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WiMAX Pie in the Wireless Sky |
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Written by Kory Mohr
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Thursday, 14 July 2005 |
Amended from PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak:
 WiMAX is supposed to deliver a fixed wireless broadband connection from
2 to 30 miles and, according to Business Week, "break the duopoly" of
DSL and cable. I want WiMAX to work. But the delays, confusion, and
bickering, and the fact that the duo-polies are rolling out WiMAX, make
me think that this may be another technological dead end.
The kicker in this is Intel, a huge promoter of WiMAX, which has been
quoted as saying that WiMAX is "the most important thing since the
Internet itself." That comment itself is the kiss of death. To make
matters worse, at the latest Interop event, Intel apparently phonied up
a WiMAX demo, largely using gear that pumps up and modifies 802.11a
radios, and got much flak for it.
Other WiMAX submissions:
So NOW they start testing??,
Satellite WiMax,
xMax Becomes Quiet Competitor,
Perfect transmission with SkyMAX,
After The Hype, Where Is WiMAX?
Yet it won't be Intel's flag-waving that will make or break WiMAX, but
the vested interests in the United States: the phone and cable
companies. The U.S. is 16th in the world in per capita broadband
penetration, despite the fact that we began the popularization of both
the Internet and universal connectivity. This is because of the telcos
protecting the lucrative T1 and T3 business to the end.
I'm convinced that a deal was made between the telcos and cable
companies to keep competitive technologies from gaining a foothold.
Look at the empirical evidence of collusion. First, all the
market research and data developed from the late 1990s until
recently—with no exceptions—indicated that DSL would surpass cable
modems in penetration here. This never happened.
Cable has dominated the U.S. and Canada (which has a similar
collusion, I'll bet), while outside North America, cable has been
overtaken by DSL. That seems a little fishy, even with our head start
in cable. The research said the crossover should have happened years
ago.
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