WiMAX Car Wows CES, but Will WiMAX Make It?
As crazy as it sounds, there may come a day when Americans no longer have to suffer the indignity of being unconnected to the internet, even when tooling along in their automobiles at highway speeds. And Intel, Clearwire, and Motorola are spending big bucks to ensure it’s their WiMAX technology that empowers mobile internet users everywhere.
Intel’s WiMAX-enabled Chevy Suburbans were a big hit at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and a YouTube video of a mobile WiMAX demonstration in which passengers in a moving car watch broadband videos, listen to streaming music, and make Skype phone calls is making the rounds in a bid to become a viral sensation. According to GigaOM, to put on the Las Vegas demo, Intel and Motorola built a small, four-tower WiMAX network that provided a wireless network that reached approximately one block beyond the convention center where CES was staged.
The demonstration proves that WiMAX may be ready to be launched to the general public. Just this past week, Clearwire launched WiMAX service in Portland, OR, providing wireless internet access over an area of approximately 700 square miles. According to BusinessWeek, users are experiencing downloads of up to 7 megabits per second and uploads of 2.5 megabits per second, at a cost of $50 per month for unlimited usage.
But just like wireless phones and satellite radio, WiMAX’s success in the marketplace will ultimately depend on what kind of network infrastructure it can build, and what kind of network infrastructure it can build depends a great deal on what kind of interest it can generate from consumers . . . who aren’t apt to jump at a new technology that lacks the infrastructure to support it. A vicious Catch-22, in other words.
While Craig Barrett, Intel’s chairman, is understandably bullish on WiMAX, he’s not adverse to a day where WiMAX technology might merge with competing wireless technologies, like 4G, to create one wireless standard. “We don’t need another Blu-ray and HD battle in the marketplace,” said Barrett, as quoted in Forbes. “If we get a great fourth-generation technology, let’s make it seamless and let everybody play with it and let’s not have two different versions.”
By Robert Pothier
