The Promise of WiMAX

Welcome back! I've been gone for a while, trying to handle personal biz. I've also been reading Tom Friedmans' book "The World is Flat" and I would say he has an interesting take on Globalization. He talks about outsourcing, opensourcing, offshoring, insourcing and even invents his own two-word combo to try and explain the techno-economic phenomenon that is unfolding on the global stage. Mr.Friedman talks about ten things that have oiled the wheels of globalization, and one of them is definitely wireless technology. WiMAX a.k.a 802.16 is one of those technology that has the potential to "flatten" the world. I prefer the term "open" to "flatten." WiMAX is a wireless technology that has the potential to "open" a region to investment and to development.

WiMAX was designed to service a fairly large geographic size (theoretically up to 31 miles) but to achieve optimum performance, a WiMAX base station can only serve a radius of 10 miles with single channel bandwidths of up to 75Mbps. This single channels can then be combined to provide bandwidths of up to 350Mbps. WiMAX, being that its still in the province of commercial companies and not anti-poverty crusaders, is currently not a feasible technology for community projects because of the capital investments required to install infrastructure. In Kenya for example, the recent deployment of WiMAX by Kenya Data Networks, a data communication carrier company that serves most Kenyan ISPs, has been in concert with the anticipated deployment of fiberoptic link between major towns. WiMAX then serves as a last mile technology to haul data, video and audio for ISPs.

The promise of WiMAX lies in its capacity to carry more information to longer distances as compared to Wi-Fi. A WiMAX network can sufficiently carry voice, video and audio traffic. For underserved communities with non-existent telephone infrastructure this can be a quick way of setting calling centers using VoIP( Voice Over Internet Protocol) . VoIP involves using IP based networks to make voice calls. A callers voice is converted into digital packets and routed over the network as opposed to using the regular circuit switched telephone system. This results in significant savings to the Wananchi ( citizens). However, the initial cost of deploying a WiMAX network is prohibitive for small businesses and community projects. This technology is still for the big dogs. Once more WiMAX equipment vendors begin to manufacture in large quantities, then the economies of scale will drive prices down and allow those savings to be passed to the consumer.

Wireless carriers are testing and deploying WiMAX as part of their migration from third generation(3G) to fourth generation (4G) cellular networks. WiMAX enjoys the blessing of some big some dogs like Intel, Motorola, Sprint Nextel and Fujitsu but is non-proprietary (open standard based).
The upside to this technology is that it helps open up entire regions of a country to entrepreneurs and in concert with fiberoptic cable deployment, any small towns that are in the path of the fiberoptic cable eventually benefit. In conclusion , fiberoptic cable brings the internet to your town, WiMAX picks it up and brings it to your neighborhood and then maybe WiFi brings it into your living room.