Customer Reviews

WiMAX Handbook: Building 802.16 Networks (McGraw-Hill Communications)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Our investment club kept hearing about WiMAX so we did some research and came across this book. We are not "techies" and found this book to be real helpful in understanding the future implications for our investment portfolios (phone companies, cable TV companies, etc) in regardds to WiMAX.

If you have a nickel invested in a telecommunications related company, you MUST read this book. It earned our five stars rating!

First of all, at present time you haven't got many options to choose from regarding WiMax. I purchased Ohrtman's handbook because it seemed to be a solid reference. I agree with this point, but in my opinion, the book only deserves 3 stars due to the following reasons:

1) Despite being a relativelly novel technology, there exist a lot of technical references and papers out there with technical details about WiMax. This book does a very good job as an overall introduction to several aspects of this technology (including WiMax economy) which could be very valuable for the non-tech corporate reader. So don't expect to find many technical inner details (you'll find a lot of info in the 802.16 IEEE PDFs).

2) The second reason, and the most important one, is the apparently lack of a rigurous treatment of security topics. For example, the author speaks about "X.509 encryption" several times. Well, as someone involved in computer security topics for more than 7 years, I think that the author completely missed the point here. There is a clear difference between authentication (which is the main goal of X.509 certificates) and encryption (provided by DES in WiMax).

...they don't get on the WiMAX bandwagon. I read in today's Wall Street Journal (12/01/05) that the big US telephone companies are trying to get rid of their copper wire land lines because they cost too much to operate. Rather they are trying to move to wireless where ever possible. This book helped me understand why WiMAX IS the future of telecommunications. It sure gets my 5 stars (and I don't give 'em out easy!)

Funny enough, our law librarian turned me on to this book. It contains a chapter on regulatory aspects of WiMAX. The book goes into exceptional detail what you can and cannot do with unlicensed spectrum, but what is most important about this book is that it covers recent developments at the FCC concerning future developments in spectrum policy.

Technology is fun, but ultimately you have to know the law on this stuff. As a telecom attorney, I have found this source most helpful. It fully earns 5 stars in my book.

I have over 20 years experience in the wireless industry and this book reads like a dream. Thank God some one got off the vendor propaganda and actually read and translated the IEEE spec. The author has taken real pains to make this techincal subject legible to engineer and business decision maker alike.

Unlike a number of tech books on the market, the author mentions no vendors. Given the newness of the technology and all the hype from vendors, this is a real breath of fresh air in tech book writing.

What almost NO tech book will do for you is investigate the legal and economic issues surrounding the technology. WiMAX Handbook goes into detail to alert the would be operator of issues they will face in the regulatory as well as the teechnical realm. By touching on the business case for WiMAX, Ohrtman went where no tech book writer will go and thats what adds real value to this book.

If you are remotely interested in the WiMAX industry I recommend you digest this book ASAP!

I was trying to get a grip on all the nexgen stuff (WiMAX VoIP, IPTV, IMS, EvDo, etc) when I got into this book. It really helped see what the next step is or at least how it all fits together. Very precient. A good investment in my telecom career.

I got this book at the USTA bookstore at SuperComm and read it on the trip home. I couldn't put it down. My company is in the Wi-Fi space and I wanted to get my arms around the WiMAX thing that every key note speaker at least mentioned at SuperCom. This book really helped me understand what all those VPs at the big telcos were ranting about.

Where this book really helped me out is to understand the difference between the spec and vendor hype. Ohrtman goes into detail describing OFDM, the MAC and PHY layers in words non-engineers can understand.

As I make the case for WiMAX to my company, clients and investors, I will be using chapters 5,6,7 and 8 directly from this book as the author nails the objections everyone has to wireless: QoS, security, interference and, most importantly "Can we do VoIP on that?" The case for IPTV over WiMAX is even more compelling.

Expect to see this book on every bookshelf in every telecom employee office/cubicle by 2007.

As a long time tech investor, I found this book especially helpful in that it tackles a lot of questions on top of technolog. For example, it devotes a chapter to the business case for WiMAX. Thats big! In addition, it delves into regulatory and economic aspects. Technology is fun, but won't "they" do something about it? This book really helped me get a grip on spectrum issues and full deserves 5 stars!

Sure, the first half of this book is technical, but the second half goes into econ and regulatory issues, but whats most interesting is the forecasts on how WiMAX potentially replaces telephone and cable TV companies (as we know them to use the author's parlance).

I've noticed how this book is getting a lot of buzz in the industry just for the future casting. That alone gets it 5 stars.

I work in investments and I found this book very helpful in uderstanding what the buzz about WiMAX is. If you start to see it as a lever toward new technologies like IPTV and mobile VoIP and data giving service providers the triple and quadruple play, then you start to see how WiMAX is "da bomb".

This book really helped me understand more than frequency plans and adaptive antennas. The second half of this book goes into the implications of the technology which is really what I bought the book for in the first place. Ergo, it gets my 5-star rating!