The chair of the WiMAX Forum, Ron Resnick doesn't want to say it anymore: 3G and WiMAX are complementary services, he told the audience at the WiMAX World conference in Boston. Of course, mobile WiMAX is better than the next-gen technology the 3GPP and 3GPP2 worlds are developing for the future, Resnick adds. Klaus Kohrt, chairman of the UMTS Forum and SVP at Siemens agreed with Resnick more or less: IP-based technologies like WiMAX are best-effort and are usually flat-rate pricing. WiMAX, therefore, is a gap-stop for Internet access between the landline and the cellular world, but cellular will always be best for QoS, voice, service delivery, accounting and billing. So the distinction between complementary and complimentary remains.
For more on WiMAX vs. 3G:
- see this article from Wireless Week