Day 3 keynote:WiMAX requires collective effort: Ailing carrier’s evangelism designed to attract partners

SAN FRANCISCO-Sprint Nextel Corp. understands that its technology choice for a mobile broadband world will require heavy lifting, measured in the billions of dollars, and that attracting others to its vision is crucial.
“It’s not something that one company can build,” said Atish Gude, senior VP for mobile broadband operations at Xohm, the Sprint Nextel business unit that is pursuing the carrier’s plans to build out a WiMAX network, during his third day keynote address at last week’s CTIA I.T. & Entertainment 2007 event in San Francisco. “I’m pleased to see the entire ecosystem coming together.”
Gude said that, in addition to partnerships already announced with computing companies, handset vendors and network providers, the consumer electronics industry will come around to the opportunity.
At CTIA I.T. & Entertainment shows, the third-day keynote address is often a tough sell, with many attendees having left town or sleeping in. Somehow, the context for Gude’s address seemed to conjure the uncertainties over Xohm and Sprint Nextel’s fullbore commitment to it. Gude, however, exhibited nothing but confidence that many smart people at myriad companies are coming together to make it succeed.
“We spend too much time talking about the ‘Gs’-3G, 4G,” Gude said. “And too little time talking about the business model. Knowledge is power and when it’s mobile, that’s game changing. We’re very close to making that a reality.”
Why this time around, for mobile broadband? Gude asked, rhetorically.
The collective effort currently assembling around WiMAX, he said. Ubiquity will help.
“We’re thinking beyond the mobile phone, beyond the PC, to the consumer electronics industry,” said Gude.
WiMAX’s speed, affordability, coverage and the myriad devices it will provide access for will prove superior to Wi-Fi (locating hotspots is unpredictable for consumers, Gude said), fixed broadband’s lack of mobility and the cost and speed of 3G networks, which will serve only as an interim measure to the next-generation world, according to the keynote speaker.
In Gude’s view, the Swiss Army knife-like mobile handsets of today may well give way to dedicated, best-in-class consumer electronic devices, relieving the handset from having to be all things to all people.
The mobile handset’s camera will never replace the standalone digital camera, for instance, he asserted.
By using open standards that will aid in application development, WiMAX will bring widespread adoption of the mobile Internet not just for consumers, but businesses as well.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” Gude said. “The mobile Internet will happen. We’re taking the latency out of life.”