Summary
1. It would be nothing short of astonishing if Clearwire even comes close to reaching its “goal of establishing WiMax service in 80 metro areas by 2010.” 2. Many analysts view the enterprise space as the potentially dominant market sector for WiMAX. 3. As the source article points out, there may be plenty of opportunities that do not require “ubiquitous coverage.”
Analysis
Assuming the grandiose vision for WiMAX goes away, what can be done for the “service where it does exist?” It appears that a possibly big application can be found with enterprises using the service internally. That seem to be analogous with what happened in the early days of VoIP in which the tendency was not to use the technology for outside purposes. The president of Clearwire expresses it very clearly: "As we get more coverage out there, CIOs need to think about how they can take the benefit immediately, running applications just the same as if they were behind the firewall.”
So, “WiMAX’s future [will likely] be in stages.” However, there is a good chance that it may never get beyond local, niche applications.
It is interesting that the anticipation for Comcast is to “initially offer WiMax service as part of an Internet access bundle giving customers high-speed coverage both at home and around town.” Before getting involved with Clearwire, Comcast’s biggest concern was that WiMAX was going to be a direct competitor to its Internet access business.
