The WiMAX race has begun

BOSTON--WiMAX World kicks off today here, and the titillation in the air is just powerful. No other technology has been hyped more than Mobile WiMAX in recent years, but for the first time the exhibitors and other assorted boosters at this show have a certain reason to feel smug.

Sprint is predictably the belle of the ball. After it agreed this summer to deploy a multibillion-dollar mobile WiMAX network using Motorola and Samsung gear, the WiMAX community has a big-name customer to point to—finally an answer to the critics and naysayers that have derided the technical capabilities and economics of their chosen technology for years. When the show floor opens on Wednesday, you can almost expect to see a carnival-like atmosphere.

The WiMAX sector definitely has some cause to be excited, but they aren’t in the clear just yet. The critics may be slightly cowed, but they still have a lot of good points. Sprint aside, WiMAX is still an unproven technology aside from Samsung’s WiBro networks in Korea. And even the ostrich feather in WiMAX’s cap, Sprint, isn’t exactly the proof of the WiMAX business case these conferees would hope. The peculiarities of its spectrum, regulatory deadlines for deployment and the lack of availability of latter generation CDMA technologies all contributed to Sprint’s choice of WiMAX. Other carriers won’t face that pressure. In fact, pressure might go in the opposite direction, forcing them to deploy latter-day UMTS technologies even if they like WiMAX.

Still, the Sprint generated a lot of excitement, and like it or not, hype drives this industry far more than we’d like to admit. There are dozens of vendors now all in various stages of WiMAX developed spurred on by the hope that Sprint is just the first of many major deals. <I>Telephony</I> has taken a look a close look a six of those vendors in a special online series: Motorola, Nortel Networks, Alvarion, Alcatel, Samsung and tomorrow ZTE. No one knows for sure whether WiMAX will become a major sector for the vendors, but those six stand a good chance of capturing a share of the market if it does. That doesn’t mean all of them will make it or that other manufacturers, either big of small, won’t pass them over. Either way, the WiMAX race has begun. We’ll see which ones reach the finish line first, or if there’s even a finish line to reach.

Contact me at kfitchard@prismb2b.com.

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