard time competing. If your home city doesn’t have WiMax service, you might want to hold off springing for a new laptop with a built-in WiMax receiver and wait to see if the market comes to you.

If you want to roll the dice, though, devices that pick up Xohm’s signal will also handle Wi-Fi, and will even go so far as to hand off the connection to Wi-Fi if that signal is stronger.

As for those in the suburbs who want a WiMax experience, the outlook isn’t bright. Only urban areas have enough potential customers to justify the cost of building these networks, which means less choice, less competition and higher Internet prices for country dwellers.

Quick Calls

If you’re a text-messaging newcomer who can’t quite figure out how to type a word on a traditional number pad, device makers are meeting you halfway. The Pantech Matrix, which AT&T introduced last week for $80, is the first of four new phones from the carrier that include the traditional “qwerty” keyboard layout. Slide the Matrix’s screen vertically, and a typical phone keypad appears. Slide it horizontally, and the bigger keyboard sets you up for easy text messaging ... While the debut of BlackBerry’s first touch-screen device, the Storm, got lots of attention recently, the company also quietly began selling its first flip phone, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip. The phone, available from T-Mobile for $150, features a keyboard that’s significantly bigger than the original Pearl, plus a bigger screen. When closed, it’s slightly thicker and slightly shorter than the earlier model ... If you’d rather not be partly responsible for someone else’s cellphone-related auto accident, a solution could be on the way. The Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and Aegis Mobility, a mobile technology company, announced software that will tell a caller when the other party is moving at car speeds. The technology will hit the market next year.