[quote author=“Mace”]Just to jolt a few memories.  Many moons ago, in this forum, we blogged about whether there are other strategic reasons (other than for retailing) for locating Apple retail stores.  If current Wi-Fi chips are replaced with Wi-Max chips, doesn’t that expand coverage of hotspots?  Other than Apple and Starbucks, who else have many Wi-Fi hotspots all over the place?

McDonalds! 

[quote author=“roontoon”]30 miles vs. the current 7-10 miles max for cells. But this is a very complicated business without high margins that Apple likes to have.

From some Cringely articles on the subject, it seems that at first you can get away with large distances between towers, but then you have a capacity issue.  Supporting 30 miles means supporting that many more people, which means you have to attach huge radio capacity and T1 capacity to support the traffic from all your customers within your large coverage area.  You soon have to add almost as many WiMax towers as cell phone towers so that each WiMax tower does not get overburdened with traffic.  Remember, WiMax will be used for home BROADBAND usage, think always on connections and P2P traffic.  Cell phone towers only support active calls with many more inactive cell phones within the coverage area.

[quote author=“roontoon”]It is better suited to Google who can also direct traffic over the fiber that it is buying. Kind of a two for one deal. They can send any Wi-max or cell traffic and traffic going to their sites over this fiber that they are buying.

I wonder where Google’s dark fiber terminates?  Although, you’re right, in that Google could connect their WiMax, or whatever, towers to their Fiber hubs over microwave links. That is actually what Verizon Wireless does. They don’t run a T1 to the cell towers, like all the other carriers prefer, they just shoot microwave signals from their towers to hub locations with very fat pipes. 

Hmm, this sounds interesting…I would like to see Jonathan Ives designed antenna and microwave towers on top of the Apple stores!

[quote author=“SNIPUS”][quote author=“Mace”]Just to jolt a few memories.  Many moons ago, in this forum, we blogged about whether there are other strategic reasons (other than for retailing) for locating Apple retail stores.  If current Wi-Fi chips are replaced with Wi-Max chips, doesn’t that expand coverage of hotspots?  Other than Apple and Starbucks, who else have many Wi-Fi hotspots all over the place?

I see it as a horse and cart situation. With a lot of iPhones and iTouches in consumers hands there may be pressure on certain
enterprises to supply wi fi… Restaurants and bookstores and come to mind or any place that humans gather for any length of time

I like this… A quick look at iPhone/iPod Touch demographics may indicate a high discretionary income crowd. Why not offer a service for hardware already purchased by the consumer while targeting an attractive demographic of shoppers?