Telecom Ramblings

As part of the debut of WiMax in Portland by Clearwire (CLWR: chart, news), the company demonstrated live streaming video over a mobile WiMax connection. And it was apparently on both ends. The video itself came off a commuter train, showing the scenery passing by, meaning that it was uploaded live via WiMax, and then downloaded. The movement of the train was followed on a map next to the video. As demonstrations go, it was pretty cool, even when the video stuttered as the train went through a tunnel.

See for yourself, here’s the YouTube clip:



I have always somewhat doubted that video over WiMax will progress very far. That doubt comes from the simple idea that if too many people use it, there’s not much you can do. After all, one can add new fiber, but adding new spectrum is rather more difficult. And it is rather easy to see that real commercial video bandwidth in an on-demand world would overwhelm the current capabilities of WiMax.

But that’s really not, in my opinion, what WiMax is for. In the long run, I view WiMax and last mile fiber as both competitive and complementary. Where the balance of power lies is a question for the future. For now, let’s just revel in the long awaited arrival of WiMax.