WiMAX gets teeth

When we published the first edition of The Complete Guide to WiMAX, WiMAX technology was new, unproven and the subject of much doubt and uncertainty. It held promise, to be sure — but then, so have many broadband wireless formats over the years, to not much avail.

WiMAX is still very new and unproven, having only just seen initial deployments (in fixed formats) in service provider networks. The big difference, however — and the reason that WiMAX remains an area of technological promise — is the push for standardization and equipment certification that has occurred over the past year. Even though commercial deployment and service introduction is still in its infancy, WiMAX is in a standardization and certification cycle that will potentially lower the costs of equipment production and pave the way for future iterations of the technology to be released and deployed more efficiently.

Those two subject areas — WiMAX certification and the technology's road map — make up the bulk of our supplement this year. The centerpiece is Dan O'Shea's in-depth exploration of the equipment certification process for WiMAX equipment (page 2), based in large part on his visit to the WiMAX Forum quarterly members' meeting and tour of the Cetecom Labs testing facility in Malaga, Spain, in April. His story provides a behind-the-scenes look at exactly what the process is for certification, from technological tests right down to how gear will be labeled once it's certified.

Over the past year, the WiMAX community also has demonstrated an eagerness to move forward rapidly with future generations of the technology. The effort to accelerate the 802.16e specification for mobile WiMAX — including the competitive implications that platform has in an increasingly advanced mobile network environment — is the subject of Jason Ankeny's article, which begins on page 10.

We also examine how WiMAX fits into various spectrum ranges in different parts of the world (page 6) and look at the technology's prospects through the eyes of the WiMAX industry's prominent analysts (page 16).

The content of this supplement is clearly very different from our first effort — strong proof of the momentum behind this industry sector and of the promise WiMAX has in the service provider realm.