Will the real WiMAX please stand up?

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 07:35

IT Industry - Strategy

The yet-to be-realised capabilities of WiMAX technology have been hotly debated and consensus on these hard to find. But WiMAX is an international standard, so everybody should at least be in agreement as to what is and what is not WiMAX. Wrong!

According to 'WiMAX Day', a newsletter produced by the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Association (www.wisoa.com), the industry abounds with spurious claims.

"An analyst at a prominent venture capital firm in San Francisco remarked recently that they had reviewed more than 30 business plans in the last two months from what were purported to be WiMAX network operators, but not one had any WiMAX credentials," WiMAX Day reported.

It said that one company "reportedly raised a significant amount of capital last month to build what it claims will be a WiMAX network in London, however the company neither owns nor licenses the radio spectrum necessary to operate a WiMAX network."

According to WiMAX Day, "WiMAX is not a technology, but rather a term for specific products or services that conform to the IEEE 802.16 technical standards, and a certification process by the WiMAX Forum...The industry that has emerged to capitalise on the 802.16 standards has adopted the name WiMAX, in much the same way that WiFi is a name specific to services that adopt the 802.11 standards."