Wimax Consortium Coming Very Soon

Sprint's wimax initiatives appeared to falter last year as they faced serious challenges from ATT and Verizon and broke up with Clearwire, but there is a new broadband wind in Sprint's sails and the New York Times is reporting that a major wimax technology consortium will be announced soon - probably tomorrow. The consortium includes Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire.

Two big advantages of wimax broadband is that it can provide extensive rural connectivity where a single tower can provide broadband coverage over an area of many square miles. Also, wimax offers great opportunities for mobile broadband. e.g. Police cruisers throughout a city can all have high speed connectivity at a very modest cost.

If the consortium is successful, look for more communities to adopt this standard and more widespread rural high speed connectivity. Perhaps unfortunately, the more lucrative urban environments already have many broadband choices in the form of DSL, Cable, EVDO, and Satellite. With the heavy capital costs of these deployments there will hopefully be enough profit left in the equation to provide consumers with many low cost choices for their broadband connection.

Google Buying Sprint? Only If Sprint Gets "Real Lucky"

Rumors that Google might buy Sprint appear to be mostly just that - silly rumors to catch a headline in our "rumors first, real news later" tech blogosphere. Not so much that a Google buys Sprint deal would be a bad idea - for Sprint it would be the rescue they can only dream about as shifts in subscribers and the mobile landscape do not appear to favor Sprint right now. As a Sprint customer with 4 phones on the plan you’d think I’d be rooting for them, but my misadventures with bad coverage here in Oregon and back east, the overhyped Treo 650, and a ringtone scam I had to *remind* them remove too often has basically soured this customer.

Google is clearly entering and effectively destabilizing and reinventing the mobile market. Google has already taken a major first step in the direction with the Open Handset Alliance. More about Open Mobile .

It is also true that Google can keep a secret as the recent Myspace “Open Social” partnership made very clear. However I have a strong hunch Google will move towards mobile marketing more indirectly than managing their own mobile network.

Cleverly, Google is poising themselves to be a gateway for most mobile advertising which is where the “extra” cash in the mobile equation is now laying on the table as "all you can eat" data plans dominate and cell phone saturation approaches.

The Open Handset Alliance phones will combine with mobile services and ads to bring a lot more advertising revenue into this market fairly fast, and Google is making sure a Google mobile OS, or something very compatible, is waiting there to scoop up the bucks.

Why buy the mobile cow when you can get all that mobile milk for free?