Wimax Technologies

Summary
Mobile wireless broadband represents the next wave of the mobile technology revolution.   This will allow consumers and businesses uninterrupted broadband access to the Internet anywhere there is a wireless signal - much like a Wi-Fi hotspot with long range.   Coupled with VoIP, this technology evolution will be a disruptive change to the market.

There is significant uncertainty about which of two competing standards becomes the dominant technology for mobile wireless broadband.   Intel is championing the next generation of Wi-Fi, while Qualcomm is at the vanguard of the cellular phone technology evolution, HSDPA.   The Wi-Fi evolution, called WiMAX, is superior from a technical standpoint, but HSDPA has the advantage of much of the required infrastructure already being in place.

This paper provides recommendations for a wireless broadband provider (ACME) that is committed to developing and rolling out a WiMAX service offering.   The recommendations focus on what they can, as a part of the WiMAX constellation, do to ensure that WiMAX is the dominant global standard for mobile wireless broadband.

These recommendations are:
  1. Do what they can to ensure WiMAX reaches critical mass as early as possible and before HSDPA can establish its market presence
  2. Promote high data usage applications and uses of broadband so that WiMAX’s data advantages position themselves stronger competitively in relation to HSDPA
  3. Demonstrate the efficiencies that WiMAX and VoIP present as a combined offering from a cost perspective and ensure governments do not regulate to erode these benefits
  4. Us a non-market strategy to pursue legislation that outlaws discriminatory network access – thereby discouraging the rollout of HSDPA networks and giving ACME a competitive advantage.

Technology

As used in this paper, wireless broadband refers to high speed Internet access over a long-range wireless connection.   We will loosely define ‘broadband’ as a...