Saturn, You know what, I tend to think out loud and wasn't looking at the radio side of it, portable wifi is built for short range so that implies wifi would be subservient to cellular, right? OTOH, it's the input device (wifi), (not the backend transport) that controls standards so maybe that does give wifi a chance to get ahead, but only in certain regions due to the short range. Maybe the ideal scenario is cellular with wifi adapter. I would think someone is making this.
So who will be a stronger deployment power: the wifi road warriors or the consumer cellular kids?
I already see consumer cellular encroaching in cisco's voip turf. Just ask any CIO what they program into their voip handsets - cellular or cisco's voip stuff. Cellular. So wouldn't that imply wifi might be subservient to cellular too?
(OTOH, the paradigm against Cisco is they've got a phone device. Phone means cellular to people, not voip. But the reverse could be true, anything resembling a laptop paradigm means wifi has the advanage.)
RE: "lack of killer 3G applications on the cell phone"
Yes, I definitely think the development community is circuling around developing wifi apps, not 3G apps. On a related note, voip wifi handsets are already on the market, but not portable I don't think.
RE: "Voice over IP gives WiMax the capability of attacking the Cell companies bread and butter"
It's pretty easy to slap VoIP over wifi, I would imagine wimax isn't too hard. What's the range limitations on WiMax and why do you think that range limitation would be able to compete with cellular? The only scenario I can think of, is when a person is hiking in the mountains, or in a rural area where cellular drops and is dead in the water. What scenarios are you thinking? I haven't looked at wimax because it's more in the consumer world.
On a different note, at this point, I'd be happy to get wimax rather than cable. Do you know if there are any wimax betas available by say next week?
Regards,
Amy J |
