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WImax has a Real Shot at Success
by Andrew McCaskey
WIMAX Has A Good Chance – Unless . . PDF Print E-mail
Written by Andrew McCaskey
Monday, 12 January 2009 21:38
Unless The Financial Hammer Descends
Wimax has a good chance in North America unless there is not enough financial stamina to stay the course. And if it does prosper, it’s going to be transformative.
Portions of a conversation in the Clearwire Booth at CES2009 referred to the “Wimax Ecosystem” – the combination and interplay of semiconductor devices, laptops,wireless modems,cards, and peripherials that are just now coming online. This is headed into the same rarified part of the financial atmosphere that, as far as the billions of dollars that are at stake, is getting close to the government variety.
The ecosystem begins with the semiconductor devices themselves – design, test and manufacture in quantities that can get the unit cost low enough – lets say under a dollar per radio that they can be economically incorporated in to the bill of materials for a consumer device like a laptop or wireless modem. The second element to come online are manufacturers willing to step up and build WiMax chips into their laptops and other mobile devices so that new equipment purchasers are on board transparently. Then, make sure that there is an easy path from WiMax into WiFi for those that don’t make the upgrade, by teaming with vendors like Cradlepoint and $200 devices that turn a WiMax signal into a wifi cloud to act as your mobile evangelists wherever they are found.
On the infrastructure side, find a partner with 20,000 cellular towers in place for base stations who is willing to make big bets, and at the same time is willing to step off the greedy bus (at least temporarily) and offer the service at rates that compete directly with wired DSL.
Two more parts to the recipe: Let consumers have multiple modems under one account, without login hassle or double billing. And make sure that you do that before your LTE competitors have working silicon.
But, all that has to happen to unravel this is for the financing for the final stages of implementation at Clearwire or Sprint to waver. This is going to be a winner, unless the rollout is strangled in the cradle
Regardless of the economy, bandwidth, coverage, flexibility and mobility are going to get those dollars -prioritized close to shelter and food.
Consumers are ready to do their part and buy Wimax. Let’s hope Wall Street gets the message.
CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network
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