Plot

Investment of a Technology should be 'held off' because there hasn't been enough investment in it yet?

Is this article funded by the LTE camp?

Some of the shit that Gartner comes up with is unbelievable.

Intel...I guarantee you will never ever see a customer using Wimax the way it was laid out by Intel 6 Years ago..

Wimax is a scam, a charade.

As is typica Gartner has its facts RONG. At least it was consistent with its standard cowardly line - "don't take the risk." God, we'd never want a consultatnt to tell us how to take a risk and earn a higher return.

There are about 200 WiMAX networks operating around the world. In the US there are several cities with WiMAX service -- Portland being one. I guess Clearwire does not pay Gartner enough to make the magic quadrant or qualified vendors list. Yes, I do know that most of Clearwire's current coverage are is not WiMAX.

Good grief, today WiMAX is the best fixed wireless solution on the planet. Tomorrow it will likely become the best mobile solution. Ultimately it and LTE will "Harmonize," which is what the customers really want.

All ground breaking technologies take much longer to implement than predicted. Sprint was supposed to have rolled out Wimax last year. Several city tests are no reason to rush into Wimax. When they get it right and nationwide - wimax will be a beautiful thing.

"WiMAX itself will remain a “niche technology” that will best serve emerging or rural markets that don't already have access to broadband services"
Wrong: The 2.5Ghz spectrum (in USA) will prevent Clearwire from delivering any form of carrier grade wireless services in any rural market where foliage/canopy is prevelant. They will succeed in delivering decent Broadband Fixed and Nomadic services with some Mobile in Urban areas.
Historically Sprint has always led with large Urban markets first (as they did with the CDMA net)and only later did they expand into rural markets.
The new Clearwire will need to gain access to and activate their partners (MSO) AWS (1700Mhz and 2100Mhz with FDD)Spectrum if they are going to begin to compete with the new 700Mhz based LTE networks being planned by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
The big carriers and the FCC have effectively locked out any 3rd party competition to their Nationwide Mobile 4G Networks.

If WiMAX is to succeed (create a 4G net)it needs a different spectrum and sufficient bandwidth (20+ Mhz) of spectrum in both FDD and TDD capable systems.

Jim A. (aka Jacomo)

He might be right -- in the developed world, people demand from WiMAX value-added services that the existing Internet architecture do not offer, mobility support, QoS, multicast are some examples. However, most of these are still at research stage or require huge investments to get appreciated performance. For some of these there is no yet clear proof to show that that they will work.

What has become apparent however is that WiMAX is capable of delivering reasonable speed wireless broadband. Although the offered speed is still much lower than than 8Mbps we have in our homes, it is very high speed for developing communities where broadband is still an expensive service afforded by just a few. Moreover, its wireless nature makes it very appropriate to the developing regions.

In fact, I was suprised by Gatner's comments. They support my paper I had recently submitted to a workshop. Let me know if one interested on the paper.

cheers,

Wimax is quite simple Intel's latest attempt at industry lock-in. The telcos and handset guys are way too smart to fall for it, unlike the PC OEMs who are quite willing to mortgage their differentiation and profits to Intel. If Wimax were to get traction, the entire industry knows that then would be in the position to dictate the standards for the interconnects, then the memory controllers, then the CPUs. Before you wake up, Intel has sucked all the profit out of the system. Man we should bow down to the telcos and handset guys.

Foolish, as if the telcos could even possibly be cast as the 'good guys'. Wi-Fi was another technology which Intel aggressively pushed, and the uniquity of that has had disastrous results hasn't it?