WiMAX Broadband Converging Emerging Fixed and Mobile Revenue Opportunities
I attended a MIT/Standford Venture Lab (VLAB) & SVASE event at the Intel auditorium on Dec. 11.
Opening remarks held by Sriram Viswannathan, GM of WiMAX Program Office at Intel
Moderator: Berge Ayvazian, Chief Strategy Officer, Yankee Group
Panelists:
Rama Shukla, VP Mobility Group & Director, WiMAX Program Office, Intel
Rehan Jalil, President and CEO, WiChorus (Content and Network Services)
P.Kelley Dunne, CEO, Digital Bridge Communications (WiMAX rural service provider)
Sandesh Patnam, Partner and CFO, Bay Partners (Venture Capital)
Tom Gruba, Sr Director Marketing, Motorola, MOTOwi4, WiMAX
Intel gave an overview of their plans and release of the new 2008 laptop platform heavily promoting WiMAX in addition to WiFi (Centrino). 2nd half of 2008 is target for hardware release including PC/miniPC cards. All major laptop vendors have signed on for this new platform.
WiChorus discussed their opinions for the need to think about mobile broadband internet access gateways with possibility for deep packet inspection and optimization of content.
Digital Bridge, presented their success in cost efficient deployments in USA for WiMAX services and ease of installation and use for customers. Digital Bridge has used Alvarion equipment for their deployments.
Bay Partners presented their interest in monitoring this technology area.
Motorola outlined their commitment to WiMAX in addition to other possible competing technologies such as 3G LTE (Long Term Evolution) for WCDMA and CDMA2000. Tom also debunked the speculation around Clearwire and Sprint breakup of JV. Motorola has deployed WiMAX in more than a dozen countries around the world. Tom expressed his opinions about that business cases for each service provider will determine what technology that will be used. This can be anything from availability of spectrum for WiMAX (2.5 GHz or 3.5GHz) or lack of spectrum in which case a 3G LTE solution may be better.
In any case, the overall comments were all positive on WiMAX business opportunities and that WiFi/WiMAX services combined will be here for a long time in parallel with 3G wireless evolution.
Berge from the Yankee Group reminded everybody to check the WiMAX Forum activities for upcoming events and conferences.
regards,
/Thomas
For additional comments or info, contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx
