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March 1, 2004

Seattle Times on WiMax

By Nancy Gohring

I wrote a story that ran today in the Seattle Times about WiMax: The idea originally was to look at how WiMax and Wi-Fi might co-exist in the future and I found people had opinions on either end of the spectrum. Some, mostly those who are in the business of making WiMax gear but also some analysts, said that in the future if operators build out wide scale, mobile WiMax networks, the need for public Wi-Fi hotspots declines. Others, including some WiMax vendors and analysts, say that the two will both fill needs in the market.

I think WiMax offers an opportunity for operators to buy gear that is lower priced than the proprietary stuff available today or to improve on the use of Wi-Fi as a longer range last mile technology. It could spur an increase in an already large market of small rural operators using wireless to offer broadband to otherwise unserved communities.

I also think that Nextel offers the most hope for a very wide scale WiMax network because Nextel has a bunch of MMDS spectrum that it bought from Worldcom. Sprint and Bellsouth have good chunks too so they could also build WiMax networks. Other operators would be reluctant to exclusively use unlicensed bands.

Posted by nancyg at March 1, 2004 9:50 AM

Categories: WiMAX

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