Stuart Corner
Thursday, 27 September 2007 13:42
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
Motorola meanwhile was selling WiMAX down the river, in the nicest possible way, demonstrating handoffs between WiMAX base stations during an "exclusive cruise along the Chicago River for media and industry analysts in town to attend WiMAX World USA."
According to Motorola "Attendees experienced uninterrupted mobile applications including web browsing, VoIP calls, video streaming and MobiTV while moving past access point sites along the route of the cruise." Fred Wright, Motorola senior vice president, home & networks mobility, claimed that "Motorola has reached a significant milestone in the industry by proving through these demonstrations that mobile WiMAX is real and ready for commercial deployment."
His comments were reinforced by a large and very important customer, Barry West, Sprint Nextel CTO and president of its Xohm business unit which plans to make WiMAX available to millions of US residents. "We are on schedule to begin Xohm pre-commercial service in Chicago by the end of 2007, with commercial service planned in that and other markets beginning April 2008," West said.
Sprint promises that "With Xohm mobile Internet, customers will be able to experience a new form of interactive communications, high-speed Internet browsing, local and location-centric services, and multimedia services including music, video, TV and on-demand products." Sprint also plans to bring Xohm WiMAX mobile Internet customers search, interactive communications and social networking tools through a new mobile portal in a deal announced with Google.
It's all starting to look good. But of course WiMAX has its critics. Notable among them is Ericsson which abandoned its WiMAX R&D to focus on 3G cellular technologies and beyond. It's been quite outspoken in putting down WiMAX and talking up HSDPA etc.
