WiMax Mobile
The emerging mobile form of WiMax (or its kissing cousin WiBro, from Korea) promises to turn today’s telecom game board upside down.
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“The 2.3 GHz band, also called the Wireless Communications Service (WCS), was created in 1997 by the FCC to provide licensees of spectrum in the 2305-2320 and 2345-2360 MHz bands with broad flexibility. XM satellite radio uses terrestrial repeaters in their same assigned (DARS) “S” band (2320-2345 MHz).
“Now XM is buying up the 2.3 GHz spectrum. No word (yet) on any Imperial encounters with Sky Dayton and SK-EarthLink. But the spectrum is there. SK-EarthLink probably wants it. They’ve got Cellular/WiMax handsets ready to roll.
“The PanAmSat/JSAT partnership on Horizons-1 will provide support for mobile video, HDTV and IP-based content distribution. Horizons-2 will be launched in 2007 at 74 degrees West. There you go.
“But will SK-EarthLink and XM Satellite radio get together to provide WiBro at 2.3 GHz — and provide real competition to Sprint and Clearwire. Who knows? It’s just speculation.
“It was once so simple — the big three mobile television networks in the United States were going to be Crown Castle’s nationwide DVB-H service, in the L band (1670 MHz to 1675 MHz), Qualcomm’s MediaFLO, with 6 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band across the United States, and Aloha Partners, which may go head-to-head with Qualcomm on the 700 MHz band, and will do so with twice the spectrum. Now Korea and Japan could be moving in with Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB).
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“The advertising potential of this platform could be the most intriguing.
“Google knows advertising. So do Yahoo and Microsoft. But mass media wants to be free, like radio and television. With location-based advertising, a new economic model could be developing.
[via Daily Wireless]