The Story
One of the big buzz words right now in mobile is 4G, and it’s buzzing because it promises to deliver real mobile broadband as opposed to this silly 3G stuff that’s presented as broadband. Well, Clearwire, which is working to set up infrastructure for the WiMAX flavor of 4G, is putting up some infrastructure in the Silicon Valley area. Notably, this is right in the backyard of Google, Intel, and Cisco.
What This Could Do For Android
So I want to run with a point that Om Malik made, which is that this gives some pretty notable companies an eye into what WiMAX will be like. Google is going to know what sort of bandwidth they have to work with in the next generation of mobile applications. Sure, they’ll have to take the performance with a grain of salt as the network will slow down once it’s ready for mainstream use, but Google is going to have a grasp pretty quickly of what you can do with 4G.
The reason why this is very interesting is that Google could get the leg up on any other major mobile developer in the sort of stuff they put into Android. I’m not talking about how high of a resolution YouTube can stream at, either. As you might know, the 4G rollout should be completely done by 2013 based on Verizon’s projections. And though that’s LTE, a different standard, WiMAX should be up and running by then if only to be a competing standard. Given all that, Google is going to want to have some new toys to work with as early as possible to be the dominant mobile platform.
Again, keep in mind that as technology improves, people find new things to do with them. I’m sure the wizards at Google are going to have some pretty good things to play with, too. And we can be sure that this’ll be profitable. I may not know what the use of WiMAX will be, but I’m sure it’ll generate some cash.
