WiMax Femto and WiMax Mobile Opportunities

Out of my head I can think of three big opportunities for mobile WiMax and WiMax Femto cells: avoiding wholesale charges, upselling Internet access without PCs, power-efficient and simplified in-home communication

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- Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Time: 2:29 am Discussion: 2 Comments Category: Mobile Video, Product & Service Innovation, Telco2.0 Tags: access, broadband, comcast, digital home, femto, femto cell, Internet, powerline, Product & Service Innovation, WiMAX, wireless Print this blog post!

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As I’m sitting relatively close (location-wise) to Comcast’s senior VP for wireless and technology, Dave Williams, a friend of mine asked me why Comcast would investigate the options of WiMax Femto cells when even traditional vendors such as Nokia Siemens Networks have not yet committed themselves. I’m no expert on WiMax at all, definitely something I have to catch up on, but from a quick review of some research, I would say that

Comcast could avoid wholesale charges it would have to pay for using ClearWire’s WiMax network, using existing Internet back haul at the customer’s premise;

If mobile (non-in-home) WiMax customers have bandwidth-requiring services or applications and are no longer satisfied with the shared bandwidth of a Clearwire tower, Comcast’s Femto cell could become an argument for selling Internet access without a laptop or other PC in the house – in-home security and utility management, anyone?

While wireless in-home communication can definitely be solved with 802.11n or similar, WiMax has a much lower power consumption. Of course it might compete with powerline in-house communication, like the new TVs of Apple, Panasonic, LG, or Samsung.

Sure, we can all wait for LTE, leapfrogging WiMax, but who knows when that will be rolled out in Richmond, where we still have no 3G, and I dearly hope LTE will have a better power consumption pattern than 3G.

I just found a neat overview study by Unstrung Insider called “The Future of Mobile WiMax: Where, When, and How Much?”. It’s a bit older, from September 08, in a news release they talk a bit about the content…

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Clearwire Finally Inks WiMax Deal

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XOHM and Clearwire merger finalized

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I was looking for external links and pings and re-read my article again – I can’t believe I actually wrote to “wait for LTE, leapfrogging WiMAX” …

Obviously both technologies / standards are “4G”, and quite equal in terms of their goals and objectives.

After getting up to speed on both technologies (on a superficial level) I think that LTE will get the upper hand with Tier 1 Telecoms, but that’s all stuff of another blog post… Just wanted to share my “mea culpa” with you ;)

1 Thorsten Claus April 27, 2009 5:36 pm

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Femtocell market update for weeks of 29 Dec 2008 & 5 Jan 2009 « 3G In The Home

1 January 11, 2009
4:50 pm

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