The drive to deliver tripleand quad-play bundles to consumers could prove to be a major factor driving mobile WiMAX deployment in the United States. In today’s concurrent session, “WiMAX and the Triple/Quad Play,” an executive roundtable will convene to discuss how WiMAX can help competitive providers deliver bundled offerings including digital video, VoIP, residential and mobile broadband Internet.
“In North America, and the U.S. market especially, the fastest growing communications offer is a bundle called the triple play in which the service provider is selling a package of broadband, telephony and video services on a single bill and where there is a set of common features and an incentive discount to buy all of those services from a single providers,” said Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer for Yankee Group and moderator of today’s panel discussion.
Ayvazian noted that while telcos and cablecos are selling the triple play, direct broadcast satellite companies like DIRECTV and EchoStar are not. Of course, they have long been a piece of the bundle through their joint marketing agreements with large telcos like AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and smaller ILECs. As these telcos build out their own broadband networks capable of carrying video, they will be less interested in selling DBS, said Ayvazian. “So the DBS companies are looking for an alternative way to become a triple-play provider in and of themselves,” he said. “The fastest and most economically achievable path to being the triple-play provider is using WiMAX.” WiMAX not only allows them to offer a triple play, it enables a quad play because all services will be mobilized. “WiMAX allows me to provide all of those services to go,” Ayvazian added.
Having dropped out of the AWS auctions, DIRECTV and EchoStar are likely to partner with wholesale WiMAX network operators that are expected to emerge. Clearwire Corp., for one, has been rumored to be a likely wholesaler. Nextlink Communications Inc., also a large spectrum holder, has said it will be a wholesaler and that it is looking at WiMAX and other technologies that would work with its LMDS spectrum. FiberTower Corp., formerly First Avenue Networks, could be another.
Mobilizing the triple play with WiMAX is an opportunity not limted to DBS companies, of course. Panelist Benjamin Finzi, president, Americas for WiNetworks, can speak with authority about helping cable companies do the same. WiNetworks in September announced the availability of a WiMAX wireless solution for cable operators to extend existing voice, video and data services to mobile users with its patented HWDV Hybrid WiMAX technology.
With the WiNetworks solution, VoD, telephony, data and mobile content are delivered over existing HFC infrastructures by connecting WiMAX access points directly to the coax/fiber.
Also speaking is Tom Flak, senior vice president of marketing and product strategy for Soma Networks, which offers the FlexMAX Mobile WiMAX System, including portable devices, mobile subscriber stations, antenna processing, traffic management middleware, integrated applications, network management and network gateways.
They will be joined by Wade Alt, vice president for sales and strategic channels for Mobile Satellite Ventures, which developed and patented the first hybrid Mobile Satellite System combining cellular and wireless networks.
