socialmedian: Beyond mobile broadband, WiMAX is about blowing up the wireless business model

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Beyond mobile broadband, WiMAX is about blowing up the wireless business model

Submitted by Michaelfidler

Oct 13, 2008

Summary

On Wednesday in Baltimore at the official launch of America’s first mobile WiMAX network, Sprint CTO Barry West said that if this was only about launching a new type of network with faster performance then it would be significant. However, it is abundantly clear that for West, Sprint, and their band of high-profile WiMAX partners, this is about a lot more than just a faster mobile network. Read the full article

Comments (5)

Niksmit,

Oct 13, 2008

Article makes some good points about Wimax's significance. Every chip being (by default) on the net, makes for some very interesting scenarios. Looks like Sprint is boxing clever here business wise.

They had a very obvious product placement in Heroes the other night, where the characters are in the middle of the desert, and can't get signal. "Should have gone with Sprint" says the one. At the time I thought it was shamefully bad taste, but considering WiMax's range, I may just be able to forgive them slightly now ;)

Michaelfidler,

Oct 13, 2008

@niksmit It's so ironic how important this is for most of the tech industry, yet they still have to raise more money to deploy it. If cloud computing is going to ever work, bandwidth needs to be higher across the board. Are they helping? If Verizon went with WiMax instead of LTE, they would have more than enough money, and one standard. High speed Wireless is going to happen one way or another. We are behind every developed country in the world in terms of broadband speed. Japan is testing a 150Mbs technology. BTW I have a Video showing different tests in Baltimore after they went live. They show them using it on a boat at 30 or 40 MPH getting a great signal.It also shows a bunch of other speed tests and some devices that are available. I need to find it, which is a little problem on this site for the time being, but I'll post a link when I do.

Niksmit,

Oct 13, 2008

@Michaelfidler I agree.The US's achile's heel from a broadband perspective is its geography, and wireless holds the answer. Incompatible "standards" confuse everyone and hamper innovation and uptake. But, despite what's going on in the financial world, I still have faith in market forces allowing the correct tech to bubble to the top....eventually. The counter argument would be that the way spectrum works limits the free markets ability to work properly, which is why google is doing what it can in that area. We look to the next administration for good leadership on that.

Aside 1 : 150Mbs is great, but do consumers actually have a need for it right now? Out of interest, has it occurred that apps in Japan have grown to fill the available capacity? Don't get me wrong - the more b/w the better, but its getting hard to justify. If I had to choose, I'd rather they invest more effort in realizing every-single-device-everywhere-online-at-min-50kbs-for-free, than some-devices-at-incredibly-high-speed, just in terms of what you could do with them all...

Aside 2: I find it ironic that information that just flowed past you - like the url to that video - is so hard to find again. We are dependant on an external site (no insult to SM intended) to improve it search to find something which is really ours. We need to do better in handling the firehouse - the paradigm is wrong.

Aside 3: They really need to convert line feeds to html br tags in these comments so its not a mess :)