WiMax Price Per Bit. WiMax initiatives will disrupt the entire carrier ecosystem, including infrastructure and access device makers, phone vendors, and even chip makers. There have been some very significant changes. The WiMax price per bit of traffic has to come down.

Phone Companies
WiMAX overlaps cellular technology significantly, and every cellular operator will have to consider WiMax, says ABI Research in a report released today. Carrier WiMax initiatives will disrupt the entire carrier ecosystem, including infrastructure and access device makers, phone vendors, and even chip makers, the ABI report suggests.

According to ABI, Ireland's O2 recently trialed WiMax as a way to deliver broadband services to households and small businesses over a broad area. Sprint and Motorola, meanwhile, will collaborate in 2005 and 2006 on tests of WiMAX for "future interactive multimedia services," ABI says.

Other carriers are likely to test WiMax as well, according to ABI Principal Analyst Alan Varghese. "It may be true that the first step was easier for Sprint because they have plentiful 2.5GHz spectrum. And for O2, WiMax was a natural extension of the WLAN hotspots they have deployed across Ireland. But every cellular operator is going to have to consider WiMax price per bit in their strategic planning."

Analyst cites five reasons why he expects carriers to take an interest in WiMAX:
Cellular network congestion due to high speed data.
Multimedia take-rates.
Spectral efficiencies and WiMax price per bit of transmission.
Operator frequency spectrum strategy.
The vision of delivering personal broadband.

Voice on Internet
WiMax is designed for data only, instead of voice and data, but this is becoming less relevant now that operators and telecoms makers are keen to move voice calls completely onto the Internet, using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, in an attempt to simplify to one IP network and dramatically cut costs.

The WiMax price per bit of traffic has to come down. There ahve been some very significant changes.