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July 31, 2009

Comcast, Time Warner Pour on the WiMAX

By Doug Mohney
Contributing Editor

If there were any lingering doubts about WiMax gaining traction in North America, Comcast (News - Alert) and Time Warner put them to rest this week. Comcast officially added Atlanta as its second market – Portland being the first – and has vowed that Chicago, Philadelphia and "more" will be launching before the end of the year. Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable's CEO announced the company would be selling WiMAX service later this year in four cities, starting in Dallas and Charlotte, North Carolina.
 
The Comcast and Time Warner announcements couldn't come at a better time for businesses, with WiMAX being able to provide both high-speed mobile broadband services at DSL speeds for lower cost than EVDO or HSPA data networks (i.e. Sprint (News - Alert), Verizon Wireless and AT&T). A "fixed" version of WiMAX – basically a box the size of a cable modem with an antenna – is expected to put pressure onto vanilla DSL offerings with a combination of lower price, competitive or higher speeds, and zero-truck roll installation; service would be simply established by plugging the WiMAX (News - Alert) modem and finding the area where the strongest signal can be found in the office.
 
For now, Comcast is delivering the same service plans as it does in Portland, making available a vanilla 4G WiMAX service within the metro area of a city or a dual-mode roaming service leveraging Sprint's 3G EVDO network for the (many, but starting to decrease) areas where 4G isn't available. It is also providing bundled plans that include a combination of cable internet service and 4G roaming.
 
Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt provided few details about pricing or in-service availability and speculation is high on what two of the cities-to-be-named later will be. I'm willing to wager one will be Honolulu, since the city is a Time Warner service area and has been previously cited by Sprint and ClearWire as one of the ten markets to be turned up this year.  Since Comcast and Time Warner are reselling the Clear service under their own brands, it's not a great leap to map cable cities to announced ClearWire service areas.
 
Verizon Wireless isn't standing pat on its 4G plans. The company announced its plans to trial its faster, more powerful, able-to-leap-a-tall-building-in-a-single bound LTE (News - Alert) service in not one, but two cities later this year. Seattle and Boston will get first crack at LTE and Verizon plans a commercial launch of LTE service in up to 30 markets next year. Verizon CFO John Killian said the company's ultimate goal is to cover all over its POPs with LTE by the end of 2013, a whopping 100 million of them around the country.
 
Say what you will about WiMAX, LTE and the proper use of 4G – 2010 is shaping up to be an interesting year for service providers and companies looking for mobile broadband options.

Doug Mohney is a contributing editor for TMCnet and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space. To read more of his articles, please visit columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi


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