WiMax From WalMart?

from the bit-of-a-stretch dept

Over at the Institute for the Future, they're wondering if WalMart might end up getting into the broadband business by hooking up WiMax base stations (once such equipment is actually available) on all their stores, covering much of the US in broadband. It's an interesting theory, and gets the attention of those who think that telecoms are a dying breed. Of course, it's really not that easy. Over at TheFeature, I've written up a longer piece looking at some of the challenges a company like WalMart might face in offering broadband services. However, it's certainly not impossible to count them out. After all, who thought Starbucks would be in the internet access business in the first place? If you take that to a larger scale, perhaps Walmart could get into the WiMax business as well. A more interesting question, however, may be how the world is going to look when there are plenty of "virtual" network operators, where one company offers up their brand for others to put on a network. Virgin has built up quite a set of businesses doing this, and in the mobile space, MVNOs are a hot topic. However, could companies do this for just about any kind of telecom/broadband offering... and more to the point, is there a real benefit in doing so? It's cool for a big brand name company to think they can suddenly get into a technology services business just by licensing out their brand name, but won't there be some risks (a la AT&T's annoyance with AT&T Wireless' trampling of the brand) and some questions about just why you want to buy your internet service from Coca-Cola?
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  • identicon
    D, 9 Aug 2004 @ 11:40pm

    Wireless Internet at Wal-Mart

    I have in my hand a brochure from Spectrum I got at the Wal-Mart in Rogers, AR advertising Wireless High-Speed internet and VOIP services for the area. At the bottom of the brochure it says. AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY AT WAL*MART

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2004 @ 9:24am

    No Subject Given

    ergh, could you imagine trying to get broadband tech support from freaking wal-mart?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2004 @ 9:55am

      Re: No Subject Given

      Honestly though, lets say they have a decent company come out and hook-up all their stores and then you have Broadband Wireless across the country... what would be so bad about that? You could travel about anywhere and be on the net at a very good speed. Now it would raise some pretty interesting wireless security concerns... we can only hope they would use some form of TKIP changing encryption even before you authenticated against a RAS server. All the same, it doesn't sound too bad to me *and the new Burger King down the street has Wireless too - isn't that funny?*.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sammy Walton, 10 Aug 2004 @ 11:50am

    Sucking @ Wal-Mart's teat ...


    Doesn't anyone else see that by buying your groceries, clothes, car repairs, downloadable tunes, haircuts, rental movies & nowe WiFi you soon won't HAVE much of a choice about who you purchase goods & services from ?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      M. Simon, 22 Sep 2004 @ 12:13am

      Re: Sucking @ Wal-Mart's teat ...

      You get better selections of vendors if you are willing to pay more.

      Let it be known you are willing to pay $10K a month for your WiFi and see how many vendors want your business.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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