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xMax: Only broadband in the village?
"We offer long range as well as high speed"

By Reuters

Published: Tuesday 05 July 2005

A new communications technology that "whispers" on busy radio channels could enable broadband internet services for on-the-go wireless devices or hook up homes that cannot yet get fast web access, its inventor said.

xMax, the latest innovation in broadband communications, is a very quiet radio system that uses radio channels already filled up with noisy pager or TV signals, said inventor Joe Bobier.

"xMax is trespassing radio frequencies, although trespassing is not the right word, because we're allowed to transmit a signal if it doesn't interfere with other, stronger signals," said Bobier.

The technology could interest a telecoms or internet operator with no radio spectrum because it can begin a wireless broadband service with very few base stations, adding more stations and increasing density as demand rises.

It is also appealing for rural areas which operators find too costly to cover with the current third-generation mobile phone networks that need base stations every few miles.

"We're talking about a 400 to 500 per cent improvement in range," Bobier said, adding that this was still much better than Flash-OFDM, also touted as a rural area broadband system.

XG Technology, the Florida-based company which owns xMax, is in discussions with several chipmakers and equipment makers to build the hardware.

Radio chips for devices should be in the $5 to $6 range when built in volume while base stations will be around $350,000. Those prices are competitive considering the range covered.

Stuart Schwartz, an electrical engineering professor at Princeton University, said xMax is not an efficient system to transport data through the airwaves "but it is doing it in a benign way. You won't even know it's there. It's very clever."

The advantage is not only that radio spectrum can be used twice and that xMax needs no special radio band of its own but especially that it can sit in the valuable low-frequency bands which characteristically carry very far and through buildings.

Other new broadband internet technologies, such as WiMax and Flash OFDM, need dedicated radio frequency bands. If they are situated in frequency ranges above 1GHz, the signal has trouble penetrating buildings and other obstacles, or travelling over distances longer than a few miles.

Bobier said: "We offer long range as well as high speed."