One of the breaking news items below, from the solid research firm ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com), notes the rapid growth of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology for broadband services, such as broadband wireless access (BWA) applications. The number of base stations to be installed in a few short years is certainly impressive, implying a large number of mobile subscribers for the LTE outgrowth of 3G cellular networks.
Assuming even conservative numbers based on these ABI Research market forecasts, what does this imply for the future of WiMAX technology? Having pored through the various versions of the IEEE 802.16 standards for both fixed and mobile WiMAX technology, there is not doubt that this is a beautifully designed wireless technology making the most of orthogonal-frequency- division-multiple (OFDM) techniques to gain bandwidth efficiency even in the less-than- desirable, multipath-infested environments typical of wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs).
In fact, based on those standards, and on the work of industry organizations such as the WiMAX Forum (www.wimaxforum.org), there is no reason to believe that WiMAX will fail to deliver on its promise of reliable fixed and mobile BWA services. In fact, WiMAX can also co-exist with other wireless technologies, such as UMTS, 3G LTE, and IEEE 802.11 WLANs, and is designed to do so. In the end, it is probably safe to say that WiMAX will go where you go.