Why There Will Be No Single Wireless Broadband Technology

One of the great frustrations for many of us is having a wireless device but, in a given location and at a given moment in time, no connectivity - especially while others around you are merrily e-mailing away. Why can't we have just one big wireless network, you lament, based on one Great and Powerful wireless technology? Do we really need UMTS, CDMA2000, and WiMAX, diluting investment and coverage? Well, the challenge with having a single Great and Powerful wireless technology has its roots in the formerly powerful, if not so great, Soviet Union, and that is my topic for today. Wireless and communism - together at last.

I recently chaired a session at the first ever Mobile Internet World conference, for which I also served as a member of the Advisory Board. My session, Competing and Complementary Mobile Broadband Technologies, included speakers from the worlds of WiMAX, UMTS, and CDMA, and I structured it as a bit of a debate with the core question being which technology, if any, would win. Of course, wireless technology continues down the evolutionary path at a breakneck pace, so such a question is academic at best, but fun to debate regardless. To cut to the chase, the result of voting among the panelists in the end was WiMAX 1, HSPA 3, and one abstention, oddly from one of the WiMAX proponents.

But the most important point noted by the panelists is that competition is essential to the evolution of wireless (and presumably any) technologies, which is why a soviet-style centrally-planned, command-and-control, one-size-fits-all approach to dictating a single Great and Powerful wireless technology will never work and thus will never be the case. In short, we need technological and market competition among smart and well-funded players in or to continue the current high rate of innovation. Specific carrier and equipment-vendor goals and objectives also play a role here, with some vendors and carriers placing big bets on the ROI from specific technology strategies. So, even though the end-user experience is quite similar among the competitors, with the previously-noted exceptions in coverage (and, of course, price), we can expect that there will be no single technology anytime soon.

But as the results of the voting noted above show, HSPA is clearly in the lead, due to the pervasiveness of UMTS as the 3G upgrade path from GSM. And yet HSPA is likely going to be replaced over the long term by one or more of LTE, UMB, and maybe even an evolution of WiMAX - or perhaps even something else altogether. The technology and consequential market dynamics noted above are unlikely to change. Communism and the Soviet Union, similarly, are unlikely to reappear. It's far from perfect, but the market, at least in this case, really works.