I don't know. I'm not a US citizen. I've only been in sicilon valley. If I were to travel to US I'd look for connectivity on a case-by-case scenario.

FWIW, second-hand N810WME on eBay:
140294144659
180318970000
170292985370

They're going for 190-210 USD. Perhaps you rather buy it elsewhere, or new, or with big discount...

Indeed, I have black on white proof that here, 3G mobile telcos have subjected to the licensing of the WiMAX frequencies which has post-poned the auction. The reasons for that are up for interpretation, and YMMV in your region(s).

At an appropriate discount, I would too. It looks better than the non-WiMAX! (But I'm not a big N810 fan at all. The main reason I'm starting to consider an N810 as the price keeps slipping is the hardware keyboard in conjunction with, e.g., Debian.)

As for modding it, that crossed my mind too, but since the devices will apparently be in short supply, it's not real likely.

As I've said many times before, LTE isn't a relevant comparison. Pay attention. GPRS/EDGE/HSPA and 1xRTT/EVDO are the relevant comparisons for the WiMAX decision.

Now who's being myopic? GRPS/EDGE/HPSA was certainly available outside of the EU 18 months ago. For example, in the US. Not sure about Canada or OZ. 1xRTT/EVDO was also available (mostly in Asia and the US, IIRC).

Fine. Calculate the percentage of the world's surface that had deployed and working WiMAX 18/12/6/0 months ago. Now do the same for GPRS/EDGE/HSPA. Weight it by dollars spent on WWAN connectivity for each of those areas (ie. an area that only spends $50 USD per year on WWAN connectivity is only worth 1/10 of an equally sized area that spends $500 USD per year on WWAN connectivity).

Or, since you're such a yankiphobe, instead of USD, convert it all into Euros, and give that answer instead.

Tell me which is the biggest market at each of those time frames: WiMAX or EDGE/HSPA. I'm willing to bet that every one here, except you, already knows the answer without having to compile all of that data.

(and, again, I never said WiMAX was a dead end, I said it was vaporware. The two are entirely different.)

As far as I know, they're not doing dongles, they're doing PCI-Express-Mini Cards for the most part. And Express Cards for the rest.

Again... this isn't about LTE vs WiMAX.

* Your only reference is Clearwire in USA; I provided several references.
* Anything else you sway towards HSPA. You have this obsession that either HSPA or WiMAX is able to live as standard. Newsflash: there are regions without HS*PA. There is a lot of opportunity for competition in WWAN land.
* You neglect any rolled out WiMAX networks not competing with HSPA.
* You neglect any of the HSPA shortcomings I stated twice (you chose to focus attention to the word Existing ).

The more and more I search about it, the more I see networks rolled out. Although indeed not use, they cover specific areas. I see, for example, in Luxembourg WiMAX acompanying the city's WiFi infrastructure which usage is for now free as in beer and from novembre commercial-grade.

Besides Brussels, Clearwire also rolled out WiMAX in the cities Leuven, Gent and Aalst.

Between the Dutch city Eindhoven and Belgian border in the region of the village Knegsel 3 WiMAX antennas are placed providing 25 km WiMAX connectivity. This is a farmer region. These people had dial-up access before. In South Rotterdam near New Meuse (shipyard region) WiMAX is rolled out as well. In Brasil, Intel rolled out WiMAX near the city Parintins which lies in the Amazone. The network gives the civilians of the city access to the internet. Previously, the only way to reach the area physically or digitally was a 27 hour long boat travel. 3 examples of last-mile connectivity. 3 examples where anything you said about HS*PA does not apply.

GPRS/EDGE/1xRTT isn't always usable to with here. According to your logic, by the time UMTS or Fon was rolled out, it was useless. I mean, GPRS was rolled out...

These are far too slow to consider.

Using mobile networking is not something which was very popular 18 months ago either; its just catching on as of now. 2 years ago it wasn't normal yet. IOW the momentum has developed recently.

(And again, WiMAX is more than mobile networking in the UMTS-sense.)

Again you're globalizing. You assume, for example, roaming is easily possible using GPRS/EDGE/HSPA. This is not the case.

I don't care about EUR or USD or GBP, I am against US centric thinking when the subject covers a world wide the world.

To which particular area are you referring to?

Strange how it is rolled out already then. Strange how corporations have bought licenses for it then.

********. 5 seconds Googling shows [1] [2] [3]

Why you mention EV-DO, I don't understand. The list of networks which rolled out EV-DO is pretty small: source. Qualcomm, the main sponsor for EV-DO's hugh-bandwidth succesor UMB stopped investing in it. We don't see such with WiMAX, let alone on a large scale.

And Sprint. And S. Korea's WiBro infrastructure provider(s).

Which is why I said look at both technologies globally, weighted by dollars available in each area. The better marketing decision is clear from that analysis.

SUM of (Dollars available / Sq. km) over the area of GPRS/EDGE/HSPA coverage

vs

SUM of (Dollars available / Sq. km) over the area of WiMAX coverage

For example, I'm willing to bet that even if WiMAX covers the entirety of the Congo, and not just the major cities, that dollars spent on WiMAX consumer devices in the entirety of the Congo is dwarfed by dollars spent on GPRS/EDGE/HSPA in a similar area of the US or EU. I bet that's true today, 6 months ago, 12 months ago, and definitely 18 months ago. So, 18 months ago, where's the smart marketing decision? Taking a risk on a trickle of WiMAX dollars spent in the Congo, or a flood of HSPA dollars spent in a similar area in the USA/EU? Now total up all of the WiMAX areas in the same way, and total up all of the GRPS/EDGE/HSPA areas. I'm willing to bet that comparison holds as you keep expanding the scope, weighted by the money.

Only if you're being myopic. I'm talking about the WiMAX vs HSPA as a global market, 18 months ago and as a reasonable forecast 18 months ago to today. Individual successful WiMAX markets don't matter. Individual HSPA deadzones don't matter. What matters is: which was a more viable/deliverable/marketable product decision 18 months ago.

No, they're not. They're quite usable for hand held devices. Even ones with better-than-WAP browsers. There's this thing called "the 2G iPhone". Maybe you've heard of it. You should look into it.

Yes, it was. Again, you should look into this thing called the iPhone. It was out 18 months ago. It was popular 18 months ago. It wasn't the first mobile networking experience on the planet, either. Oh, and, at the time, it was 2G, not 3G.

Which is it: do you want me to look globally/world-wide ... or not? Don't complain that I'm looking globally in one paragraph, and then complain about lack of world-wide focus just a few lines later. Make up your mind which one you want.

World wide.

18 months ago? 12 months ago?

Wow. Way to shift goal posts. You said the number of netbooks that are coming with 3G dongles. I have yet to see a netbook whose included 3G coverage was via a 3G dongle (thus "they're not doing dongles (for their 3G coverage)", where "they" is "netbooks including 3G coverage"). All of the ones I've seen are via PCI-Express-Mini Cards, and a few MIDs are going with Express Cards.

And you back up your support that netbooks are coming with 3G UMTS dongles by showing me 3 links to WiMAX dongles? Interesting logic.

Because it's an available/usable/profitable option, and has been for the entirety of the last 18 months. Even just selling a CDMA based (1xRTT and EVDO) tablet in the Asian markets alone (not even considerig the US CDMA market) would probably be a decent marketing decision.

Both combatants to your corners until the next round!

Quite possibly the most information I've had to digest while here at ITT.

It's actually conversations like this that give me hope for WiMAX in the US. Having met WiMAX engineers in Europe and Asia, smaller nations such as India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, have been making far greater strides in WiMAX deployment than the US has. This is for two reasons, smaller geographic area and differing economic conditions allowing a more rapid deployment.

The sheer size of the US is prohibitive in deploying any network regardless of technology. Urban areas will almost always see deployments before rural areas do. Having multiple carriers with the same tech will also speed deployment than one single carrier. Up until recently, XOHM has been going it alone. Sprint/Clearwire changes things (albeit, arguably "slightly")

I'm still weighing in with allnameswereout on this discussion. The US is not indicative of WiMAX's success worldwide. There is room enough for both LTE and WiMAX in the US.

This is an interesting debate, but I suspect the outcome is largely dependent on economics. Unlike LTE, WiMax is fulled spec'd. 2009 was supposed to be the year for it to catch up, but it seems the buildout is being held back by the economic situation. Where the economy goes, I don't have a good idea.

In the US, there is one important distinction in that LTE is really an evolution of the existing cellular industry, and all of the carrier-centric paradigms that come with it. However in Wimax via Clearwire, there is a different business model, with more input from the device and HW side, and from services, and also CATV companies who aspire to resell and bundle Wimax. Stop thinking of Xohm and Sprint. Although Sprint has a huge equity investment in Clearwire, it tends to make people think of cellular when it's not. It's not so much competing wireless technologies, as it is competing business models. Read the Clearwire reports if you can.

There is another underlying business challenge when one looks at the fledgling US WiMAX vs. LTE scene. I know from some folks who were consulting to Sprint on the XOHM development process that there have been lively internal discussions about whether the best course was to provide a dramatically-fast network, without trying to "own the app." Frankly, the fact that ANYONE currently operating a "walled garden" wireless data service in the U.S. would even have the conversation is a good sign.

The incumbent network providers seem to have missed the lesson of the early Internet (I was at one of the earliest and largest ISPs and saw it first hand), namely that markets can and do develop even when one doesn't necessarily control every layer and service with an iron fist. There is a compelling business argument that one can't achieve competitive ARPU numbers without application offerings, but there is precedent that it's not the only way to build a network.

If the new Clearwire can see its way to give an open ecosystem a shot, depending on how well they manage their capital expenditures over time, I don't see any reason that it couldn't fly.