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October 5, 2005

BusinessWeek Points Out WiMax's Disruptive Potential

By Glenn Fleishman

Mainstream but in-depth article on WiMax in BusinessWeek: The writer looks at WiMax from several angles, talking primarily about its threat to cellular operators and their strategies for taking out mobile WiMax before it hits the streets. It’s an excellent article and well worth reading to get a view of the competitive and business landscape.

The writer conflates fixed and mobile WiMax a bit in the beginning: a fixed WiMax transceiver can’t create a hotspot dozens of miles long, and mobile WiMax won’t have that kind of range. Rather, mobile WiMax will create quite large and fast cells that will compete with cellular operators and Wi-Fi hotspots and fixed WiMax will very soon be an effective alternative for even long-range final mile broadband just as its precursors have been since the mid-1990s.

The article also seems optimistic about Intel’s mobile WiMax chip for laptops, suggesting that Intel will have them in Dell laptops next year even with the standard and certification not due until 2006 or 2007. My opinion from the folks I’ve talked to is that mobile WiMax won’t be fullblown until at least 2007, possibly later, at which point cell operators will have had years to develop services that will more directly compete, and Wi-Fi will be well into its 802.11n stage for greater throughput and distance.

Posted by Glennf at October 5, 2005 11:15 AM

Categories: mainstream press

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