wireless v broadband, page-20

Some posters are mixing up 802.11 a/b/g with 802.16 Wimax. The various 802.11 standards are local area networks intended for offices or home use. They have a very limited reach. Wimax is a high bandwidth wireless services which will be rolled out by carriers over the next few years.

I note comments on the limitations of the available wireless bandwidth but I heard similar comments when mobile phones first came out. Back then very few people would have thought it possible that the mobile network could support so many calls simultaneously. The answer for Wimax is the same as it was for mobile phones - put in more cells. As to the comment about the wired network still being needed for wireless that is only true for connections between the wireless base stations and the rest of the network. This will most likely end up being optical. In a few years (5-10) I suspect it will be a difficult decision for telcos to commit to dig fibre/copper into the ground for new suburbs when wireless has such a low capital investment.

And for the comments about the value in telecom network being voice; you also need to think again. Telco revenue from voice is falling every year and at some time in the not to distant future all voice calls will be carried over IP. BT in the UK has a plan to turn off its current voice network by 2010 and KPN in the Netherlands has a similar plan with no commited end date. Read http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=68488&site=lightreading for more detail. The profit from voice calls is in STD and ISD. The carriers will find it much more difficult to charge significant premiums for long distance when voice calls are effectively carried over the internet.