The idea of WiMAX as a rural play, at least in a country with a developed fixed infrastructure, is easily killed off. The business model just does not stack up. It’s not much more commercially attractive as a mule serving the backhaul needs of the mobile industry.

I see mobile WiMAX taking off in countries without a fixed infrastructure as a data service alternative – because WiMAX is here and LTE isn’t yet; and in countries with a fixed infrastructure to serve specialised markets, primarily in cities, that can’t be served on a consumer mobile telephony infrastructure because of QoS issues. The variability of demand in consumer mobile and the variability in service that goes with it, which just gets worse on a data network, will provide plenty of space to play for a WiMAX operator even where 3G (and eventually LTE) is ubiquitous.

Whether a mobile operator adopts WiMAX or LTE is going to depend on relative costs and, as you say, availability of handsets. LTE is not a natural upgrade path for 3G, it’s a skip upgrade. I don’t know of an infrastructure operator that is actually wedded to a technology, particularly if the cost structure of that technology becomes a commercial disadvantage. Most of the LTE v WiMAX debate is noise created by the manufacturers.

Prior to the 802.16/WiMAX ecosystem having gained momentum, 3GPP/3GPP2 had next generation efforts beyond CDMA/WCDMA on the back burner for 2014-2016 . And there was malformed resolution about what set of technologies would be used: TD-SCDMA, Coded OFDM, and other technologies were proposed by DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Ericsson and others.

Your own company, Nokia (networking group), was involved in 802.16 from an early stage but then dropped out saying that WiMAX/802.16 had little future as a mainstream wireless effort. But, surprise, surprise, Nokia jumped back in when momentum continued to build despite sustained denunciations from the 3G camp.

WiMAX is not the primary candidate of incumbent mobile operators but, then when was it and why would it be? WiMAX is still a fledgling effort in terms of market size. But the ecosystem has produced substantial results: a plethora of 3rd-4th generation WiMAX chips are available that now include mixed signal devices including sophisticated multi-band RF and multiple mode WiMAX plus GSM/EDGE and soon WiMAX plus EVDO. Planned for the end of 2009 or early 2010 are WiMAX plus LTE chips.

Obviously there is a lot more to becoming mainstream than having low cost, efficient chips or willing suppliers of equipment. LTE differs in terms of integration of services and support for enhancement of incumbent networks from well disciplined and capable tier 1 suppliers such as Nokia.

Next G, as Nokia well recognizes, is not so much about wireless as it is about a comprehensive package; converged devices, services and migration path of operator control of their business models than it has to do with technology.. technology is the vehicle but not the gas or driver. NG also will require eventual re-farming of spectrum, a shift that will be several years in process.

But becoming a service oriented company in an open IP access and development environment, although certainly not completely, is a wild west show… who determines what portal and services will be used if the market is more driven by user choice than by decisions of operators of what is allowed?

WiMAX is mainstream development because it has irrevocably impacted mainstream technology and market evolution well beyond the numbers of subscribers and service coverage. WiMAX has already impacted thinking and actions of IPR regimen that impacts ease of entry of chip and device suppliers. It might also impact ease of access of network infrastructure suppliers but that is more likely to be dominated by current mobile players and companies from the IT/networking realms rather than small upstarts, particularly given the protracted economic crisis.

Will WiMAX become mainstream in itself? That still faces major hurdles of gaining access to spectrum, capital and successful cash flow. Incumbency definitely has advantages including cash flow which is magnified in importance during financial recessions. But a good argument can be made, imo, that WiMAX has already entered the mainstream by becoming the Trojan Horse of change within mainstream mobile and FMC streams of development. The economic crisis also appears likely to slow migration to LTE: 3G continues to be extended and extensively deployed so that it is likely to remain the mainstream network for several more years. Markets and operators obviously vary but it appears likely that WiMAX and LTE function for incumbent operators will be more as overlays to offset growing bandwidth and new service demands than as replacement networks.

Verizon and perhaps a few other beacon networks will serve more as rallying flags for fresh marketing campaigns than as displacement NG networks. For all the value of ‘beachfront property’ 700 MHz spectrum, the bandwidth available is limited. The benefit of sub 1 GHz spectrum is also its ‘Achilles heal’: signals travel farther and around and through objects better but this makes it much more difficult to use advanced multiple path signal processing and beam forming methods needed to reach high reuse factors. Due to interest in this subject, it is the topic of a short research report I am currently engaged in writing.

In my opinion, WIMAX & Mobile WIMAX is adopted and is a very good solution for the developing markets where DSL penetration is still very poor. The main adopters are ISPs wishing to deploy a complementary wireless service, incubents with no 2G/3G spectrum and greenfield operators with no infrastructure.

Also some factors that are responsible for the WIMAX uptake are:
- Lobbying power
- Ecosystem

Unfortunately, the power of both factors is pretty weak compared to the 3GPP lobby and its ecosystem (variety of handsets, terminals etc… at very low prices).

One last thing is that I have noticed from my experience that traditional Mobile Operators are “afraid” and reluctant in adopting a technology which is coming from the IT world (WiFi, WIMAX etc..). They perhaps do not understand the business model behind it, since in the IT world you mainly sell products and subsidize services, and in the Telco world you sell services and subsidize products.

Wimax is becoming mainstream, slowly, and its uptake depends heavily on large scale deployments (i.e. Sprint), Lobbying and the ecosystem.

The marketing power for GSM technologies alone should be able to retain 80% of the world’s installed base of cellular that GSM has. Next, the three major wireless carriers in the US — Verizon Wireless (CDMA), AT&T and T-Mobile have all announced LTE plans.

Whenever two technologies perform the same function, the one with the larger installed base wins. Critics will point out that LTE has no installed base. True, but its antecedents have a huge base. Besides, technological excellence has little to do with the outcome. And marketing is always more important than engineering.

Do you remember the ‘imode’ scare of 1999-2001? Imode – the customized compact-html for mobile deployed by NTT DoCoMo was going to take over the world, as was WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Companies spent gazillions marketing WAP and iMode versus big screen HTML. Utimately, what happened? Consumers and businesses did not buy based on technology or convergence path, but based on functionality, familiarity and ease of use. So nowadays most websites have a sophisticated blend of XML and XHTML to allow for screen/content resizing based on the protocols detected during SSH protocol swap and voila! Nicely rendered content.

So the answer is NO. Operators (besides Sprint) in Tier 1 countries will not adopt WiMAX as 4G, if any do, it will be as a brief transition step. WiMAX will succeed in emerging markets that have not built out 10 billion miles of copper and don’t have millions of mainframe distribution switches lying around to be re-used. These markets will primarily be ASIAPAC, EMEA, MENA and to some degree, LATAM. WiMAX will succeed there, big time.

“the spectrum band for WiMax has not standardized” – wrong – there are 2 primary bands being used: 2.5 (2.3 to 2.7) and 3.5 (3.3 to 3.8). LTE is being considered in so many different bands of new and existing spectrum.

“there are many more options for consumers for inter-operator roaming” – only if you have a multimode device with 2G/3G/LTE. You can do the same for WiMAX.

“Role of the open and developed eco-system” – WiMAX is much more open than LTE is.

“the winner is likely to be LTE purely due to the business issues of developed standards and eco-system rather than on strength of technology” – You got the winner right, but the reasons all wrong.