Monday, 03 July 2006 14:19 | 
Written by Robert Syputa
Changes are afoot that will greatly affect the pace and modes of adoption of WiMAX. This will shift expectations for adoption in developed markets: until recently, developed markets were seen as already saturated with alternatives and as less important to success than the emerging markets such as China and India. But the personal video phenomena, including YouTube video sharing and popular online TV shows, are already wrecking havoc with network capacity requirements and the trend is accelerating[1]. This comes before the thrust of major introductions of higher bandwidth services: Windows Live which includes blogging and personal video hosting, Google Video, and video hosting and advertising enhancements to popular ecommerce sites including Amazon.com and eBay in addition to the YouTube appearing on mobile phones offered by Verizon and Sprint[2].
Last Updated (Friday, 10 July 2009 04:32)
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Friday, 10 July 2009 03:04 | Written by Robert Syputa
The debate surrounding the new entrant into wide area wireless standard developments has tended to be constructed as being WiMAX versus Cellular technologies and market development. That seems fair, but industry shaping debates should start with a clear understanding of the framing of the premise of the debate. Judging from recent white papers, panel discussions, articles and interviews, WiMAX is being opposed as WiMAX being an anti-cellular effort rather than an alternative development that fits into cellular mobile and the broader context of fixed-mobile convergence. While WiMAX appeals to alternative service providers because some spectrum is designated specifically for use by wireless broadband, and all IP systems will cause significant shifts in business models, it and the cellular 3.5-4G are heading on the same convergent change path that renders the dichotomy viewpoint a Swiss cheese argument:
Last Updated (Friday, 10 July 2009 04:24)
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Friday, 10 July 2009 03:24 | Written by Robert Syputa
(Mobile-WiMAX Advisory Whitepaper, May 2007). Mobile-WiMAX equipment sales are eventually expected to largely displace outdoor fixed-WiMAX equipment sales. Fixed-WiMAX may continue its $100M/year baseline over the next 3 to 5-years (source: Infonetics, 2007), but within this deployment horizon most WiMAX sales into both fixed and mobile applications will begin to involve only mobile WiMAX equipment. Giant mobile network vendors are resourced for longer term planning horizons than the smaller specialty vendors whose mobile product development remains cash-flow dependent upon fixed revenues. These giant incumbents will be fierce competition to the thousands of smaller, more specialized vendors coming out of the fixed BWA market. If the giants persuade operators to reserve CAPEX in anticipation of mobile-WiMAX, could they starve the specialty vendors into submission? Meanwhile, specialty vendors are searching for defensible niches for fixed sales, e.g. in emerging markets with teledensities below 15%, partially because deregulation there can create ‘use it or lose it’ spectrum licensees, ‘deploy or die’. Of course, regulators can be shown that spectrum is ‘in use’ without forcing operators to spend commercial-grade CAPEX. Some specialty vendors are planning mobile-WiMAX build-outs, led by developed markets in Asia and the
Last Updated (Friday, 10 July 2009 17:05)
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