Northern Michigan University (NMU), located in Marquette, Michigan, will operate a WiMAX network exclusive to university staff and students, and include the costs of the network in the school’s tuition. Each student will be issued a Lenovo laptop with built in WiMAX capability. The network will cover the entire city of Marquette. Like many other universities, NMU had been offering a campus-wide Wi-Fi network. The university demonstrated their new WiMAX capability on Thursday August 20th.
I wonder how other ISPs in the area view this development. By providing this city wide coverage, the university basically removed thousands of potential customers from the market – a huge hit for a small market like Marquette, which is currently served by AT&T, Charter, and few smaller ISPs. What do you think — all’s fair in love and ‘broadband war?’
Wonder how speeds are on the WiMAX network? If they're better than what the competition offers, the competition needs to revise their offerings upward to compete. If not then the competition can offer better services. Sure, it might take out the low end of the market, however I don't want to be limited to a single Lenovo laptop for my 'net access.
Additionally, there's still the opportunity for selling TV service, which those companies seem to like doing anyway.
Lastly, ultra high speed internet is one benefit of being on a college campus, though there may be usage controls put into place (like firewalls) that aren't seen on normal systems. My university has an OC3 (155 Mbps) circuit serving the campus, with an upgrade to gigabit happening soonish. Folks in the dorms run off of this network, but nobody stays in the (overpriced) dorms just for that…
I believe that campus is also covered with Wi-Fi using Meru.