An article by
Dana Blankenhorn this morning
on Broadband Wireless appears to have been triggered (see the first link he includes) by one of the many articles resulting from Intel's massive PR campaign pushing WiMAX. In short, I don't agree with him that use of licensed spectrum and proprietary systems are necessarily "bad".
At the core, Broadband Wireless Internet Access provides consumers and businesses another option for being able to get cost-effective, always-on Broadband Internet Access. BWIA is highly-effective competition to wireline Broadband Internet Access - competition to the tyranny of wires (mobile broadband is now being done), competition to the century-old rights-of-way that are a near-monopoly, competition to the high cost of "doing it with wires", competition to the old technology of analog signaling over copper wires... and competing to the empty promises of the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) that "we'll deploy fiber-to-the-premises Real Soon Now... we promise... cross our hearts... Honest!... real soon now... Really... to at least a few customers..."
The strength of BWIA is that it encompasses an enormous range of technologies, spectrums, and techniques... all of which are useful in given situations - licensed spectrum, license-exempt spectrum, proprietary systems, or standards-based systems.
While I believe that the license-exempt model of spectrum allocation will ultimately win out over licensed spectrum allocation because it simply works better in an era of wireless systems driven by Moore's Law, there are numerous useful and cost-effective BWIA services being offered with licensed spectrum. One such example is Mexico's e*go/i*go.
Similarly, it's not the case that we need to "wait for WiMAX" to make use of BWIA; numerous systems, such as Motorola Canopy are available that are cost-effective and really work in the harsh spectral environment of license-exempt spectrum. That the BWIA system you might buy today happens to be "proprietary" is of no real consequence if it meets your requirement of today. The tyranny of Moore's Law dictates that we replace such systems on a regular schedule not because it stops doing what it was designed to do... but because we want to take advantage of the performance advantages of newer generations of equipment. This will be no different with BWIA systems.
Steve Stroh