Who’s attending the WiMAX party?
In order for WiMAX to take off really well in the USA, a number of things need to happen. First, Sprint needs a shot in the arm. With the departure of Gary Foresee and the falling apart of its loose coupling with Clearwire, it is in a bad shape. The Xohm testing has just had a soft start. It badly needs WiMAX to work. Second, Clearwire needs a shot in the arm. Although its loss per subscriber has been improving, it has a long way to go to move into black and recover the investment in spectrum-shopping. Third, WiMAX needs to take off really quickly. After months of hype and hoopla, it finally seems to be delivering in other parts of the world. With competition breathing down its neck (LTE, HSDPA, etc), it needs to start generating revenues soon. Fourth, the 700MHz auction could be utilized for WiMAX and so that has perked up a number of players. Cisco, (which has not bid) showed its WiMAX seriousness by buying Navini. Google, (which has bid, but …) is eyeing the mobile world in multiple ways and any means of connectivity is game for its feast. AT&T, which sold the 2.5GHz spectrum to Clearwire has little stake in WiMAX. Verizon has announced its backing of the LTE race-horse for 4G and will lean heavily on Qualcomm’s current opposition to WiMAX.
In all this, Intel has a big stake in WiMAX. Its long-delayed PC card will finally see the light of the day some time in mid of this year. It has invested heavily in Clearwire. It badly needs WiMAX to hit off in order to justify its spending on WiMAX. So, inspite of the recent resignation of Intel bigwig Arvind Sodhani from the Clearwire board, all indicators point to a stronger Intel-Clearwire tie. Alexei Oreskovic, the Senior Writer at TheStreet.com has written in detail about this.
This drama could unfold in a number of ways. The humming blogosphere is coming up with lots of ideas. One old idea is that Google will buy or invest in Sprint. The other is that it is participating in the auction to ward off the big carriers and will lend its support to an underdog. Of course, in exchange it would demand access to the connected customers using this spectrum. It could invest in ClearWire to galvanize the WiMAX rollout and therefore get access to those connected customers (after all, Paul Otellini is on Google’s board). That way, Google, Intel and Cisco could team up with ClearWire/Sprint to have the WiMAX party, where the music would come from an ad-supported mobile revenue model. Google still gets to attend ‘the other party’ (of mobile carriers) thanks to OHA, Android, search and partnerships. Motorola and Samsung also get to attend and benefit from both parties. Hark! Did I hear somebody knocking on the door? I suspect it’s Apple.
These are interesting times indeed!
Related Posts:
- Traveling and Blogging Break
- Recent Carnival of the Mobilists
- IEEE Workshop on WiMAX
- Water-powered cellphones by 2010?
Ron said,
January 9, 2008 @ 5:13 pm
WiMAX will be the story of 2008. ISP’s need to wake up.
StartupNewz.com said,
January 10, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
The WiMAX party…
WiMAX is an interesting technology which is very promising and supposed to make wireless broadband a reality. In this post Jitendra talks about all the major players and their interesting moves….
Robert J Berger said,
January 24, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
WiMax is not promising other than hype. It does nothing to resolve the issues of all the past failed licensed broadband other than being only incrementally cheaper.
The hype for it is so far beyond what it will be able to deliver, we will have a similar meltdown that we just had when reality hit the hype of muni-wireless.
Sprint will go down with WiMax. Intel is trying to buy an industry (just like IBM tried to do when they came up with the MCA Bus when the PC started to get commoditized. There is no business model that will allow for a multi-billion dollar industry in places where there is adequate wired Internet access.
And don’t get me started with people who think that WiMax (or any wireless technology that is possible today or anytime soon) will compete with wire/coax/fiber. It can’t and it won’t. WiMax will deliver a SHARED 10 - 30 Mbps per sector. That SHARED 10 - 30Mbps degrades rapidly due to obstructions (trees and walls primarily). One tree is 20 dB of attenuation. A typical wall is 15 - 20 dB of attenuation. The link budget before walls and trees is probably in the 120 - 180 dB range (I think that is probably optimistic too). So just a few trees and walls you are starting to get close to the edge of the link budget, which forces you to lower modulates which reduces the SHARED bandwidth capacity even further.
So like all wireless Internet services, WiMax will be a nice way to deliver ubiquity, primarily to mobile users. But it will not be able to be competition to wired/coax/fiber broadband and will do nothing to limit the oligopoly of the AT&T/Verizon/Comcast/TimeWarner CableTelcos. And though WiMax will be cheaper to deploy than next generation “3G/4G” cellular, its still going to cost Billions of Dollars to reach any level of national ubiquity.
And consumers won’t be willing to pay for the service at any level that will bring an appropriate ROI for those Billions.
Jitendra Mudhol said,
January 28, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Robert,
Many thanks for your comment.
I agree with you on some of the things. Yes, there is a lot of hype about WiMAX. Yes, it cannot compete with fiber for the last-mile solution. Yes, WiMAX is not the panacea.
The attenuation numbers you quoted are for specific frequencies. The current auction for 700MHz, for instance, could open it up for WiMAX use (yes, with lower QoS) but without those attenuation numbers.
I am sure you will agree that for true ubiquitous computing, one needs a good wireless solution. WiMAX is just an attempt in that direction - may not be “the one”.
Thanks again.
WiMAX in US: Upbeat? said,
February 4, 2008 @ 8:40 am
[…] I discussed before, the WSJ has a report stating that Sprint and Clearwire are dancing together again, with […]