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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (11759)	10/15/2005 4:49:12 PM
From: fred g	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank, I don't think it's fair to excoriate George on this one. I just read through Belk's paper and frankly I like it. Sure, it's a classical example of "the glass is half empty!", but it's reasonably honest. WiMAX is a decent technology, but it has been hyped beyond reason. Belk is getting at the same point I am with my standard WiMAX punch line: WiMAX is said to be suitable for 70 MHz, 30 miles, and unlicensed use. Those are all potentially true, but only if you PICK ONE. They don't go together. Now Belk is obviously pushing CDMA. That's RF, a mode of emission. WiMAX is also a standard for a mode of emission. When you come right down to it, they are probably pretty close to one another in terms of efficiency. That is, for the same power and bandwidth budget, they will probably come pretty close to one another, not all that far from the Shannon limit if implemented well. (Most WiFi is implemented badly, though it's more primitive to begin with.) They're different, of course: CDMA depends on frequency division duplex and very, very clean reserved channels. It's optimized for mobility and CBR operation. WiMAX works on time division duplex, is probably more tolerant of QRM, and is optimized more for data and VBR operation. However, proto-WiMAX does make a decent Wireless Local Loop. And because it works TDD, it can be adapted (forget about the "standard") to whatever piece of spectrum you have handy, most likely to be found in S band, though I suppose it would work fine in L or C bands (to 6 GHz) too. What I haven't seen is a bake-off between WiMAX and CDMA, using the same parameters. Computer nerds are used to benchmarks, wherein some publisher can compare the Frames per Second count between the latest ATI and nVidia cards running Serious Sam. Just swap the card and run the test. But WiMAX and CDMA are run under different licensing regimes, so it's not just a simple card swap. I suppose you could use WiMAX technology on a PCS frequency more often used for CDMA or GSM, but who's going to waste that kind of spectrum to run benchmarks? He's also right about the unlikelihood of embedding WiMAX in the near term. It makes more sense to be in an external modem, another choice to be provided by service providers to their customers. You get your CDMA data cards from CDMA carriers, not Dell -- too few of Dell's customers would want them, but VZW and Sprint have an interest in moving them.