Brave new world

Welcome to WiMAX World!
It’s impossible to concisely describe an entire new industry, complete with new entrants, new business models and oh yeah, new technologies in a matter of two days, but I’m going to take a stab at it anyway.
The vision of mobile broadband is the Internet, only wireless. Sometimes it’s fixed, sometimes it’s mobile. Sometimes it’s getting easy, quick, cheap access to the same information, sometimes on familiar devices embedded with new chips. And sometimes it is completely new applications, on new devices (think of squeezing a stress ball and have your biometrics automatically forwarded to your healthcare provider.)
“It’s about all the content and documentation of human existence,” said Xohm’s Atish Gude.
Read that again: “all the content and documentation of human existence.” Wow.
The challenges are real. Creating what companies are betting will become a multibillion-dollar industry is rocket science. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are sure to be the celebrities at this week’s show, but WiMAX needs an entire ecosystem to support it. Regulations that are not yet written could derail or, or propel it to earlier adoption by the masses.
The hard work is in the details. But the ability to connect people in new ways-and all of the potential that comes with that-is huge. How often do you as a person get to take part in something with the opportunity to change the world? In wireless, it happens a lot.