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

Post Information
- Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Time: 2:29 am Discussion: View Comments Category: IPTV and Mobile Video, Product and Service Innovation, Telco2.0 Tags: Access Network, broadband, femto cell, Internet, powerline, 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…

■

Clearwire Finally Inks WiMax Deal

■

XOHM and Clearwire merger finalized

4 Responses

You can follow the comments for this article with the RSS 2.0 feed.

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

Thanks man, just what I was looking for. Worked like a charm Thanks so much…

2 ADSL Viettel November 16, 2009 6:58 am

Thanks man, just what I was looking for. Worked like a charm Thanks so much…

3 ADSL Viettel November 16, 2009 11:58 am

The most amazing invention in the world of communication is a mobile phone. It is one of the boons to the modern people that avails them to stay connected with their friends and family members wherever they are.

4 payday loan July 01, 2010 8:19 am

One Pingback

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

1 January 11, 2009
4:50 pm

blog comments powered by Disqus

Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)

31 queries.
0.589 seconds.

This Playout Intelligence blog post by Thorsten Claus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

All entries in this blog are my opinion and don't necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer or sponsors.

Except where stated, all materials contained in this Web site are the copyrighted property of Thinkstorm. Permission is granted to use, copy and distribute these materials as presented in this Web site for personal, non-commercial use only. All copyright and other notices must appear in all copies as they appear in the original. All other uses are prohibited. (please also see these two articles about “All Rights Reserved” and general copyright law, with some focus on the US).

This site contains links to other sites that are not owned or maintained by Thinkstorm. These links are provided for your convenience. Thinkstorm makes no warranties about the contents of or products and services offered by such sites.

Thinkstorm shall not be liable for any injury, claim or damage whether direct or indirect which arises out of the use of this site or its contents or the inability to use this site. Thinkstorm shall not be liable for any injury, claim or damage whether direct or indirect which arises from the unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmission unless it results from the gross negligence or intentional actions of Thinkstorm.

Playout Intelligence