Companies Betting on WiMAX

PreacherTom writes "This week, two companies — NextWave and Clearwire — filed to go public and make their fortunes with WiMAX, a wireless broadband technology expected to make serious inroads into the telecom market by offering a high-speed alternative to DSL, Cable, and other current offerings. Market researcher Gartner Dataquest expects the North American WiMAX services market to swell from 30,000 connections in 2006 to 21.2 million by 2011. Could this be the new backbone of the mobile effort?"

Comments

that's not exactly how it works

[mo]

WiMax is regulated spectrum. IE: the FCC will not allow the average consumer to buy equipment to build towers.
It's intended use is more as competition to both local DSL/Cable bandwidth providers, as well as competition for Cell networks.

If whoever owns the spectrum rights for WiMax (like NextWave) decides to offer a reasonable mobile data service over WiMax then it will force Verizon et al to bring their prices down.
Also, VoIP over WiMax could provide a compelling voice platform for competing with cell networks.

Re:that's not exactly how it works

[sg3000]

> There is no uniform global licensed spectrum for WiMAX. You can run WiMAX in the unlicensed spectrum. There are already companies doing it.

There are two different standards for WiMAX (from an access perspective).

The older 16d standard (designed for fixed environments) can work in unlicensed (5.8 GHz) spectrum and licensed spectrum. The newer 16e standard is only defined for licensed spectrum (2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz). The majority of the service providers will deploy 16e because it supports mobility, in addition to fixed applications.

Re:Price, Performance and CONTRACT!

[omeomi]

Judging by the comments on Broadband Reports they sound just as bad as wireless phone companies in the contract department -- automatically resubscribing people to another year of service and charging $180 to break out of "contracts" early.

While I'm not usually one to defend big business, it's not really all that difficult to cancel your plan after your contract expires. I've done it before, and it's actually a very easy process. As for the period before your contract expires, you *did* sign the contract, presumably in exchange for a huge discount on your phone. You didn't have to sign the contract...you could have paid full price for the phone, and entered into a month-by-month agreement with the provider. It's your own fault if you're not happy with the contract that you signed.

a bit more information

[mo]

TFA is a bit vague, but I believe the business plan of these companies works as follows:

1) Raise a bunch of investor capital (done)
2) Use the capital to buy out the WiMax spectrum at auction (done)
3) Raise more money with an IPO
4) Use the IPO money to build a residential/business broadband service

At this point they're competing with DSL and cable providers, but not cell networks because the coverage is still spotty. Of course, coverage doesn't matter much for residential service since your house isn't really moving. After they get a good amount of subscribers, then they can:

5) Build out their coverage enough to compete with the Cell networks.

Re:Mobile, nothing...

[gad_zuki!]

My understanding of wimax (is there even a consensus on this stuff?) isnt as a last-mile solution as much as it is a wireless infrastructure. Its not going to replace home/corporate wifi but it will bring T1+ speeds between nodes without paying for the monthly t1, etc. So for rural this may be a godsend. In areas too expensive to lay down more copper or fiber it might make economic sense to use wimax like a Motorola Canopy/WISP as well as "wireless t1." Your grandpas laptop wont be able to get on wimax, but the box mounted to the side of his house can. From there he can plug in a cheapo linksys wireless router.