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It was a busy week in the telecom world. One piece of news that caught my eye was that Clearwire and Cisco have formed an alliance. Cisco will provide network equipment for Clearwire and also plans to build mobile WiMAX devices for the company down the line. As of now, both companies are being vague about what kind of devices this would include.
Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOM speculates that “it’s some sort of WiMAX version of Verizon’s MiFi router that takes a 3G signal and uses it as the backhaul for a Wi-Fi hot spot.” I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from both companies on that in the future.
Until now, Cisco’s role in the WiMAX space has been mostly undefined. The company acquired mobile WiMAX equipment maker, Navini back in 2007 but hasn’t done too much with the assets since. Also, initially, the company was only interested in the non U.S. WiMAX market – it’s good to see that they are now concentrating on the U.S. Overall, I think this is really exciting news for the WiMAX market that could really help advance the roll-out of the technology to consumers.
What do you think about Cisco and Clearwire’s alliance? Do you agree with Stacey that the mystery “device” will be like the Mi-Fi? Or do you have some other ideas?
2 Comments
Jeff,
Is it your feeling that cisco’s increased involvement in the mobile Wimax market is good for both fixed and mobile providers, because it will draw more attention/investment/technology into the whole wireless field, which should lead to a larger overall market share for wireless?
“Hi Michael,
Yes, that is actually exactly what I think – and it’s what I thought about Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast etc. getting into the WiMAX market. Having these industry titans involved helps make the technology a household name which in turn helps companies across the ecosystem. This, of course, includes Towerstream. Also, having more equipment choices can only improve prices and business models for service providers, like Towerstream.”
Thanks,
Jeff