Ben Wolff on nationwide WiMax and the killer app

15.12.2008

Google's involvement is intriguing.What's its role going to be? It's across the board. They and we are very aligned philosophically about the ability to deliver true broadband to the palm of your hand so it's available anytime and anywhere -- that's good for their business and good for our business, and good for consumers. Second, their work on the Android platform is really groundbreaking, so we expect to have devices on our network that use Android -- not exclusively, but as an option. In addition, Google is one of the most innovative companies out there today focused on how to bring the Internet to a smaller screen and to make it relevant in a mobile environment, with applications tailored to you as a consumer. We hope to do joint R&D for applications they are creating for the 4G network.

What will be the WiMax killer app? I hope there will be a number of killer apps. But one is live video chat.

Videoconferencing? That's got an enterprise connotation, but what I mean by video chat is where you are able to push a button, transmit and then see each other and talk to each other, real time, across the country. It's possible because WiMax has very low latency. I think the ability to have face-to-face communications -- see body language, all that -- will be a killer app.

Is there a corporate dimension to video chat where the boss talks to a worker or shares, say, training and product information? Yes, you're dead-on with those business applications. Plus, you could multicast to many workers, similar to push-to-talk from Nextel, but with video. Think about doing that nationwide. That has real utility.

So, is WiMax focused on consumers or businesses, or both? It really depends on the device you have. Clearwire before the merger [was] a mass-market broadband provider of mainly fixed WiMax to the home and small office, with nearly half a million subscribers. That's clearly a mass-market, consumer play, not targeted at the tech-savvy early adopter. But USB dongles or laptops with WiMax cards in them can provide real productivity tools for real estate agents or insurance agents or others who spend a vast majority of their time moving around in their local communities carrying laptops. And there are a lot of those people. Students are also a great market for USB WiMax cards or dongles. But the Nokia N810 is more for the early-adopter, tech-savvy type of user. We will target products for different segments of the population.