Media for WiMAX for Corporate Telephony/PDAs/smart phones/Portable PCs

WiMAX for Corporate Telephony/PDAs/smart phones/Portable PCs

Hi all,

Wonder if I could have your opinions on something. Lots of enterprises have an internal telephone network, but now are also providing employees with mobile/cellular phones so they can work away from the office.

At the same time, most of these voice networks are "traditional" telephone switches. These are evolving towards voice over ip (VoIP). In the last few years, push email has proven immensely popular. Does WiMAX present a solution to these developments?

- deploy a WiMAX base station in the enterprise - use a "smart" phone with WiMAX and GSM/GPRS/3G capabilities - while at or near the office, the "smart" phone can use the WiMAX network to carry calls, as well as data, for example push email. This would be "free". - while away from the office, switch to GSM/GPRS/3G

Advantages; - users need only one phone/device (not a desk phone, and a mobile/cellular phone, and a Blackberry) - develop a VoIP infrastructure to replace traditional "switched" voice network (if phones resemble cellular/mobile phones, are rechargeable with days of bettery life, there's no need to worry about Power over Ethernet (PoE), air conditioning/uninterruptible power in wiring closets, etc which makes switching to VoIP/PoE expensive and difficult) - WiMAX supports QoS at the MAC layer, making it better suited to VoIP/video, etc - mobile WiMAX means a single base station could cover the entire business "campus", easier than many Wi-Fi access points. - many employees live close to work, so may well be able to use corporate network from home for "free". (assuming 30 mile coverage!) - Intel envisions incorporating WiMAX in future revisions of Centrino, making PC support "semi-ubiquitious"

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Would the big names (Nokia, Ericsson, and now Cisco/Avaya/Nortel) see a future in this? Intel is clearly very optimistic about this technology.

Tried googling for perspectives on this, but can't find anything relevant. Think this is achievable from a technical perspective, but how likely is it?

Kindest regards,

Anwar