VoIP and WiMAX = A Perfect Storm?

Alas, human cloning hasn't (yet) been perfected, and I don't have an infinite travel budget either, so I need to pick-and-choose my shows. I didn't go to Interop this week (I've had enough of Las Vegas for a while, thankyouverymuch), and according to this blog post on ZDNet, I missed one heck of a keynote address. Apparently, Intel stuck four directional WiMAX (i.e. the under-development IEEE 802.16) broadcast-and-receive antennas (operating in the 5.8 GHz unregulated band) on top of the Stratosphere, then beamed a proprietary 72 Mbps wireless link from there to the Mandalay Bay where the keynote was being held.

Intel executive VP and general manager Sean Maloney held live audio-plus-video chats with four WiMAX-toting lackeys scattered throughout the city, including (here's what particularly caught my eye) one person in an RV (impersonating Elvis, but not driving at the time) cruising down the Las Vegas Strip. I thought first-generation WiMAX wasn't supposed to be mobile-capable? According to Intel employee Adam Moran, the ringleader of the demo, data rates between the WiMAX transponders on the Stratosphere and the mobile participants averaged 7-16 Mbps.

Make sure you read through the entire ZDNet post; there's lots more tantalizing tidbits in it. Then ponder this prognostication. Is it just me, or do you also think that the VoIP-plus-WiMAX combination, with WiMAX for city-wide coverage in tandem with localized, coverage-overlapping Wi-Fi hotspots, presents a 'perfect storm' that as time goes on will have the cellular service providers increasingly quaking in their boots? Consider that MPower Communications has decided to buy the Las Vegas WiMAX gear and keep the network running post-Interop. Now consider that Speakeasy is putting six "pre-WiMAX" towers up in Seattle, one on top of the Space Needle. And that TowerStream has stuck a pre-WiMax PoP on top of San Francisco's Nob Hill, and is claiming to be able to serve customers within a 10-mile radius of it. Connect the dots and see what they create….

This all hits in conjunction with a report that Verizon is shutting down the Wi-Fi-equipped telephone booths it has scattered all over New York City, presumably to push folks to its more lucrative CDMA 1xEV-DO cellular data service. Meanwhile, Sprint, who's specifically interested in mobile WiMAX (i.e. IEEE 802.16e), is cozying up to Intel and the WiMAX Forum. One CDMA-based cellular provider has chosen to "stick its head in the sand" and avoid acknowledging the technology transformation, it seems, while another embraces the inevitable.

Yes, WiMAX doesn't (and, for the foreseeable future, won't) have pervasive coverage, but neither do the cellular folks, particularly now that serious discussions on the inevitable phase-out of AMPS are underway. Yes, WiMAX implementations will initially be city- and provider-specific fiefdoms, but the cellular and Wi-Fi folks have struck up roaming agreements and there's no reason why WiMAX providers can't do the same.

Intel (aside from its flash memory group) has yet to succeed in cellular in a big way, in spite of substantial time, effort and money invested to date. Could WiMAX be its ticket to turn the tables on those who've spurned it? With apologies to Jar Jar Binks, "mesa think so", in spite of the fact that my BroadVoice service has been flaky for the last week-plus. Now that's trust in a technology's inevitable triumph!