
Qualcomm allegedly bribed Apple into not making a WiMAX iPhone - vezycash
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14303910/qualcomm-allegedly-bribed-apple-wimax-iphone-ft-complaint
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simonh
Interesting, but let's not overstate whatever impact this might have had.
WiMAX was pure snake oil. The enormous cells had far too little bandwidth to
support a significant number of subscribers. Also for most of the cell area
the signal was too attenuated to penetrate buildings.

You could roll out a network quickly, but the network would become saturated
just as fast. At the time I worked for MSI, a vendor of cellular radio network
planning systems. We implemented a WiMax planning module but as soon as you
simulated the network with significant subscriber maps, it became pretty clear
it wasn't workable.

So I'm not saying this deal didn't happen, or that Qualcomm aren't culpable,
just that we shouldn't take this to mean that Qualcomm was responsible for
killing WiMAX. It was doomed anyway.

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ArkyBeagle
So was there ever an actual time when 802.16 was considered to be even in the
same game as LTE? The people I know who were messing with it were specialized
in underserved areas, where the cell size was a plus. Mobile was an
afterthought.

Where LTE was the DNA of a handset protocol stack that has been pressed into
service as a MAN, 802.16 was the other way 'round.

And no, I have no idea what Sprint was thinking.

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simonh
>specialized in underserved areas

Arguably WiMAX did useful work in Africa where it's long range was a
particular advantage and it was better able to address the relatively low
subscriber density. It filled a gap before being supplanted by more capable
LTE networks.

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ksec
Even IF Apple did make a WiMax iPhone, it wouldn't have helped WiMax one bit.
The tech wasn't ready for prime time, Intel being too greedy and NO one wants
another x86 monopoly on the Telecoms market. Remember that was before the era
iPhone took off and ARM has won the SoC race. Now all there is for Intel is
X86 on Desktop and Server.

Although in many ways, WiMax do live on as TD-LTE, which is 80% similar to
WiMax.

