WiMax

WiMAX is a coined term or acronym meaning worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX). What WiMAX is however at its heart is a standards initiative. Its purpose is to ensure that the broadband wireless radios manufactured for customer use interoperate from vendor to vendor. The primary advantages of the WiMAX standard are to enable the adoption of advanced radio features in a uniform fashion and reduce costs for all of the radios made by companies who are part of the WiMAX Forum"--- a standards body formed to ensure interoperability via testing.

Will WiMAX compete with Wi-Fi?

Clearly WiMAX and Wi-Fi are complementary technologies and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The widely available Wi-Fi technology used in hotspots in hotels, restaurants, airports and even larger Wi-Fi zones in some cities will continue to grow for many years.

The wide availability of integrated 802.11b/g/a laptop radios provides a continually growing base of Wi-Fi consumers. The forum itself anticipates at least three waves of WiMAX gear during the next two years with affordable laptop based (mobile) WiMAX radios coming in the third wave in years 2006-2007. However, even these units will almost certainly be dual Wi-Fi/WiMAX or multi mode Wi-Fi/WiMAX/Cellular and will continue to be for several years thereafter. As the WiMAX standard grows and continues to gain acceptance and drive cost reductions new chipsets that incorporate the ability to function across multiple platforms will become more common with the MAN portion of this network technology slowly being converted to the more robust WiMAX systems as the business cases for hotspot venues merit.

Basically this means that WiMAX users in a few years will be able to not only access Wi-Fi hotspot access at a café but could also have mobile citywide WiMAX access as well.

However, other LAN technology standards such as Bluetooth, Ultrawideband and the emerging 802.11n specification that offer value in shorter range hotspot networks will both grow and necessitate chipsets and laptop radios that will eventually be able to seamlessly cross these shorter range data networks as well as cellular networks and WiMAX citywide networks.

Is WiMAX a mobile technology?

Yes. And it appears that it may become primarily a mobile technology eventually. Even in its present so-called "Fixed WiMAX" version the technology already offers some mobile capability at least as regards licensed band products. However, the Forum is in the process of finalizing a standard for Mobile WiMAX or IEEE 802.16e. That standard is due to be completed probably during mid-2006. The present technology is typically described as Fixed or sometimes portable or nomadic by some vendors. In most cases Fixed WiMAX or 802.16-2004 technology is probably best suited for licensed band fixed broadband wireless deployments. However, precursor WiMAX gear already provides portable and even mobile capability at modest scale today. There are International and US deployments where mobile applications are used daily with precursor gear.

Most mobile applications on the precursor side however, have been focused around public safety needs such as police and fire with some notable exceptions. It is common nowadays to see firms offering portability and for customers to use it in limited application. One firm Unwired Australia reports that about ten to fifteen percent of its customers do move their radios around downtown Sydney, Australia.

Another firm in rural Iowa, Evertek has deployed mobile public safety access that it layers across its public net using encryption to maintain privacy.

The short answer is yes, as never before with broadband wireless systems. However, this area appears to be early ground that vendors are staking out to differentiate their products and philosophies. The WiMAX standard itself incorporates more, better and more flexible security support by far than the Wi-Fi standard launched with. It can be sometimes confusing when industry pundits and detractors talk of standards such as WiMAX and then in the same breath describe ways in which vendors will be "different" or that WiMAX security might be weak. At first glance, these comments on the part of some vendors zealous to promote the added capabilities of their products can leave one feeling uncertain about the quality and reliability of the product. Security is probably a good place to explain the difference between the very robust base standards of WiMAX and the ways in which individual vendors can still differentiate their products (with additional and perhaps more powerful or convenient features) beyond the features that the base standard offers. We explain the base WiMAX security standard in a different FAQ question. However, what is important to understand is that it is quite robust. Perhaps more importantly, it allows for additional feature sets that could be added by various vendors to achieve security results as good as or better than any competing wireline broadband option even those being used for extremely secure governmental applications. Typical residential service doesn't require the kind of security a bank, hospital or government often needs. WiMAX can handle this. An example can be helpful here. Let us say that a broadband wireless service provider chooses one particular customer premise equipment (CPE) radio that has nice features and an especially good price for its consumer based offering. These CPEs possess normal WiMAX security functionality which is at least as good as other broadband consumer technologies such as cable. It might choose to utilize a second vendor's base station to feed service to those radios that also possesses enhanced security capabilities adding an additional security overlay to the base security of the residential network consumer purposed CPE radios---particularly in the backhaul portion of the network. This could add a small layer of additional support to radios that, while secure, could not feature enhanced capabilities due to the cost factors that consumer radio business requires.

This same base unit could also offer the company an ability to support an additional layer of radios for business or governmental or health care industry customers, where health insurance privacy and portability act (HIPPA) confidentiality compliance is of great importance, that actually have a DIFFERENT CPE radio that, while more expensive, possesses feature sets that take full advantage of extended security features that are commonly added to high-security government networks. It does not detract from the network for perfectly serviceable residential class security capable (and inexpensive) radios to coexist with premium feature (and cost) WiMAX products on the same network designed to serve specialty customers. Similar to add on products used with wireline products that often require additional hardware beyond the modem.