Bitch-slap
However, he saves his most disdainful and stingingly effective bitch-slap for last. “I have 15 years in the Telecommunications industry, and I would expect better research from a fresh faced kid out of College,” Ofili fulminates. “Such ‘analysis’ from Gartner should be supplied with a warning: ‘Not intended to inform strategic business decisions’. The LTE gang must really fear WiMAX. Otherwise, why all the attention and erroneous analyses?”
We contacted Gartner for its response to these comments, but it seemed to be initially lost for words. In line with our leading HEXUS Right2Reply initiative, HEXUS.channel will publish any comment as soon as it’s received.
UPDATE - 17:45 22nd July 2008:
It looks like Ofili didn’t think he made his point clearly enough in his first post, so he’s added another today.
This one is entitled “Will LTE become the 'Red Headed Stepchild' for the Telco's?” It begins: “There is a lot of talk these days about Telco’s deploying LTE, etc, etc…. Let’s ignore the fact that LTE remains ‘Vaporware’ today, (all talk, and no product in sight, not even an IEEE standard in sight).”
Having ignored that fact, Ofili goes on to make this statement: “So, if and when it does get here, then how will the proponents of LTE position it? LTE, and WiMAX for that matter, are both packet technologies. WiMAX is super fast, open, no walled garden, etc, just the internet we know and love, but mobile. LTE is being positioned as essentially the same as WiMAX.
“Gosh, I can’t help but wonder about the effect of positioning LTE beside DSL, or LTE beside traditional semi-walled garden 3G services. Looks to me like the incumbents have a cannibalization problem on their hands. No surprise, since WiMAX and LTE are both disruptive.
“Simply cloning WiMAX and renaming it LTE does not change the fact that it is a highly disruptive technology. I have not seen business models from the Telco’s that take WiMAX/LTE into consideration. For the Telco’s, whether they deploy WiMAX, or WiMAX by a different name (LTE), the incumbents still face the same problem: DSL, Home Phone, & Cellular service, are in for a serious shake up. What do you think?”
