Vodafone hedges bets with WiMAX Forum membership
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Vodafone has signed up to principal membership of the WiMAX Forum, the organisation dedicated to the promotion of WiMAX interoperability and adoption, though it's not giving up on 3G any time soon.
WiMAX is a long-range wireless standard designed to operate in licensed frequencies - initially for fixed connections, but evolving towards mobility and eventually competing with 3G and other telephony standards.
The standard is often compared to Wi-Fi, though the comparison is unfair as WiMAX isn't based on a 20-year-old wired standard but was designed for wireless use (at least, the bits not borrowed from DOCSIS were). WiMAX offers greater speed and range than Wi-Fi, but most importantly it offers quality of service guarantees that make VoIP and streaming applications easier to manage.
"Our membership of the WiMAX Forum will complement our existing memberships of other key industry bodies such as the GSMA, 3GPP, and the Next Generation Mobile Network initiative," Vodafone global chief technology officer Steve Pusey said.
WiMAX has been heavily pushed by Intel, which intends to build it into laptop chipsets, encouraging rapid adoption of a technology in which it owns key intellectual property. ®
COMMENTS
Intel's motives
"in which it owns key intellectual property."
Is the IP the chips or the underlying methods? One means they profit from the standard's broader use (the more people that buy the chipsets, the better). The other means they profit from everyone who implements the standard. But at least they would be upfront on this, as opposed to certain others who hid these facts until after the standard was adopted. And were then clubbed down because of this ethically challenged approach. Not naming names, but they used to make QUALity COMMunications products.
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