AT&T and Verizon might have the lion’s share of the mobile broadband market, but don’t count Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX out just yet. The chairman of Clearwire was nailed down for an interview at CTIA where he championed the high bandwidth wireless solution by talking about the low capacity of VZW’s and AT&T’s 3G network. And how WiMAX can even handle the Skype calls despite the application’s inefficiency.
What else would he do? It’s his stuff. You didn’t expect him to talk about Sprint’s major woes and how the wireless carrier is losing subs left and right? Hells no. WiMAX for life, playa!
WiMax works for point-2-point, niche markets as an open standard replacement for hundreds of proprietary standards. As a 3G competitors, this alternative is as dead as metro-WiFi. Thus, the problem is that scales of economy won’t be realized since the broader needs are not served well.
Clearwire has a clear strategy in rural areas. Sprint is lost among the wireless operators.
If you happened to live in Portland, Oregon, like I do, you’ll find that Clear’s 4G product totally rocks over any other solution. It’s better, faster, less expensive and there’s “no strings” or wires attached. Both figuratively and literally!
Soon to roll out in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Grand Rapids just for starters. The company has an aggressive deployment strategy that translates to turning up new markets every three to four weeks.
And with WiMAX built into my new laptop (and I think pretty much ANY new laptop has it now), all I need to do is turn my computer on. There’s this cool, inexpensive little USB accessory from ZyXEL that allows my computer to become a mobile hotspot or AP. The future has arrived!
Rock on Clearwire! Go Speed Racer Go!