WiMax coming to iPhone 4th generation?

[starsfan91]

What are the chances that if Apple drops AT&T exclusivity they will add a ClearWire WiMax chipset so iPhone users can use their mobile Internet instead of the cellular company? I believe it will be 100 times more reliable than AT&T or Verizon. I know WiMax isn't mainstream yet, but it is available in a lot of places now and they are rolling it out to new cities every month. It might be a long shot, because then there would be no need for a data plan with AT&T or Verizon or whoever carries the iPhone because they would want users to use their mobile broadband. But maybe ClearWire can team up with cellular companies to provide the best 4G mobile broadband experience possible.

Who knows? We can dream for great service can't we?

 

[Harman M]

That would be a dumb idea on their part. They don't want to make it easy for you to tether due to their ****** networks.

 

[rjohnstone]

WiMax is Sprint's 4G solution.
WiMax has poor building penetration (operates in the 2.5 Ghz spectrum) and is currently limited to 6 Mbps.
I doubt Apple will even give WiMax a first look.

LTE is the future.

 

[nateo200]

WiMax is Sprint's 4G solution.
WiMax has poor building penetration (operates in the 2.5 Ghz spectrum) and is currently limited to 6 Mbps.
I doubt Apple will even give WiMax a first look.

LTE is the future.

It's not limited to 6Mbs forever you know. 802.11b used to be only 11mbs but look where we are at 300+ today....also wimax has no set frequencie. I've seen it in 2500, 3500, 4900mhz, not very ideal for going through buildings but I'm sure there's some room on the lower bands for wimax (well...) Wimax on 2100mhz in the US would be awesome, a little better than 2500. I think However wimax is heading for use in communitys where Internet access is difficult to get not mobile devices but I think it would be great.

 

[rjohnstone]

It's not limited to 6Mbs forever you know. 802.11b used to be only 11mbs but look where we are at 300+ today....also wimax has no set frequencie. I've seen it in 2500, 3500, 4900mhz, not very ideal for going through buildings but I'm sure there's some room on the lower bands for wimax (well...) Wimax on 2100mhz in the US would be awesome, a little better than 2500. I think However wimax is heading for use in communitys where Internet access is difficult to get not mobile devices but I think it would be great.

In the US, WiMax is locked to the 2.5 Ghz spectrum. Everything else is pretty much gone unless you go above 5Ghz.

As for the 6 Mbps limit, that is where it sits right now as an effective maximum.
From the research I've done on the WiMax forums, there are still some tech issue to overcome.
One of the major ones is coverage/range, you have to sacrifice bit rate if you want to have good coverage from a site.
It has a max range of 50 km, but is typically installed with only a 5 km coverage area per site.
It has a theoretical limit of 1Gbps, but has never achieved more than 40Mbits, and that was only in a test lab.

The average user will most likely only get 2 to 3 Mbps in real world scenarios.

And 802.11b is still capped at 11 Mbit/s.
You're thinking of 802.11g (54 Mbit/s) and 802.11n (600 Mbit/s)

 

[greygray]

What are the chances that if Apple drops AT&T exclusivity they will add a ClearWire WiMax chipset so iPhone users can use their mobile Internet instead of the cellular company?

*SNIP*

Who knows? We can dream for great service can't we?

Yes. But I wish this would be true but I don't think we'll see it happening anytime soon.

 

[nateo200]

In the US, WiMax is locked to the 2.5 Ghz spectrum. Everything else is pretty much gone unless you go above 5Ghz.

As for the 6 Mbps limit, that is where it sits right now as an effective maximum.
From the research I've done on the WiMax forums, there are still some tech issue to overcome.
One of the major ones is coverage/range, you have to sacrifice bit rate if you want to have good coverage from a site.
It has a max range of 50 km, but is typically installed with only a 5 km coverage area per site.
It has a theoretical limit of 1Gbps, but has never achieved more than 40Mbits, and that was only in a test lab.

The average user will most likely only get 2 to 3 Mbps in real world scenarios.

And 802.11b is still capped at 11 Mbit/s.
You're thinking of 802.11g (54 Mbit/s) and 802.11n (600 Mbit/s)

I worded the thing about 802.11b wrong I meant the standard was improved and so can wimax. I'm sure they can do SOMETHING to the air interface, or packet service something to get more bits out of it. Also I could I sworn there was some spectrum in the 3500-3650Mhz range being dedicated ti Wimax in the USA...we also have the 900Mhz range but idk how well that would go with older cordless phones and other crap. 2500Mhz isn't all that bad though, there's plenty of wide area networks in the 2400 range using wifi that aren't sufforing too much, if it gets bad just use the crude technique of cranking up the watts.

 

[Carl G35c]

WiMax won't happen, theres only a few carriers that will utilize it.

However LTE is going to be the new "standard" in 4G so Apple will definitely launch one that.

 

[jbs3229]

In my opinion, iPhone has a very good chance of happening on Clear/Sprint WiMax/CDMA network as this article from TheStreet.com talks about: http://www.thestreet.com/story/10621778/1/apple-should-turn-to-sprintclearwire.html

Rumors have it that Samsung and HTC will have WiMax(4G)/CDMA(3G) dual mode phones running android OS on Clear/Sprint network sometime during summer of 2010. As article discusses, Verizon will not have LTE/CDMA phone capabilities until at best mid 2011 and more realistically early to mid 2012. LTE is about 1.5 to 2 years behind WiMax and Apple/iPhone will not take a chance of losing market share to android phones running on Clear/Sprint network.

Check out this YouTube video that shows how much faster Clear's 4G network is over AT&T's 3G network running iPhone apps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqdK84XU1aw

AT&T is still trying to build out it's 3G network (as seen in VZ commercials) and Clear will be close to catching up in building out their 4G network as it is projected to cover over 120M people by the end of 2010.

Based on Verizon's new push with android and mocking Apple/iPhone with iDon't commercials, I do not believe Apple/iPhone will be going to Verizon anytime soon.

So Clear/Sprint is sitting in a very good position "IF" AT&T and Apple eliminate their exclusivity agreement on the iPhone.