Your article focuses only on Sprint/Clearwire and the U.S. Market. I think most analysts will agree that Mobile WiMAX will not be a success in the U.S. or any developed market. But in developing economies, where there is no broadband infrastructure at all to homes, WiMAX is making great inroads and there are huge deployments taking place. It is not intended, as its name suggests, for mobile use in these countries. It would be foolish for investors not to look at U.S. companies that are closing deals in these markets. There's plenty of money to be made on WiMAX, whether the numbers match cellular or not.
Paul G
· 1 year ago
Frank,
I agree with you in terms of Fixed WiMax opportunities in developing countries, as I suggest above. My concern is that mobile WiMax has been alternatively overhyped and misunderstood by journalists and others who believe mobile WiMax is a direct competitor to HSPA and LTE.
WiMax Fanboy
· 1 year ago
Paul, nice article. Although they can squeeze some performance out of their voice-centric 3G networks, celluar companies will also have to eventually do complete fork-lift upgrades as they migrate to IP based data networks (i.e, LTE). This is a common mis-conception in the industry that LTE is a natural migration from GSM that is being perpetuated by the cellular carriers.
WiMAX on unlicensed bands (either whitespace or 3.65Ghz) is also very interesting and something we are following closely as well.
Ur misinformed
· 1 year ago
Minor upgrades to get to LTE? And MIMO antennas will appear by magic? OFDMA/SC-FDMA cards will appear by magic? LTE is 4G, HSPA is 3G. There will be no minor upgrades. The LTE soup they are feeding you is fake.
Paul G
· 1 year ago
MIMO requires truck rolls. That's why T-Mo is considering holding out for LTE and not deploying HSPA+, which also requires truck rolls. All new flavors of 3.5 and 4G require additional backhaul to deal with capacity demands, and the core networks (not the RANs) are all going to look pretty similar in the future. I get all that.
But for an operator who is currently deployed with HSDPA facing the choice of upgrading to HSPA+ and/or LTE, versus mobile WiMax (802.16e, not d), are the costs really equivalent?
I also take issue with the argument I keep seeing that WiMax is ahead in terms of deployment - FIXED WiMax certainly is, but moving from fixed to nomadic to truly mobile is a different kettle of fish. LTE is equally on the drawing board, but big companies usually tend to follow the path of least resistance to mitigate their risks.
None of this negates the potential for greenfield deployments of fixed AND mobile WiMax, and I hope this provides some real business model competition to the carrier world. My point has always been that most if not all carriers will follow the consensus path and head toward LTE.
All Comments
I agree with you in terms of Fixed WiMax opportunities in developing countries, as I suggest above. My concern is that mobile WiMax has been alternatively overhyped and misunderstood by journalists and others who believe mobile WiMax is a direct competitor to HSPA and LTE.
WiMAX on unlicensed bands (either whitespace or 3.65Ghz) is also very interesting and something we are following closely as well.
But for an operator who is currently deployed with HSDPA facing the choice of upgrading to HSPA+ and/or LTE, versus mobile WiMax (802.16e, not d), are the costs really equivalent?
I also take issue with the argument I keep seeing that WiMax is ahead in terms of deployment - FIXED WiMax certainly is, but moving from fixed to nomadic to truly mobile is a different kettle of fish. LTE is equally on the drawing board, but big companies usually tend to follow the path of least resistance to mitigate their risks.
None of this negates the potential for greenfield deployments of fixed AND mobile WiMax, and I hope this provides some real business model competition to the carrier world. My point has always been that most if not all carriers will follow the consensus path and head toward LTE.
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