Just like it started, the WiMAX bubble is started to deflate. It must be, because research firms who make a living out of selling big research reports and promises and grand visions are scaling down the expectations. I got both press releases in my in-box, hence no links. ABI Research and ISuppli have doubts about the so called mega-billion dollar potential of WiMAX. The market is likely to reach $2.5 billion by 2009, according to iSuppli, a research firm. The problem with ISuppli is that it is giving the wrong reasons for the take-up – iSuppli thinks that the best potential for WiMax will be as a next generation mobile network. Not sure what to say, but guys stay focused on tracking the monitor businesses.
The biggest scope for WiMax is is providing fixed wireless broadband to not only cities, but perhaps more importantly the 100,000 villages in India that have no Internet and in many cases no voice service. In that vein, what will kick-start WiMax even more is if VOIP over WiMax standards are quickly hammered out and cheap Wimax phones appear.
Then you’ll REALLY see it boom.
First starters, Wimax spectrum needs to be unlicensed, like wifi. That’s what drives demand, not the underlying modulation, BER, channel capacity, IPv6 etc. etc. The unlicensing of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz for cordless phones exploded that market in the 90’s.
Packetized speech is more efficient use of bandwidth(wireless or otherwise) and equipment, since speech by nature is bursty and 40% silence anyway!!