I've been in Boston this week visiting the WiMAX World conference.

This is supposed to be the biggest such event in the world currently and Boston's World Trade Center was a good location for it - also size-wise not too big. Watching the scene and talking to many on the exhibition floor, I somehow had my own thoughts on the current state of (not WiMAX) the wireless 3G market and its proponents. The joke of the event was without a doubt a Siemens VP reminding the audience of the fact that UMTS has millions of users already and therefore WiMAX would have to arrange itself and co-exist with it. Now let's look at some facts that this gentlemen leaves open in his PR talks either through not knowing better or through fear of losing his job:

• UMTS is one of the most complex communication technologies I could think of. Based on ATM and a super complex signaling architecture it cost the big vendors hundreds of millions to develop and roll out the technology. Joke number one of course is the fact that Siemens e.g. has not even managed to develop a product on their own but is reselling NEC's equipment. With the Nokia merger it is to be expected that Nokia's product will be the joint offering.
• Now what can the UMTS handheld owner expect from this in terms of really usuable service? Nothing. I could not think of one single practical service that UMTS would be capable of supporting. This is the other big joke of course. With a GSM/GPRS phone I can make phone calls everywhere and download text e-mails. Surfing the web or download attachments is practically impossible to do. While UMTS is a bit faster in real world scenarios than GPRS it is still by far too slow to allow me fast Internet access or to download attachments in a practically useable amount of time. In short, all those billions that operators have spent for spectrum licenses and installing UMTS infrastructure do NOT add any really practical services to end users.
• So why are operators and most major vendors still hestitant to roll out WiMAX? It is entirely political. How do you want to explain that you have just sunk billions when now a technology (WiMAX) is available that together with GSM can do what UMTS is unable to deliver, for a fraction of the costs, and can do NOW? Full phone coverage and at the same time high-speed data access - so that finally people can really surf the Internet fast and download attachments on their mobile devices - is now possible with a GSM/WiMAX combo. Of course, operators and vendors cannot explain this, and that's the reason why the marketing/sales machines of operators spend their budgets on promoting UMTS handsets and "services" and hope to continue to fool more and more end users. They have been partly successful since many people are simply unable to look beyond the hype. But I think that we will also see more and more end users who will ask themself why they should pay more for a UMTS phone when it cannot add anything more or offer better practical services.
• So the VP from Siemens should indeed be scared since here too, just as in other markets, the customers will decide - and they will do just that at the end of the day, when they have a choice. That choice is coming with WiMAX and it is coming strong and fast...