The first
Under the brand name Xohm, the Wimax service was launched by Sprint Nextel in
It will cost $45 a month, but for the first six months will be $30, which is excessive for a service which only works in Baltimore and, by some accounts, only in parts of Baltimore.
Xohm plans to follow the
Headline speed is 2-4Mbits which, presumably, means 1-2Mbits in practice, and less if there's heavy usage.
Clearwire, which Sprint is financially involved with, will merge its network with the Xohm network at some stage.
For reasons known only to itself, Xohm is limiting users' access to content and applications and availability of bandwidth.
In
In the
Maybe I'm not in the loop in this as you are, but the latest public reports I could find indicate AT&T and Verizon are aiming at 2010 for initial commercial deployments. Presumably this will be with 5-10MHz of spectrum, for a total bandwidth of 25-50Mbps in theory.
IMO, Mobile WiMax doesn't seem to have much of anything going for it except time to market. Yes, WiMax will improve in performance, but going from 5 to 50Mbps requires quite a lot of infrastructure change, I'd wager... And except for *maybe* Icera, I'm not aware of anyone investing in a multi-mode 2G+3G+WiMax baseband or RF chip, so that means extra chips *and* packages in 'mainstream' WiMax mobile phones.
BTW, talking of Icera... Did you read this article: http://eetimes.eu/semi/210603903 ? If this means a tape-out in a quarter or two and sampling in late 2009/participation in early deployments, then that's huge news. Certainly if they achieve that and don't increase transistor count much so it's very competitive for both LTE *and* HSPA sockets, I pity their competitors!
The biggest difference between WiMAX and LTE isn't technical, it's who is backing what and which markets they're targeting.
LTE is -- unsurprisingly -- being pushed by the established telecomms operators who have a huge 3G investment to defend and expand on.
WiMAX is -- equally unsurprisingly -- being pushed by data-centric companies who can't break into the telecomms cartel and want a cheap way of pushing their data to end users.
WiMAX might indeed find it difficult to penetrate regions like Europe where 3G is well-established even if it's available earlier, though this could change if some massive data provider like Google jumps on the bandwagon.
In places with no significant data-capable cellular infrastructure like Africa the position is completely different, because rolling out a new WiMAX network is *much* cheaper than rolling out a new cellular network.
It's markets like this -- large untapped ones --where WiMAX is likely to clean up.
Ian
Thanks Ian.
Well, I don't have much to add except that perhaps I was thinking of a more narrow definition of the word 'mobile'. The main reason why WiMax is being considered in those countries is that there is no other broadband infrastructure right now; so those deployments might often not be primarily aimed at the 'mobile' market from my POV.
I do expect WiMax to have a very fair amount of success in the role you are describing; but then again I'm skeptical that's where most of the money is at. If you agree WiMax nearly certainly won't (or couldn't) take off in the USA/Europe/China/Japan/etc., then I don't think we really disagree anyway.