WiMAX A Boon For Labels

WiMAX has been hyped up for a while now, but it looks like it will be deployed in the next few years — by Sprint, at least. That’s being seen as a boon by the music industry…Reuters reports: “It costs much less to transmit data over a WiMAX connection than a traditional cellular network. Cheaper distribution means cheaper prices, which in turn likely means more people buying mobile music. Taken together, the result would be a greater slice of the revenue pie for wireless operators and record labels to share. “Then we’re negotiating over a much larger number, rather than the tight margins we have today,” Warner Music Group senior VP of digital strategy/business development Michael Nash said at a panel discussion at the recent CTIA Wireless conference.”
Which is possibly true — but it’s equally likely that any savings will be offset by a corresponding fall in prices, such as Sprint’s recent song price reduction. Despite every effort by the carriers and the labels it seems that the price for single track downloads is heading down towards the 99c mark popularized by iTunes. Which probably doesn’t concern Nash — he’s been at the forefront of pushing music bundles which will include more content, and benefit even more from higher-speed networks.
There’s still a wait for the technology, though… “It would not be accurate to call 2007 ‘the year of mobile WiMAX,'” says Tammy Parker, an analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media. “But it’s clear that the future of this technology in the U.S. will be built upon the foundation being created this year.”

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