So yesterday I blogged briefly about the benefits of WiMAX in easily reaching many end-users from a single deployment. So with all of this promise, you might be wondering, “Well, where is WiMAX today?”
WiMAX on the Rise
The article from NEC Unified Solutions, “WiMAX and the Last Mile“, outlines the brief and initially promising history of the technology in the U.S.:
“The very first standard for WiMAX technology was made available around 1999, with various amendments made through 2005. While the technology has gained swift, widespread adoption in many countries, growth in the US has been slow and localized.”
“In 2006, Sprint (in conjunction with Clearwater Telecommunications) announced plans to collaborate on a three-year, nationwide WiMAX deployment through its brand Xohm. As the only major US major telecommunications provider to date to propose a large-scale launch, Sprint conducted a successful soft launch of the product to Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC residents at the end of 2007. The company’s initial plan was to further extend coverage to 100 million additional people in various metropolitan areas by the end of 2008.”
Going Down?
With Sprint, the only major telecom provider backing WiMAX, undergoing great change in management as well as business mission, WiMAX’s future at least in this country seems to be floundering. In April 2008, Sprint announced another delay in the release of its commercial WiMAX service. On the other hand, the company is moving forward with its Chicago WiMAX deployment, and its venture with Clearwire received a cash infusion of $3.2 billion from Google Inc., Intel Corp., Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc.
Right now it’s too early to tell exactly how WiMAX is doing? Nortel announced they were dropping WiMAX in favor of another high-speed wireless technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE). Matt Hamblen of ComputerWorld outlined the battle between the two technologies last month. Although WiMAX has a time advantage, with other major communication players lining up behind LTE, it may not matter. Hamblen’s article goes on to state:
“WiMax and LTE are directly comparable in terms of what they do, and it’s very likely LTE will have a significant global advantage over WiMax in the long term,” said Craig Mathias, an analyst at The Farpoint Group and a Computerworld columnist. “But that doesn’t mean WiMax is toast or won’t survive, although I’m not even sure of [Sprint's] expected time-to-market advantage when we talk about critical mass penetration.
“LTE is the natural upgrade path for GSM, and that leads me to conclude that LTE will be one tough cookie for WiMax to beat,” he added.
WiMAX vs. LTE
Reading Hamblen’s article and it sounds like the standards debate could be up in the air for several years. Vendors could avoid this debate by developing devices that support both standards as Intel has called for, but I think this will be more like the debate of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. There can be only one winner.
The following links present proponents and predictors for each technology:
WiMAX or Wi-Min? – Thoughts on why WiMAX may not be the next big thing
Amsterdam Switches on WiMAX – Europe’s “first” mobile WiMAX city
Why Nortel Chose LTE – NetworkWorld discusses the motivations behind Nortel’s LTE decision
LTE vs. WiMAX – GigaOM explores this 4G sibling rivalry
Tags: clearwire, intel, long term evolution, lte, matt hamblen, nortel, sprint, telecom
