Is This The First WiMAX Mobile? Where’s Our Service?

Is this the pic of HTC’s new T829 mobile that is due to hit stores in the not-too-distant future? And if it is, so what you might ask?

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Well, there is pretty good information coming from sources within the company that it will be the world’s first WiMax-equipped mobile. The pic you are seeing is supposed to be one of the new phones connected to Moscow’s Yota WiMax network, which gives the phone a speed of 13.8Mbps, which is twice as fast as any current HSDPA phones.

With Channel 7’s Unwired being the only company taking WiMax seriously (they have yet to role out the service, but do have a test site), you have to wonder if such a phone would do any business in Australia. That might be about to change. With a recent story in The Age stating that a further $200 million would be needed to get the service to all the main centres, some think may be now is not the right time for Kerry Stokes to invest further in telecommunications, and therefore Wi-Max may be a dead duck before it even gets off the ground.

However, Stokes is known to take the odd risk or two, and Unwired Chief Executive David Spence has just returned from the fact-finding mission to the US. He was very impressed with the Chicago WiMax system that is 75 percent complete and is bullish about their own system being up and running in the near future. “[Kerry Stokes] would not have invested in us if he didn’t think it was going to work,” he says. “Wi-Fi is the way of the future, especially when you see what the Koreans are doing and what the Americans are doing.”

He has a good point and if vendors are going to start providing product that can take advantage of such a high speed rate such as 13.8Mbps, then like any field of dreams, if you build it, they will come.