What does WiMAX really change?

The overall WiMAX picture is about providing a foundation for next generation devices to innovate. That's not BS and I'm not a CEO, so forgive that it sounds kind of mission-statementy and let's dig in:

Devices are getting bigger and faster at every announcement. Today a college graduate can put into an Altoids tin a device that is faster and more powerful in every dimension than the desktop computer they started high school with. A similar thing has happened with mobile data networks -- the phone I purchased eight years ago could not send text messages, and the only "browser" type functionality it had was a very crippled WAP implementation. The back end was overwhelmingly voice oriented. WiMAX is about bridging the gap from IP on your phone as a novelty to IP as an expectation -- IP as the default, and possibly only protocol for communication.

WiMAX itself isn't some kind of miracle protocol. It has some very desirable attributes, and was subject to a large amount of review by companies, from carriers to silicon vendors. People that say that WiMAX itself is going to revolutionize anything are dreaming, just as naysayers are missing the bigger picture.

The bigger picture, here, is that new radio links are capable of consuming enough bandwidth that carriers need to rethink their backhaul, or site to main internet connection, infrastructure. One of the reasons, to date, that the incumbent carriers have treated data so gingerly is because their towers are frequently served by a small number of T1s, each 1.5 megabit. If you have 4 T1s to a site, you only have 6mbit total, which of course could be consumed by a single aggressive user, even with existing 3G technology.

The backhaul requirements of WiMAX (and LTE) are going to require intense effort invested by the carriers. The carrier(s) that do the best job on this aspect of the network are going to be in a position to offer the most flexible data plans, which may drive a lot of customer adoption (innovative platforms that can't work anywhere else). Carriers that punt on this are going to need to traffic shape to keep the network under control, and this will limit what they can offer their customers and at what price.

Disclosure: I have skin in this game.

This is huge win for any company making a product that needs the network but doesn't want to be tied to an existing broadband deployment. The cost of embedding a WiMAX chip is far cheaper than embedding a 3G chip, so a whole new array of devices will now be able to communicate with your network or web site whereas before it was too expensive.

Some of the examples in the article (parking meters, home energy meters, etc) were interesting, but there are exciting consumer facing applications for this.

I always thought the main thrust of WiMAX was to allow high-speed connections to rural areas because of low infrastructure costs. I guess I was wrong. Seems like rural areas are being ignored altogether.

I'm in Baltimore... is there anything neat I can do with WiMax? I don't see why I care about this, and certainly not why I should pay for it.