Steve_Rosenbaum
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True broad Internet everywhere, at home, at the office, in the field, everywhere! That's the promise of WiMAX. By seamlessly bridging broadband Internet everywhere, users will have the same broadband access everywhere they go, making time and distance a non issue when needing to communicate. With WiMAX, tomorrow’s device will provide same connectivity as the cellular phone of today. Couple this hyperconnected world with the rising use of high-bandwidth applications based on video (being further accelerated by online social networking) and one arrives at a single conclusion: WiMAX is the only technology available today that is 3 - 5 times faster and 5 times more cost effective than existing 3G technologies that can also support the rising capacity demands. So that’s the promise, but how real is that promise? This blog is intended to answer that question, letting the reader decide.
At the CTIA Wireless trade show last week, Sprint Nextel Chief Executive Dan Hesse said that the company intends to move forward with the build-out of its WiMAX network. It would appear that wireless broadband remains a key strategy for Sprint, yet current technologies such as EV-DO are “still not fast enough for true broadband experience,” Hesse said. With its WiMAX network, Hesse told reporters that the company believes it has “at least a two-year time to market advantage” against other companies for wireless broadband. Its WiMAX service, called Xohm, already has been “soft launched” in Chicago, and the company was scheduled for a commercial launch this month. However that has been delayed. In an interview with IDG News Service, Barry West, president of the Xohm service, said the commercial launch this month is delayed due to backhaul issues. The company has previously stated they would spend $2.8 billion on its network through 2008, and in total up to $5 billion on its WiMAX network over the next few years. Forecasting revenue that will grow up to $5 billion annually. Sprint also said that the device manufacturers in its ecosystem have committed to deliver 50 million WiMAX devices over the next three years to ensure that Sprint can meet consumer demand. But Sprint is not the only player focused on deploying WiMAX. I have highlighted just a few WiMax deployments already under way. At an investor conference last week at its Silicon Valley compound, Intel CEO Otellini told financial analysts that he believed Intel can “triple the market for [its] products.” Part of this future success Intel believes will come from WiMAX. Sean Maloney, EVP for Sales and Marketing at Intel, said that there should be 650 million people around the world that will be under WiMAX coverage by 2010. The numbers would seem to support this claim. Maloney noted that there are 281 WiMAX networks being deployed today, with an ecosystem that includes 29 companies manufacturing equipment for WiMAX network infrastructures, 15 companies set to deliver WiMAX radio chips, and another 19 offering baseband chipsets based on the IEEE 802.16e standard. In addition to a broad ecosystem, WiMAX can today boast a significant and expanding spectrum base. According to a presentation by Sriram Viswanathan, Vice President at Intel Capital, WiMAX can scale to almost 4 billion pops. Moreover, new spectrum for WiMAX may spur as much as USD 15 billion in new investments this year.
Along with network and equipment investments, this will result in estimated WiMAX subscriber revenues of USD 16 billion by 2012.
You don’t get to be the CEO of the world’s largest mobile operator (in revenue) by making mistakes. Arun Sarin, the CEO of Vodafone, is no different. His public comments at the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona last week were made quite deliberately, and many in the mobile industry have yet to come to terms with the enormity of what Sarin said.
His urgent message to the slumbering industry voiced what few even dare to contemplate. In essence he said that the voice-centric technology used by mobile operators throughout the world is being rendered obsolete by competing technologies in the rapidly changing data-hungry world. Mobile operators have been desperate to develop a more data-friendly technology, yet 3G has been a damp squib, accounting for less than 10% of Vodafone revenues says Sarin.
Technologies such as HSDPA have a limited shelf life, and all hopes for a 3G broadband solution are pinned on 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), the future upgrade of old UMTS technology masquerading its way into the IP-OFDM world of tomorrow. However, the Vodafone boss stated that LTE isn’t ready, not by a long way. The standards haven’t even been set! What he also said was that WiMAX is here today, and as WiMAX networks roll-out, they will make LTE irrelevant. No, Sarin didn’t make a slip of the tongue. He is simply one of the first telecom executives of his stature to say publicly what many in the industry already know. WiMAX will lead to a fundamental paradigm shift for the mobile business.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it has awarded a loan of $267 million to the satellite broadband company Open Range Communications Inc to develop a WiMAX network that will reach 518 rural towns in America.
The loan comes as part of the USDA “Rural Development” program. According to a USDA press release, the company Open Range will build a network consisting of “cutting-edge WiMAX technology that transmits wireless data in areas not serviced by cable or DSL technologies.” Rural Development Under Secretary Thomas C. Dorr said that “broadband is as important today as providing rural telephone service was 75 years ago, and we’re proud of our role in fostering public-private partnerships to bring broadband services to rural America… Portable, high-speed connectivity provides new options to help create business expansion in rural communities.” The project is intended to reach a rural population of six million people across 17 US states. The USDA said that while it has in the past invested in other technologies to help bridge the digital divide, “the Open Range project is the program’s first investment to support WiMAX technology.”
The wireless broadband provider Towerstream announced that it launched a fixed WiMAX network in the city of Dallas-Forth Worth in Texas. Towerstream offers fixed WiMAX solutions in several American cities, catering to a growing list of corporate customers. In a press release, Jeff Thompson, the President and CEO of Towerstream said “the Dallas Fort-Worth metro market is a significant opportunity for Towerstream to expand its customer base with many regional and national corporate headquarters located within the city’s large business community.” Towerstream offers a service comparable or better than traditional broadband services, and according to Thompson, its service “can be installed in just days and at bandwidth increments difficult to get from the legacy carriers.”
The WiMAX Forum forecasts that there will be more than 133 million subscribers to WiMAX services around the world by 2012. The forecast is based on independent research, and will be released in a report this month entitled, WiMAX Forum Worldwide Subscriber and User Forecasts. According to a press release, the report examines “the progress of WiMAX service providers, equipment vendors, content developers and users in regions around the world.” One of the key drivers of WiMAX subscriber growth will be the adoption of the technology by operators in specific global regions, including “Asia Pacific and the Americas.” Market growth also will be stimulated by the products being certified for mobile WiMAX in Q2 this year, which the WiMAX Forum will begin to the process of introducing more products into the WiMAX ecosystem, or which it estimates there will be more than 1,000 different products by 2011.
These data points are just the tip of the iceberg. With this much capital being allocated to WiMAX equipment and network build out, it would appear the writing is on the wall.
Now it would be easy for me to end here, but if you have read this far, I would like you to take a little more of your valuable time and read on just a little more. Why should the users care and what will make them come. It will be the feature rich interactive multimedia applications many of us have longed for and in some cases have limited access to today. Just like the promise of broadband access anywhere, Java makes the same claim. In order to leverage anytime, anywhere communications and collaboration there needs to be a common software platform that these new applications are deployed on and I suggest it will be Java. If technology touches your life, chances are, so does Java technology. Invented by Sun Microsystems in 1995, Java technology has become the essential ingredient of the digital experience for hundreds of millions of people in all walks of life, all over the planet. Java software powers the onboard computers in toys, cars, planes, rockets, and even the NASA Mars Rover. It brings interactivity to the Internet, real-time graphics to television, instant imaging to cameras, and multi-player games to mobile phones and desktop PCs. It connects the largest enterprises and smallest businesses to their employees, customers, and data. And it secures the vast majority of electronic transactions in retail, finance, government, science, and medicine. In short, Java technology goes everywhere you go. It's no wonder that Java technology has become the most powerful force in software and the most prevalent software in technology. In fact, it is the software of choice for more software engineers than any other brand of software. If you're looking for a way to do something that's never been done before, and you want the most thrilling, efficient, fast, secure, animated, compatible, and reliable software for the job, you've come to the right place.
Java software runs on more types of consumer and embedded devices, smart cards, ATMs, thin clients, PCs, servers, and mainframes than any other software.
Today's six million Java developers are one of the largest communities of software developers/
The annual Java One Developers Conference has been the largest gathering of software developers for over 10 years.
Sun estimates the total Java Economy to be more than (USD) $100 billion in sales annually driving an additional $110 billion in related IT spending.
The Java economy includes 2.5 billion smart cards, 800 million PCs shipped with Java, 1.85 billion Java Powered phones (source: Ovum), and over 180 telecom providers who deploy Java technology based content/services.
Sun has recently released the source code for Java Platform Standard Edition, Java Platform Micro Edition and Java Platform Enterprise Edition under open source licenses.
In closing I believe any company that has embraced Java as a development platform has positioned themselves to play a meaningful role in the mobile broadband world we are entering. Imagine if a service were available today that allowed the user to broadcast a live channel from a Java enabled mobile device at broadcast quality utilizing the web to reach any and all that might have an interest in the content being transmitted. It might be even more compelling if the content being broadcast could be interactively shared with friends or business associates while in a live video chat. Think of the possibilities. Stay tuned.
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05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.08.08 @ 12:19
ars@chrisforesman.com (Chris Foresman)05.07.08 @ 10:13
05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.08.08 @ 12:19
05.11.08 @ 15:00
05.11.08 @ 15:00
Clean Edge News05.07.08 @ 21:00
05.06.08 @ 11:33
i'd suggest: JAVA on Linux on [a mix of ARM and X86] communicating over [Cell/Wifi/Wimax ... with Wimax winning out in the long run]
Same result.
Windows (the anti-Java OS) will hold onto the desktop, but the desktop will fade out, and Microsoft along with it...