Day two’s CTIA keynote speakers are as follows: Dan Hesse, CEO Sprint Nextel Corporation, William Morrow, CEO Clearwire Corporation, Réne Obermann, CEO Deutsche Telekom AG, Jon Stanton, Chairman of the Board Trilogy International Partners, and Padmasree Warrior, CTO Cisco. Hit the break for the live updates! More →
Clearwire may be optimistic about the growth of WiMAX in 2010 and beyond but network hardware manufacturers are a bit more bearish on the 4G wireless technology. Last month, Alcatel Lucent announced it will be scaling back on its WiMAX equipment and focusing on LTE; while popular WiMAX chipset maker Beceem introduced a new WiMAX/LTE multi-mode chipset to be used in devices that will support both wireless technologies. The latest company to join this burgeoning WiMAX exodus is Cisco, which announced plans to discontinue the production of new WiMAX base stations and modems. Rather than provide the radios for the wireless 4G technology, Cisco is adopting a radio agnostic strategy and will focus on the IP network and IP equipment that runs behind the base stations and modems. This discontinuation is more symbolic than it is detrimental to Clearwire as most of the Cisco equipment purchased by Clearwire is IP and not radio equipment. Nonetheless, it is yet another indication that, though WiMAX currently has the lead, network hardware manufacturers see a bright future for LTE and are not willing to place all their eggs in the WiMAX basket. That’s certainly understandable. More →
A circulating rumor suggests that Cisco is developing a new technology to give the Internet a major speed boost. Details on this rumored technology are sparse but Cisco claims it will “forever change the Internet” and will “show what’s possible when networking gets an adrenaline boost.” The new technology will target telecommunication service providers and will be marketed as a means of improving the customer’s high speed Internet experience which we hope translates into 100Mbps speeds with no throttling and no bandwidth caps. Cisco’s new technology will be revealed on March 9th, slightly ahead of the March 17th unveiling of the National Broadband Initiative plan, a plan which not so coincidentally will push for minimum Internet data transmission speeds of 100Mbps and will require telcos to pipe this high speed service to 100 million homes in the US within ten years. More →
