WiMAX World: Seeing the light

CHICAGO – “We live in a visual world.” The comment, from Dan Moloney at Motorola, quickly summarizes how WiMAX services can change the world. He backed it up with a bunch of stats from a Moto survey of millennials (young people between the ages of 16 and 27 who influence 83% of today’s purchases by adults and who are tomorrow’s customers too.) No surprises here: they want what they want when they want it and they want to take it with them when they go.
And they want video – high-definition video.
A theme across many of yesterday’s opening keynote sessions was the role that content would play in tomorrow’s wireless world. Yes, people will continue to communicate, but we are also people who consume content. And content consumers are no longer content to sit on the couch to view our content passively (although fixed nomadic solutions likely have a robust future ahead too). Wireless content experiences will be interactive.
All the talk about accessing the Internet wirelessly is really just the starting point. Cable operators have to get in on tomorrow’s content play because their customers are going to want to be able to move their content wirelessly. The partnership between the new Clearwire and the cable companies is going to be fascinating to watch as they navigate how best to deliver content in a variety of ways to a variety of customers who want a variety of things.
Yankee Group conference chair Berge Ayvazian emphasized the link between cable operators and WiMAX operators a number of times. Cable companies are rich with content, but trapped in the house.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was crafted to enable cable companies, wireline carriers and wireless service providers to better compete in each others’ businesses. It fell short, spurring massive consolidation within each industry segment. Today, WiMAX technology could achieve what the law could never do.