Summary
Nortel cannot afford to devote any resources to niche markets in which it has not built a leading position. Its abandonment of WiMax even as a reseller helps remaining WiMax vendors who are fignting over a limited opportunity, which lies primarily in otherwise underserved environments for broadband access.
Analysis
In light of Nortel's relatively limited success in securing mobile WiMax contracts, its final withdrawal from this market does not have much impact on WiMax's ultimate potential. It may even help other WiMax suppliers by reducing the number of vendors competing for this niche market. Other developments and initiatives are more important in reviewing assessments of how large the WiMax market may eventually become, such as: (1) On the positive side the mounting effort by WiMax advocates to persuade the public sector in the U.S. that it offers the best solution for new public safety networks and is worthy of support from the new Administration's proposed broadband stimulus package as the best candidate technology for extending broadband access to under- and un-served areas; and (2) On the downside (a) Motorola's announcement of an LTE testbed in the U.K., which is a sign of the efforts this WiMax infrastructure supplier to Clearwire/Sprint is devoting to LTE; (b) planned and existing (Telstra in Australia) deployments of HSPA+; and (c) Vodafone's planned deployment of HSPA to provide broadband access in underserved regions in Italy as an example of an alternative to WiMax (as Telstra has shown in Australia) for bringing wireless broadband to rural areas. As I have said repeatedly, the main competition to WiMax in the near future is HSPA/HSPA+, not LTE, and most of the propaganda about WiMax touting it as the only available so-called "4G" system with a time-to-market advantage over LTE is or should be irrelevant (at best, and misleading at worst) for the decisions most operators face in planning their network investments. Current and following versions of WiMax systems do not for the most part offer any significant "4G" advantage that has meaning for the vast majority of customers, while compared to alternatives WiMax-based networks and services will continue to suffer from several critical limitations to which customers are sensitive.
