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Enterprise users will drive WiMAX' first phase
Published: 13 October, 2008
Tags >> WiMAX
Much of the excitement surrounding WiMAX in developed economies has focused on advanced consumer applications, but the early adopters are likely to be mainly driven by business usage. Embedded or dongle-based laptop access is set to be the primary early driver of WiMAX and LTE use, and these type of devices are central to enterprises and their business travellers.
Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff said in a recent interview: "Enterprise users right now are the biggest users of today's 3G data cards. Now if you as an enterprise user think about being able to get an office-like bandwidth experience for teleworkers and for workers on the go, you can imagine that the level of productivity will go up dramatically. Think about the tremendous amount of use that mobile WiMAX connectivity will be to enterprise customers even before you start talking about applications that are geared specifically toward enterprise customers."
In terms of added value apps for corporate users, Wolff expects video to be important, just as in the consumer world. He expects to see rapid development of 'push to see' techniques, enabling users to click a button and immediately join or set up a video conference. He also sees fixed/mobile convergence and unified messaging, using VoIP, as important to enterprise WiMAX use, although in the first year Clearwire will not be focusing on voice.
