Mobile Expert

Mobile Will Trump Fixed Broadband Internet

The Mobile Broadband revolution will indeed occur. But sadly it is not going to be driven by small or medium sized handsets. The only reason for this is not end user lack of desire, but purely the limitations of battery technology and screen size limitations. Battery technology that requires very high density for sustaining 1 MBps usage continuously for a few hours on a handset is probably at least 10 years away. Screen sizes need to be very small for handsets to be put in your pocket, so they will inherently consume much less data, due to the limited user interactions and capabilities possible.

So from now to 2015, the Mobile Broadband revolution is going to be driven by Laptops, netbooks and also larger mobile internet appliances, vehicles and home portable modems. The reason is that these larger mobile devices can pack larger batteries and larger screen sizes to enable a richer use of the Internet data more like a PC.

Till the Mobile carriers realize the value is not just focussing on handsets anymore, they will continue to have the ostrich mentality of pushing HSPA and EVDO technologies not optimially designed for Mobile Broadband but rather for mobile narrowband data. WiMAX has a good chance if being the technology of choice given its IP based Ethernet style roots. (For those who do not know, Ethernet is by far the largest PHY/MAC technology running the internet as we know it). WiMAX was designed with the same philosophy. So WiMAX may become in the Mobile broadband data world what Ethernet is to the wired world and GSM is to the mobile voice world. LTE also has promise as a technology, but it is being driven by the wrong players who still do not understand broadband data technologies driven by the Internet and still see a telco centric world. So ultimately WiMAX is more likely to prevail given the strong ecosystem that supports it and the low prices being offered for the devices today.

3G iPhone Impact on AT&T and Verizon

I think this analysis is so biased. Have you really understood all the players in the market and the real dynamics. Of the 6 million iPhones sold at least close to 50% of them are sold as unlocked iPhones and do not make any dent in AT&T's picture as they have been purchased by folks for use in their home country (not US). So even when they hit the 10 million this trend will not stop for sometime in countries where this phone is not available.

In addition the euphoria of the iPhone has reduced much since the last years launch. It is still a great product, but trust me the Samsung Instinct, RIM and LG's new products are going to give a run for their money. Also Sprint is very agressively offering its $99 plan that is way better than anything AT&T or Verizon has to offer other than lots of in your face advertizing.

Nationwide WiMAX: Who Benefits?

I'm believe in people who are visionary and make the right predictions on how technologies will evolve and be successful.

The folks who never belived in cell phones, Wired broadband and WiFi were quite many in the technologies early days. But value for the consumer and right pricing enabled all the 3 technologies to succeed.

In a world where connectedness is essential rather a luxury WiMAX will be a success as it extends the capabilities WiFi gives us and also provides QoS.

If HD improves picture quality for Standard definition video. Then one can say WiMAX provides reliability, QoS and ease of use (authentication etc) for mobile broadband. So its got all the ingredients for being a future success.

My prediction, WiMAX in next 3 years will be a mandatory feature in every single Laptop sold on the planet. Mark my words it will succeed.

So will benefit, end users will be the first to benefit, because price of the service will be low, due to the operator needs to grow subscribers. Intel will benefit because of maximal platform sales. TEMs and operators will benefit because now, they have full mobile internet platform to innovate without boundaries as opposed to the telecom technologies where innovation was more contained.