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WiMax In 2010 — Too Little, Too Late?
CWmike writes "By the end of 2010, users in more than 80 US cities may be able to ditch their cable modems, T1 setups and DSL lines — and the Wi-Fi routers that go with them — in favor of WiMax wireless technology. Wait, haven't we heard that before? WiMax has been promised 'any day now' for years, but WiMax vendors such as Clearwire Communications LLC have suffered numerous delays in rolling out services. A recent ramp-up in Clearwire deployments bodes well for WiMax, but it may not have the chance to fully get off the ground before a competing technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE) does it in. Craig Mathias, principal analyst at Farpoint Group and a Computerworld columnist, sees WiMax taking a minority stake in the wireless broadband future. 'LTE will eventually be a combined broadband voice/data solution that can do everything that WiMax can and more,' he said. Mathias believes that LTE could get up to 80% of the global market share in future cellular installations. 'This leaves WiMax with a potential market share that cannot exceed 20% — but that's still a huge number, assuming 4 billion users around 2020 or so," he said. 'You do the math. The opportunity is nothing to sneeze at.'"
LTE is still far into the future. We are currently testing LTE in some sites here in Sweden and it's quite expensive. Plus we need more terminals with the LTE chip before this will be a breakthrough among the population. My guess is that here in Sweden we will have a bad/ok LTE connection around 2015, and around 2017 ïwe will have about as much as 90ï-95% of Sweden covered with LTE. Where as in USA which is a bit larger I don't think you'll have okish LTE connectivity until 2020. But these are just number I pulled out from a dark place and guesses from when I worked at TeliaSonera (Swedens largest mobile access provider) with different projects like Telia Homerun (wifi in public places) and UMTS. Wimax is a good solution until then, if it's rolled out within 2-3 years.
Research the technologies, it takes about 20 minutes, and you'll see that LTE and WiMax are nearly identical. Basically WiMax and LTE have different optimization strategies, but they operate on the same band ranges, the same equipment, etc. In nearly all cases, a firmware update could make a WiMax radio into an LTE radio.
As it is, WiMax is best suited for non-moving targets, or, alternatively, short range cells that would best suit a city with skyscrapers. It's not a big difference but it's there.
Anyway, clearwire has already made it ... clear... that they could switch to LTE if needed with minimal impact financially or technically, and minor research supports that claim.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Disclaimer: I work for the cellphone company that's currently rolling out WiMax i Jamaica.
We are doing it so we can deliver broadband Internet to those people who simply never had it before in any shape or form. Hard as the concept is for 1st world geeks to grasp, there are places where it's likely, you don't have a phone line running by the house and where if you do it's most likely beyond the effective range of ADSL.
3G can do the same thing too. Except the technology is so expensive (compared to WiMax) that it's only worthwhile s a premium service, bundled with expensive phones and high end call rate packages. I.e. Outside the price range of 2 million of our current customers.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I think you may have slept through a few decades. The ITU says 4.1 billion cellphone subscriptions by the end of 2008.
link
Well over 4 billion have electricity.
The world literacy rate is about 82%: about 5 billion. link
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