http://www.slideshare.net/newworldready/connecting-a-continent-with-80216d-the-indian-experience

The real problem is architecture. The standard PMP architecture of most networks is well suited to gaining coverage quickly, and does the job well, albeit at high cost. However, in developed markets, customers requirements of a network are changing. Holes in coverage will be less acceptable, data demands will continue to rise and all this will come with an expectation of “all you can eat” data at $15/month.

In developing markets, reliable coverage and data availability are even more important given the lack of alternative infrastructure.

In this situation, the standard macro-cell architecture will look increasingly expensive, regardless of which standard is used. That is what needs to change. The negative comments made about WiMAX networks so far only seem to re-inforce this. They don’t seem to be about problems unique to WiMAX.

GSM technology has yet to deliver on its promises. I can tell you that today WiMAX is delivering on theirs. there may be those persons reading this blog that would think of their experience with a current cell phone provider, AT&T, Vodofone, T-Mobile, BT, LIME that can truly say the technology they are using delivers a better customer experience than WiMAX.

We are about to deploy one in Barbados using Moto Wi-4 and we know the experience will be better than any current established provider can deliver- video calling, an Internet expierence where you get all of the frames you would using a laptop or on a network, and yes way faster than Verizon’s Rev-a network; by far the fastest in the USA.

THe customer wants reliable broadband speeds to their palms and at their finger tips and WiMAX is doing just that and will do more.

FIrst it was suppose to be the high speed HSPA that was suppose to deliver way in excess of 5 Mbps; theoretically, but barely delivered 300-500Kps. Given the clear advantages WiMAX will be more dominant than LTE.

THe truth is that the GSM cellular providers have to find a way to keep their customers but having not been able to deliver on it yet I seriously doubt they will be successful. YOu will see many GSM provider either acquire or bid for WiMAX spectrum

Nokia is having second thoughts about abandoning WiMAX and its clear that Ericcson will as well. Given the predictions of this market and where those predictions were correctly called Ericcson will see their stock rise or fall dependent upon if they are allowed to keep the parts of Nortel is won at auction, and how they handle acquisitions and partnerships. Nonetheless if they opt to stay out of the WiMAX market they will loose significant market share.

I believe that Moto will come back once properly aligning its assets and determination.
Most of the companies doing GSM selected the technology because of cost and it will not allow them to handle the competition from WiMAX like a Rev-A network will.

If you are only doing nomadic stuff, WiFi is working OK if you can live with the many drawbacks with regard to simplicity of configuring logging into Hotspots; if you have however embedde connectivity that ALWAYS works, in MORE playes, WITHOUT fiddling with logins, you will catch yourself as prefereing that even if it IS more expensive. Most folks to some degree prefer convenience and instant functionality over low price.

Beleive me – I’ve seen it happen with folks who plugged a SIM card in their 3G model enabled DELL more than once..

I’d expect WiMax will “fill the gaps” for nomadic use cases similar as WiFi is still (and will remain) a speed improvement over 3G for several usage contexts.

The huge value of global SERVICE interoperability within the GSM and 3G community is hard to emulate on WiMax, as there is no default realtime communicaton service out of the box that you can rely on as functioning between all users, and roaming is not really a model the nomadic community has ever cared for all that much – having a standard into exitance and having framework of standards in widespread global operation are IMHO quite diffrerent things.

So WiMax *wil * be there, surely, but to position as followup and replacement of the 2G AND 3G installed base its by far too late, and the 3G upgrade path is so little disruptive in the installed base that the shift to WiMax will likely remain not attractive enough for many operators.

I don’t think so, and neither does Screen Digest. See the following figures from their recent report:

- Less than 9 percent of the 186 million people with 3G phone service have mobile broadband Internet service. Those who do have it, have paid €3.6 billion ($5.1 billion) to operators in 2008

- That was just 6.8 percent of 3G operators total revenue from data, which implies that over 93 percent of mobile data revenue came from SMS/text messaging.

- Only 1% of the total global cellular industry revenue came from mobile broadband access

So essentially, when you hear about a surge in mobile data use and revenues, how can we separate out SMS, ringtones, wall paper, and other minor transactions picked up by people whose phones may have a 3G chip in them, and may have access to the 3G network… but probably can’t do much more than 190Kbps?

Daryl Schoolar from Current Analysis has an interesting little blog up on WiMAX Times that pretty much takes the entire mobile broadband industry to task here, and it is worth a quick read: http://is.gd/2fH4z

Jonathan Singer
WiMAX Forum
http://twitter.com/JAyalSinger

No ‘war’ was ever won by Powerpoint.

Twitter/mobileinsider

Or, said another way: WiMAX will fail because WiMAX will fail.

The arguments used by the pro-LTE people to denegrate WiMAX continue to be full of holes.

LTE will have greater scale because it will dominate in the FDD spectrum that is much more widely available, and DO-A and HSPA operators can afford to wait. WiMAX will continue to perform well in TDD spectrum and its lead in perfecting the technology and a developing device ecosystem should not be underestimated.

The article rightly points out that optimizing the three legs of the device stool – screen size, portability, and battery life – will be the key for mobile applications beyond laptops and netbooks. Aside from small differences in chipset pricing, LTE and WiMAX face identical hurdles in this regard.

Some of the dominant 3G players made similar statements about WiFi a decade ago. We all know how WiFi successfully created its own market and today is delivering unforeseen value and critical missing piece to broadband environment.

Ashish Sharma
Alvarion

Twitter/assharma

I cannot understand the business case for spending over $7B in R&D and investments… can show any kind of positive return with “maybe” $1B in revenue by 2013-14. Today, Clearwire and Sprint ‘may’ have 1m subscribers. How many are using it for mobile? “Maybe 30%? Compare that to over 200M mobile subs today for HSDPA/HSPA consuming up to 4Gb/month/subs (Europe).

Signals Research recent report “Wassup with WiMAX?” from July 21.
“…if one compares the sustainable WiMAX ecosystem with the sustainable HSPA ecosystem, then the advantage clearly lies with HSPA – both from the perspective of the number of companies that it can support as well as to the overall size of the addressable market….And as we have argued in the past, the real competition for Mobile WiMAX is HSPA and not LTE. Once an operator deploys HSPA it isn’t going to look back and reconsider a switch it Mobile WiMAX. When the HSPA operator ultimately deploys LTE is an entirely different question, but it will ultimately be a question of when and not if.”

Mo — keep up the good fight…though I think the mobile fight is over.

Twitter/Mobileinsider

Every time I see an Ericsson comment about WiMAX it makes me laugh. It seems so last century to me that LTE vested interests find it so necessary to continue to knock WiMAX. You don’t see WiMAX proponents continually knock LTE.

Spectrum, availability, CPE availability and cost, performance will all play roles in which technology is ultimately more successful – but for mine, the competition won’t be a technology nor a business economics fight but more of a big (incumbent wireless operators) company versus small (new WiMAX startups) company fight.

Today the incumbents would score an easy win. But as someone who has spent a lot of time selling to wireless operators (for one of the large LTE providers) and therefore experienced how slow and cumbersome and last-century they are (just like their suppliers and Ericsson’s Mr Eriksson’s comments are also last century in fact), I suspect the big-powerful-slow-want-to-control-the-world Vs small-nimble-open-just-get-on-with-it fight will be much closer in a year or two.

If I can get Google Talk, and all the other new applications that the incumbents will find so darn challenging, on my WiMAX network but not on my LTE network I know which I will choose.

GG

I agree with Mo’s quote from Mr Murdoch – small is the new big.