3GPP | IMHO Carl Ford

Moderating conferences for the last decade has been a wonderful experience and I have grown in the process.

Last night we announced a 4G event that is being organized with TMC. The team at TMC has been wonderful and I am looking forward to working with them.

Looking at the infrastructure they have put in as an organization they have a great many abilities that were left undone in my previous experience.

The most fascinating thing to me is there ability to embrace the industry and help deliver the message. The editorial staff is dedicated and they are very good at gathering all the data.

So where do we fit in? Crossfire Consulting is a trusted name in the IT industry that often develops and delivers projects that are either critical to our customers or are adopting new concepts that need to be proven. We worked with telcos on their Internet strategies and did technical due diligence on many acquistions. Crossfire Consulting success has helped in other industries as well.

So we are in a position with TMC to not only deliver the news, but put together the appropriate people in the industry.

In my favorite book, “Fifth Business” the character in opera is explained as neither protagonist nor antagonist, but the keeper of the secrets. While publicly moderating I have been very good, (though it would be hard for you to know) in keeping company council and progressing the story.

Crossfire Media is dedicated to progressing the story of what happens next for telcos and the wireless Internet. That is the story behind the 4GWE conference and it’s the story we will follow on the portal.

As 3GPP progresses there are several issues that make Long Term Evolution uncertain. Remember the Internet was built to overcome any one network’s weakness and we are seeing these same concerns expand the applications providers network. So high speed services are going to be a continuously evolving mixture of applications being implemented in new ways, consumers adopting them virally and access providers (telcos) trying to profitably connect them.

I am waiting for the plane to take me to WiMAX world in Chicago.

As you know I am looking to create a 4G conference and the big question is does WiMAX represent an alternate part of 4G. If you read pay attention to the ITU, the answer is yes. 3GPP and TIA organizations both aimed at making WiMAX part of the 4G discussion.

But when ATT and Verizon decided on LTE for their new spectrum it begged the question why?

The logical answer is that they wanted to service their existing customer base with the new spectrum. Thats part of the answer but the more direct answer is an assumption as to what the device of the future. If you think the device is an iPhone, the control of battery makes Single Carrier strategies inherent in LTE is the deciding factor.

But phones are not the usual device of computing and the need for nomadic computing power and battery is not necessarily the problem.

But if WiMAX does not support the computing applications better than LTE for nomadic computing, then its going to be strictly a backhaul solution.

So in the 4G Wireless Evolution WiMAX will be marginalized.

Tag Archives: 3GPP

4G Wireless Evolution.

Where in the World is WiMAX?