The battle over our always connected future will be decided over the next several years as WiMax and LTE slug it out as the platforms vying for our 4G attention. They each have their arguments against each other why the other won’t succeed, in the end it will be the consumer that decides based on pricing plans, device availability and features/applications delivered by the developer community.
Clearwire has officially announced their Clear WiMax service in Las Vegas today for service that will be available as of August 1st. They are targeting the Vegas region that spans 683 square miles and 1.7 million consumers with dual mode 4G/3G modems. Customers will connect up to Clearwires 4G network and when traveling out of the 4G coverage areas they will connect up to Sprints 3G network. Sprint majority owned Clearwire still has high hopes to reach their target of launching in 80 markets by the end of next year trying to beat LTE providers to the punch as they struggle with similar testing/rollout delays that Clearwire themselves experienced over the last couple of years in their Baltimore and Portland test markets.
Timed with the announcement of the Vegas Clearwire launch Samsung is announcing the release of Mondi, their portable computing device that sports a slide up full Qwerty keyboard and a 4.3 inch touch screen. The initial release of the device will be sporting Windows Mobile and the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser. WinMo is currently in a terrible state as Microsoft focuses on WinMo 7 to be on devices sometime starting next year, rumored Q1 timeframe so this will be a good "experimentation device" for the marketplace to see if business users jump on board.
The WiMax vs. LTE battle is going to be interesting for consumers. It should provide for a nice competitive marketplace where the providers come up with creative packages for their bandwidth and device offerings. I expect to see some plans where the devices are heavily subsidized. Right now Clearwire has the edge with rollout planning/testing schedules and they definitely get the nod for some cool demos of what a Clear connected world will be like at the Cable Show in DC back in April.
Where is my WiMax enabled Palm WebOS based portable tablet device? CES ’10 possibly? A guy can dream can’t he
[...] reported a couple weeks ago about Clearwire and their Wimax launch in the Vegas market. Today they have followed up on that announcement by stating that starting in [...]