LTE v Mobile WiMAX, but what about WiFi?
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008There is a big battle going on in the mobile equipment vendors and standards market, with the makers of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Mobile WiMAX.
Vendors of both technologies have laid their bets, analysts have made their judgement calls and vendors who get it wrong will be very severely damaged if not taken out of the game.
For me, if both technologies fulfil their promise (though I doubt they will), LTE will win where existing networks need upgrading, and Mobile WiMAX will win when new ones are being built – but we’ll see, neither are yet ready for prime time.
What I pose is a question about WiFi?
It’s an insidious technology, everywhere and nowhere, yet thousands of devices have been WiFi enabled, Blackberry and Apple have just turned Mobile WiFi into a prime time mobile technology.
Now I don’t think there will be a (UK) wide WiFi network like we have 3G (did I say UK wide?), and the makers of both LTE and Mobile WiMAX position themselves as WiFi killers, however…
I offer the thought that maybe, just maybe, WiFi has the momentum to become a mainstream third mobile technology.
Certainly we are seeing some interesting developments in our own backyard.
Our joint press release with BT about our landmark project with the Manchester Velodrome deploying end user WiFi connected to the Internet via our Symmetrical Fixed Wireless Internet Access is the first of a number on our radar of similar projects.
Ubiquitous genuinely high speed, low cost mobile broadband (where one has the time and a spare hand to use it) sounds like a winner to me!
Ian Roberts