Why is the rest of the world outpacing US Wimax growth?

Our regular readers are aware of the fact that Wimax is red hot, almost everywhere except in North America. Why is Wimax so popular? It is an inherently open networking technology that can delivery a  variety of services, rather than a technology dedicated to one or two services. Only troubled Sprint and and former partner Clearwire are attempting to build a significant presence in the US. Part of the problem may be lack of spectrum. The spectrum Sprint is using is a block allocated to education that was never used, and the company has been privately acquiring rights to it in a piecemeal fashion. American spectrum is is public property as defined by law. Our governments’ FCC, however,  is quite happy to perpetuate the myth that when the temporary right to use of a block of spectrum is “sold”, it becomes the permanent property of the property of the entity it is “sold” to or allocated to.

In an interview with Midwest Business, Motorola’s Tim Mitoraj made a few telling comments:

The activity is where the spectrum is and that’s almost everywhere. The countries that have the most demanding implementation requirements are moving the fastest. In Chile, the carriers that got the spectrum license had to implement in one year or they would pay a penalty. They had to move fast.

In other countries, it’s more driven by economics. It’s based on the regulatory framework, degree of competition and other local factors. It depends on when the carriers are going public because they would like to get as far as they could without alerting their competition to what they’re doing.

I’m beginning to feel that the FCC does not care about allowing the use of more spectrum for Wimax services because AT&T and Verizon don’t want it here. Aggressive implementation of US Wimax would require the wireless cartel to invest heavily in new infrastructure to compete. It could also be very disruptive to the duopoly’s under served fixed line customers who continue to wait to have any broadband service. It’s time to review how we license spectrum and to be more proactive in it’s allocation. That means some big players may have to lose rights to some spectrum they have not productively utilized.