An interesting series of interviews with Tom Mitoraj Director of WiMax development at Motorola. The rest of the world seems to be going gangbusters for WiMax. Here in the US its stillborn.

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.

Content compliments of MidWestBusiness.com.

RCR has a note on their website of the current handset providers. Motorola still maintaining a commanding lead. Interesting tidbit –

Bluetooth and music playback are two features becoming rapidly commonplace among feature phones. Of all feature phones, 72% sold include Bluetooth, up 44% year-on-year. Half of all phones sold include music playback, a 100% jump over the year-ago quarter.

I.e., a convergence of functions is occuring. That will continue of course. What shape it will take is anybody’s guess. But in the end the universal communicator-compute device will emerge.

Well we’re going to hedge our bets here. Don’t know what Google is going to say tomorrow but here is a bio piece in the guy heading up the effort. Compliments of the NYT.

Rumor Dept: If it goes down, Google will offer the OS software for free to all takers.

Now think about that for a moment. Nokia, Samsung, Motorola all spend a fair amount of dollars on Software Engineers to write their cores for the phones. Can somebody spell R-I-F-F? The first of these mfrs to adopt the Google core AND foster Open Source codevelopment of some key components will have an economic lead against their rivals.

Oh and here’s your Eggo moment for the carriers. Google gets the majority of the big phone mfrs to adopt the gPhone OS.  The mfrs turn to the carriers and basicly say “2009 we will offer nothing but gPhone OS sets”. The carriers are now between a rock and a hard place because regardless of whether they lock the set or not, tech heads will hack the phone just like they did iPhone.  Only this time it will be so easy as the core will be Open Source.

We live in interesting times!!

Linky.

US wireless technology manufacturer Motorola is donating equipment for its Canopy wireless broadband solution to the city of Garanhuns in Pernambuco state on Brazil’s northeast coast, news service Bureau de Prensa reported.

The Garanhuns digital city project is one of the initiatives of the communications ministry’s digital inclusion program due to be launched on December 20.

The technology, which is based on the WiMax 802.16e standard and operates in the 3.5GHz band, is expected to help improve access to public services in the city. Access will be available from libraries, schools, cultural centers, clinics and the buildings of a range of public entities.

An interesting idea. Sponsor the gear. Then maybe get a service agreement? It will be interesting to see how this plays out for Motorola.

Linky.