Disqus
Japan’s UQ Communications is showing off a demo of Samsung’s WiMAX 2 technology at a local trade show and is achieving download speeds of roughly 330 Mbps. That’s bananas, but it also seems like a waste, much like Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), the standard that Qualcomm was developing as a competitor to LTE until they decided to just kill the project and join the rest of the world in adopted the GSMA backed standard. Clearwire, who until recently was committed to WiMAX, but has no admitted to testing LTE equipment, is the largest operator using WiMAX. Once they go, who’s left?
Technological progress is a funny thing these days. It’s no longer about who has the best solution, but who has the largest marketing budget, the most amount of friends, and even some unknown political factors, that decide whether or not a technology lives or dies. WiMAX 2, as wonderful as it seems both on paper and in demos, will probably never be deployed in a commercial network. Never say never, but if I had to bet a bottle of expensive whiskey on there being a consumer facing WiMAX 2 network operating within 5 years, I’d tell you that it isn’t going to happen and you better ship me single malt using overnight FedEx.
Samsung says by the end of 2011 they’ll have commercial WiMAX solutions on the market. They didn’t specify whether that means infrastructure equipment or things like netbooks with the new technology embedded inside, but either way, by the end of 2011 LTE is going to be deployed across Western Europe and in many large American cities. The ecosystem is going to be so large and growing so fast, that if an operator even mumbled the word WiMAX, he’d get laughed at by an entire industry. At least that’s what I’d like to imagine happens.
About The Author
Stefan Constantinescu
Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.
