4G vs WiMAX, Round 1

I've said it before. In the end, 4G will win over WiMAX. Now, that doesn't mean that WiMAX won't be able to find applications for which the technology is particularly well suited. It just means that in the global mobile marketplace, WiMAX will not be a replacement for the cellular infrastructure that will eventually lead to 4G deployments.

The Register just released an article on a demonstration done by Samsung in, presumably, Korea. They showed 4G data zipping along at 1Gb/sec, or 100Mb/sec. My (wired) Comcast High-Speed Internet gets 4Mb/sec. I.e., the demonstration was way zippier than anything we can anticipate on the near-term horizon for the US market. And, completely unwired.

Now, Sprint and Nextel have signed up to deploy WiMAX ASAP in the US. All good news. So, while WiMAX may win briefly in the US, I doubt that it will win globally. And, in the end, at those speeds, WiMAX will not be able to survive in the US either. The race is on.

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Tags: WiMAX, Mobile, Samsung, Sprint, Nextel, 4G, Brian Berliner, brianberliner

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