WiMAX Next Year

The WiMAX Forum, which is running an interoperability PlugFest this week as the last tune-up for product certification later this year, is predicting that mobile fixed wireless technology will be out in the market early next year and widespread in 2008.

“The message we’re receiving from the marketplace is that WiMAX is not going to be a replacement for any one technology just as there’s no one voice technology out there today that dominates,” said Jeff Orr, marketing director of the WiMAX Forum.

That’s good and bad news for a cable industry that has to be interested in a mobile WiMAX play. The good news is that products and handsets will be around next year. The bad news is that small, entrepreneurial types like content providers, municipalities and rural telcos could get to market first and build a wall that ropes the most valuable customers into their own fixed-mobile offering.

Speaking of voice as a commodity, a new report that can be found at http://www.convergenceonline.com/reportE.html outlines some of the details of the whole VoIP market.

– Jim Barthold