I have been reading whitepapers on WiMax whenever I can find some free time and it has started some of the wheels turning on where I think inventive people with lots of cash backing and a stomach for early adoption can go with this technology.
The more I have been reading about this technology the more parallels I can draw between how wireless connectivity in Europe erupted due to the cost and complexity of wired infrastructure.
In Europe, cell phone adoption was initially much higher than what we saw here in North America and there were some simple reasons for it: Cost, Time, and Convenience.
Cost - it was cheaper to own a cell phone than to have a land line because the cost of putting up cell towers was much cheaper than digging trenches for fibre
Time - it was faster to get a cell phone than get a land line because it doesn't require a technician to visit your house
Convenience - your cell phone works everywhere due to lower cost and rapid expansion of networks
These are what I view as a holy trinity of Consumerism and where you have demonstratable gains in all these categories through a new gadget, service, etc you will see rapid adoption. It will explode even faster if you have a killer app, texting (SMS) in this case. I am sure there is a business rule and a business plan in this observation.
WiMax is positioned nicely to pull the same kind of coup d'etat on wireline internet service:
Cost - put up a tower every 35km at a much lower cost than digging trenches for fibre
Time - a tower can be erected much faster than the amount of time it takes to buy land, dig trenches, etc. Simply install the repeaters on existing cell towers.
Convenience - easy to expand existing networks, easy to maintain, easy to leverage existing infrastructure.
Now if you want to provide data communications and enable areas that have no connectivity, like what we saw happen in New Orleans post hurricane Katrina, in a few weeks it is now possible. Imagine being able to leap frog the entire wired internet generation straight to wireless in developing communities. That would truly be progress.
