This morning I skipped along to the WiMax Forest Workshop held at the New Art Exchange. There I was told that Intel (the worlds largest micro chip manufacturer) as invested an awful amount of money in a new wireless technology called WiMax. The system is being deployed across north Nottingham with antenna masts being erected at Djnogoly City Academy and Haddon Park School. Apparently Nottingham beat off competition from Cambridge to act as one of Intel’s UK guinea pigs. North Nottingham is in effect Intel’s urban poor test bed.

From what I can gather WiMax seems to circumnavigate the golden mile long guarded by Telco’s. The mile of copper wire that connects the user to the telephone exchange. The practical upshot of this is that WiMax could be a viable alternative to the mandatory enforcement of a landline as a basis for domestic and commercial broadband. Log onto WiMax as a gateway to WiFi. For this reason north Nottingham could well be a fruitful study for Intel. There is a high transitory population with many residents not leasing landline phone services, and sub sequentially broadband connectivity, for a number of reasons. Having said this, the session this morning was aimed squarely at early adopter businesses in the catchment of the WiMax antenna. Many of the speakers talked about community but the whole event was very much about what the community could do to further the interests of the project sponsor parties. As both Nottingham and Nottingham Trent Universities are partners then we heard quite a bit about student placements, academic research and piloting. From the technology partner we heard that we could try connections across an unknown radius to see if the system would work. These messages were not particularly reassuring both from a confidence in new technology point of view nor from a benefit to the community point of view.

The sheer volume of investment in WiMax could well make it as viable as 3G and as ubiquitous as WiFi. The potential benefit for digital inclusion within a community that is routinely excluded from an ever techno-literate society is apparent. The main question seems to be whether the technology companies and academics who are currently heading up the programme can translate techno excitement into practical and tangible results.

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