Historically data vendors, like Cisco, have got an entry in telecom space mainly due to IP Telephony. IP Telephony did wonders and bad things concurrently for vendors in the communications space – be it a data vendor, voice vendor, video vendor, wireless vendor or wireline vendor. IP brought them all on the same table.

By now everybody agrees that mobility is the future in communications. So all the futuristic solutions will have mobility component. Somehow, vendors are trying to have more of speed to have rich content applications over the wireless networks. For an end-user it will be immaterial how it gets it. They should be able to use these applications over their wireless devices.

Right now we are at a cross road. Whether to go with LTE or WiMAX? I say both will co-exist. The selection of the option will be determined by who is selecting. If it is a cellular operator, definitely they will go for LTE or at least advocate for it. On the other hand, if it is a data operator like as ISP, it will prefer WiMAX. After all, both want a wireless alternative that kind of extends their present learning curves.

Clearwire, the largest WiFi access point network owner in the world, recently set up a WiMAX innovation network at Silicon Valley to help developers build applications in real time over the network. There are three major communications companies that have supported the network – Cisco, Google and Intel. Of these Intel has been since banking upon WiMAX and developed a chip for it. Google is perhaps looking at WiMAX to develop its own broadband network to bypass the intermediaries. Equally this is attracting Cisco. Cisco has not a presence a mobile market. It has little or no solutions for GSM or other mobile networks. But it also wants to have its presence in the mobile market at wide area level. At homes, it already dominates the WiFi market with gateways and routers and modems. To expand this presence in a broader perspective, WiMAX suits it very well. In fact some of the experts in the industry believe WiFi-WiMAX convergence would be the final answer – with WiFi taking care under the roof and WiMAX being the channel outside. In that scenario, Cisco will be able to deliver end to end and supporting this initiative from Clearwire is definitely a step in this direction.

It will be interesting to see, whether WiMAX dominates or the LTE. I will not say who will win. Both will coexist. But we need to check whether mobility will have the lead or enabling data. For sure, we will see other traditionally data vendors polarising towards the WiMAX and it should be like that. Makes sense!