 A Paranoid Industry
By Adlane Fellah, CEO and Founder
The emerging WiMAX industry seems paranoid. The majority of service providers don’t want to disclose their key metrics, in particular their subscriber counts. The privately-held equipment vendors only disclose vague information about their deployments and little to nothing about their real shipments unless under an Non Disclosure Agreement. This makes our work as analysts both challenging and valuable to the industry.
But why are industry players so reluctant to share their success stories? Is it that, as someone said to me, the “data are unpopular”? Could one not argue that empty criticisms made by opponents to WiMAX, such as “WiMAX has no business case,” more…
 The US 3.65 GHz Band: What Does it Mean for WiMAX?
By Tim Sanders, Senior Analyst – US Market, Maravedis and CEO – the Final Mile
In almost all respects, the FCC made no changes whatsoever to its prior rulings on the 3.65 GHz spectrum. What it did, however, was clarify the rules around its "contention protocol" requirement, which are extremely important for both WiMAX equipment vendors and carriers potentially using this spectrum. The spectrum is still non-exclusive, but does require base station registration and a filing fee for the spectrum by each provider, of which there could be many. This is close to the unlicensed-band approach, aside from the registration and fee. One operator described it to me as a "lightly regulated" band, which seems a very apt characterization.
This band is potentially very important, with a solid block of spectrum (50 MHz) that would carry even more bandwidth per MHz than the 2.5 GHz range. It also boasts more…
 Clash of the Titans: What is Really Different about the Apple iPhone
By Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst
The Apple iPhone has entered the market with more fanfare than any product introduction in recent memory. This speculation has fueled by Apple’s success with the iPod, a music device that re-wrote the formula for success when it entered an already competitive market for portable MP3 players. The unique ‘it factor’ that Apple brings to the party is an intuitive but painstakingly designed approach to man-machine interface development that started with the first Macintosh PC and continues to breath fresh life into the company.
IPhone enters the market for cellphones and PDA devices at a point of maturity that many might have thought that only incremental improvements were possible. more…
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