Missed It by That Much

 Does WiMax already have its best days behind it?  The strained relationship between the IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) and Sprint in its push to make WiMax the 4g standard may be all for naught.

Verizion  and Alltel announced a deal to combine their services and thereby trumping Sprints main goal for WiMax, long distance wide coverage and higher data rates then current 3G networks.

Verizion and Alltel have existing infrastructures which will allow them to quickly and nimbly outstrip the pace of installation by Sprint.

In attempt to ease manufacture adoption Sprint  and partners created an ‘open patent ‘group to

"…to help ensure product differentiation and interoperability at a more predictable cost”

But one of the major 4G players –Qualcomm – is expressing indifference.

And what may be the equivalent of”Et tu, Brute” Nortel is shifting research funding from WiMax to LTE.

 

In addition there is  also the 60GHz band now under development for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) by the IEEE 80.11 study group on Very High Throughput (VHT) and the 802.153c group.  As the article as EE Times states

“The .3c group focused its standard on two applications. One is distribution of uncompressed high-definition video. The other is high-bandwidth synchronization of devices, such as wirelessly downloading a video from a kiosk to a portable media player.”

A direct strike at the other much touted possible use of WiMax. 

Sprint may invoked itself into a cone of silence