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To: Rob S. who wrote (1780)	4/2/2009 6:00:10 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1819

Hi Rob. What do you think of: Message 25541791 Nokia says WiMAX is no good and will lose as the Betamax of wireless cyberspace. <Nokia Disses WiMax As The 'Betamax' Of Wireless Technology ~ Dianne See Morrison \| finance.yahoo.com \| Thursday April 2, 2009, 10:03 am EDT -- Nokia has panned the prospects of 4G wireless standard WiMax, comparing its fate to Betamax, the early video format that emerged in the 1970's and was superseded by VHS. The FT.com reports that Nokia's head of sales and manufacturing Anssi Vanjoki said at a launch event that he didn't see WiMax taking hold anywhere in a big way. He said, "I don't think the future is very promising [for WiMax]. This is a classic example of industry standards clashing, and somebody comes out as the winner and somebody has to lose. Betamax was there for a long time, but VHS dominated the market. I see exactly the same thing happening here." It's especially harsh considering that the handset giant is usually much more circumspect about the comments and criticism it makes. It also still has a seat on the board of the WiMax Forum, the industry group that was set up to promote the technology and which Nokia was a founding member. It's now predicting that competing 4G technology LTE, or Long Term Evolution, championed by carriers Verizon and AT&T, will be the big winner. Vanjoki said, "It's my prediction that by 2015, we will have an LTE network that will cover most of the important places in the world and that will give us the coverage and capacity we need." WiMax is the technology that Sprint's joint venture Clearwire offers. The company is on an aggressive roll out schedule, hoping to get traction and market share as quickly as possible before the promised LTE launches from AT&T and Verizon. Last week, Sprint announced an aggressive roll out of its WiMax offering, confirmed that it would start offering WiMax to customers on the same schedule as Clearwire. This year it plans to roll out 4G in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle. > It seems a quite different situation from the VHS/Betamax competition. In that competition, people had to buy a very expensive machine to be able to run very expensive video tapes. The idea of multi-mode would have been absurdly expensive. In cyberphones, the cost of multi-mode is near zero so the efficiency of the respective technologies is far more important. The competitive position of WiMAX versus other options is also more important. Also, the economies of scale are huge in ASICs and cyberphone devices whereas the video market was measured in thousands or perhaps millions of units and the idea of billions was not even considered. The Betamax argument is a cliche trotted out by people with a weak argument [often enough]. The "max" in Betamax and WiMAX gives a superficial similarity too but the name is hardly evidence of an issue though the way people think, it probably would affect some [though Obama was elected and Osama was not]. But it's true that there is a competition and WiMAX so far is not swamping mobile cyberspace. It's early days though. It took CDMA going on 20 years to be accepted as the dominant technology and GSM continues to have more subscribers than the CDMA realm [including all varieties]. We [Zenbu Networks in New Zealand] are thinking that WiMAX will probably be desirable, with public spectrum being allocated and spectrum-hunting software keeping the peace between users. Wide area networks will also have a place. Devices will be multi-mode based on the likes of Gobi. There is a LOT of spectrum available now that the cost of hardware has fallen so much and micro, pico and nano cells can be popped in anywhere there's fast back-haul, which saves on the cost of monster spectrum-hogging base station towers on top of expensive civil engineering towers and foundations, town planning and public argument. It saves on electricity too as little devices sending puny signals not far [say 500 metres] don't need the horsepower of a mega base station sending signals for kilometres. It saves on installation too - a motelier can plug in a Zenbu router and away it goes. To build a big base station and install it takes expensive talent. Mqurice