WiMAX World: Searching for the WiMAX lifestyle

Sprint’s taken Xohm live in Baltimore. Dozens of smaller operators have mobile WiMAX networks running around the world, blanketing the likes of Amsterdam and Seoul with 4G. Moscow and Taipei are coming online. The WiMAX ecosystem is growing from a mere concept into a tangible community of operators. But how do those operators now turn these new amalgamations of transistors and radios into a service that captures the imagination of consumers?

That was the question a panel of vendors and Sprint batted around at WiMAX World batted back and forth with the Yankee Group chief strategy officer Berge Ayvazian today at WiMAX World. Ayvazian pressed them on when the innovative embedded devices will arrive, when will WiMAX become transformative rather than just another access technology, when will WiMAX make a social impact?

The answers weren’t readily forthcoming from the panel, but several over the panelists took their best crack at the question. Though they weren’t able to settle on any particular dates or timeline, the panel did seem to reach a consensus that numerous it will take far more than the deployments of a few U.S. carriers to achieve the mobile broadband lifestyle they’re hoping for.

That lifestyle is dependent on an embedded device business model, in which not just phones and laptops have wireless connectivity, but a whole range of consumer electronics devices. That kind of hyper-connectivity requires consumer electronics makers to buy into the WiMAX vision and embed WiMAX chipsets as feature in some of the most common consumer appliances. While Nokia, Samsung and Motorola have agreed to produce such devices for WiMAX market, the three are also major suppliers of the world’s WiMAX infrastructure (Nokia through Nokia Siemens Networks), giving them a vested interest in seeding the market. Aside from some laptop makers, which have agreed to embed Intel’s Centrino 2 chipset in upcoming computers, the rest of the consumer electronics world hasn’t yet signed on to WiMAX.

Xohm senior vice president for mobile broadband operations Atish Gude said he believes that those device makers will see the light, but they may not be the first consumer electronics makers you’d think of. He pointed toward the hundreds of small electronics makers at shows like CES every year, all of whom are searching for a market differentiator to distinguish them from the Sonys and Apples of the world. WiMAX could be that differentiator, Gude said.