WhyMax?

"WiMax and LTE: Unwelcome Guests" ?

This is the title of a very interesting article appeared on this months' newsletter of "The Basestation" presenting operators' point of view on these two technologies.

Much has been said so far, many technical aspects discussed, possibilities of use and much hype around them has been raised, but not much has been said about the main problem: Investments.
Operators are struggling to keep up with the speed rate at which new technologies are becoming available "The Basestation" reports:

"In a period when operators are paring back capacity investments (after reaching sufficient coverage or negotiating network sharing deals), it seems odd that vendors are pursuing two new systems: WiMax and LTE."

Vendors of course will not go a long way without Operators making technologies available and while this was already evident with 3G, not everyone has learned the lesson. This means that WiMax especially (it has already been discussed for years) will very unlikely meet the expectations of the bandwidth-hungry consumers.

Skepticism is another factor to take into consideration. Among operators only Ericsson is investing in LTE at the moment and many others (NEC, Motorola, NSN etc...) struggle to see profit margins in a very expensive move like the migration to 4G.

There would be a lot to say on this. For further interesting details here is the full article

In my opinion, Operators will in the end drive the decision of a market, that risks otherwise to be flooded with gadgets with enormous possibilities but no service to allow the users to take advantage of them.

Digital divide might only get worse. Maybe investing on cheaper technologies making them available to everyone would be a better way to go, but I wouldn't dare suggesting this to either Vendors not consumers... Good luck then.