Here is a small clip from the Mobile Monday Event in the Samsung Center that we streamed from our pda using quik. Ari Zoldan spoke on an expert panel along with Robert Samuels of the New York Times and Carl Taylor of Hutchison Whampoa Europe. During the discussion, Ari explained how one can create a personal WiFi hotspot with one of the many cutting edge Cradlepoint routers. You can use these routers with a USB or PCMCI data card or throught a usb connection to your data phone or PDA. Furthermore, many of these routers will soon have Wimax or 4G capabilities. Check out the Cradlepoint Routers on http://www.quantum-wireless.com and http://www.Wimax.net

Mobile Monday New York presents Broadband everywhere, the mobile opportunity. Monday, 22 Sept 2008 at the Samsung Experience Center, 10 Columbus Circle, NYC

The current rollout of HSPA [High Speed Packet Access] is creating new business opportunities that exploit mobile broadband. The huge sales of USB modems reveal an emerging market that is different from pocket broadband on handsets. Mobile broadband is competing with WiFi due to always-connected mobility, ease of access and flat rate data plans. Carriers are developing HSPA and WiMax capabilities, deploying femtocells and partnering to provide xDSL connection to their core networks.

In Europe, the market has already transitioned from one dominated by visionary mobile broadband customers, to a mainstream market dominated by pragmatic customers. In the US, more people are using Web-friendly handsets and consuming more Web content overall, particularly content that lies outside carriers’ portals.

Meanwhile industry bodies - in conjunction with a raft of PC OEMs – are creating a new Mobile Broadband logo and branding campaign for wireless broadband in laptops, aiming to educate the public about ‘broadband inside’.

MoMo New York presents a discussion on the impacts of mobile broadband on carriers, content providers, laptop manufacturers and infrastructure vendors. We are happy to announce the following distinguished speakers:

Moderator:

• Lubna Dajani, Stratemerge

Panelists:

• Carl Taylor, Director of Applications & Services, Hutchison Whampoa Europe
• Ari Zoldan, CEO, Quantum Networks, LLC
• Robert Samuels, Director, Mobile Products, The New York Times

If Amsterdam is any indication, mobile WiMAX is already starting to overtake widespread WiFi in large metropolitan centers. Today Worldmax, a privately held Dutch firm, with Alcatel-Lucent, has activated a WiMAX network that covers the hub of the city, providing high-speed broadband to subscribers far beyond the limited berth of WiFi hotspots (Reuters).

This network, termed Aurea, is only a shadow of the scale of deployment the company wishes to have in place within the next few years–by the end of the summer, the entire city; by the a few years’ end, the entire country. The new network boasts activation within 2 working days, and a monthly subscription fee, entailing access to unlimited wireless data, of 20 euros a month. Currently, it needs a WiMAX PC card and USB adapter, but as soon as Intel (a large investor in Worldmax) produces its WiMAX-compatible notebook chips, users will have all the technology they need, right out of the box (Edubourse). Quite the efficient relationship!

Worldmax, Alcatel-Lucent, and Intel intends to showcase their new system with live feeds from taxis and cruise ships at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress, which, in fact, just started today. Whether their network lives up to expectation remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: Worldmax definitely knows how to kick off an event.

In spite of the failed partnership with Clearwire and their current financial strain, Sprint expects to launch Xohm as planned. We could be experiencing a wireless broadband network from Sprint in several major cities, such as Chicago and Washington DC, as early as spring of this year.

According to the LA Times, Sprint’s Chief Executive Dan Hesse is convinced that WiMAX is the way to go even though Sprint’s bigger competitors Verizon and AT&T have disregarded WIMAX in favor of another 4G network known as LTE (Long Term Evolution). LTE is a project in the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) and is an easier progression from our current wireless networks. While some are concerned that the industry’s two largest carriers are not backing WiMAX, Google, Comcast, and Time Warner are rumored to be jumping on the WiMAX bandwagon. Not to mention, WiMAX was the big buzz word at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas. On Tuesday, Nokia presented its most updated version of N180 Internet Tablet, a WiMAX device projected to run on Sprint’s Xohm network. Motorola displayed a WiMAX enabled car with music, video, and data mapping streaming wirelessly from temporary WiMAX towers placed in the city. All of the hype and optimism surrounding WiMAX is great news for Sprint but may be bad news for Sirius and XM satellite radio.

Sirius and XM have just received the long awaited approval from the Department of Justice for the Sirius XM merger that was first announced back in February of 2007. The merger would double their customer base making it much easier to cover fixed costs. Sirius and XM are also hoping that the merger will help ease the highly competitive environment so acquisition and marketing spending can be lowered. However, with the development of WiMAX, Sirius and XM will face competition from Internet radio which could be streamed wirelessly into cars or mobile phones. Sirius and XM have more than just the pending approval from the FCC to worry about.

While WiMAX tends to have a futuristic image, the Convergence India exhibition in Delhi proved that WiMAX and 3G mobile phone services may be affordable to the lay user sooner than predicted.

Crowds gathered at the Alcatel-Lucent stand to experience the zippy speeds of WiMAX — allowing them to stream smooth video footage, browse the Internet, carry on a video phone conversation with someone on another continent — all at the same time, around five million bits per second.
Making it happen was a matchbox-sized plug-in card that fitted into what is called the PCMCIA slot of a laptop computer.
It was visible proof that superior WiMAX speeds could be experienced today on any laptop with hardware not much different from the wireless data cards now offered by all leading Indian mobile providers. The Hindu, Anand Parthasarathy

The speed of WiMAX that allows for such multitasking is a huge attraction especially in our fast paced environment. Yet, despite the optimistic news in Delhi for WiMAX believers, doubts have been made clear by Garth Freeman, CEO of Hervey Bay’s Buzz Broadband and Australia’s first WiMAX operator. In fact, Freeman has concluded that WiMAX technology is a “miserable failure.” According to Freeman, while the main selling point of WiMAX technology to entice people to switch has been the Internet applications, the non line of sight performance was so poor that such applications including VoIP would not work.

As WiMAX technology continues to be experimented with and tested in real world applications, we will see whether or not it pays to be a believer.

InformationWeek reports that Intel, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Network demonstrated an early version of a Wi-Fi/WiMAX network solution at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The technology is designed to allow mobile devices to seamlessly move from a Wi-Fi connection to a WiMAX connection with no disruption in internet access.  It works by responding to several different triggers; for example, a weakening Wi-Fi signal. Before the Wi-Fi signal is entirely lost, one is able to simultaneously connect to a WiMAX signal, leaving any online work unaffected by the switchover.

The article goes on to state the value of such a development:

Such anywhere, anytime connectivity is pivotal to mainstream adoption of future Internet-enabled devices, capable of accessing multimedia and other services over the Web. Intel and other companies are investing billions in the technology needed to build and support such devices, which are the future of mobile computing, proponents say.

Technologies like this are pivotal in terms of dual access, especially in moving some out of the familiarity of Wi-Fi into the still-somewhat-unfamiliar realm of WiMAX connectivity. But perhaps most valuable is the seamless quality of what Intel and Nokia are developing and what that will mean for mobile access.

Want to talk WiMAX? For those in the New York City area, this is definitely something worth checking out. The New York Media Information Exchange Group (NY:MIEG) is having a breakfast panel discussion on WiMAX and related technologies. Here are the details:

Thursday, January 17th
7:30am to 10:00am

SobelMedia World Headquarters
4 West 43rd Street/Main Ballroom
New York, NY 10036

“Wireless, WiMAX & Mobile 2008 and Beyond: The Future of Communications”

Panelists include: Eric Bader, Laura Forlano, Dana Spiegel, Sree Sreenivasan and myself.

• To register for the event click here.