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.

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.

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….