Groovy to the WiMax

If the good folks at the WiMax Forum have learned anything from their predecessors in the Wi-Fi world, it's that the IEEE's Byzantine series of numbers do not a popular technology make. From Day 1 they've been calling the forum's broadband wireless standard “WiMax” instead of “the IEEE's 802.16 specification.”

The forum, however, is doing more than inventing a spiffy name for its new wireless technology: It's trying revitalize broadband wireless, hoping that the same success standards brought to Wi-Fi will work on the languishing technology sector.

At first blush, WiMax doesn't sound that different from the point-to-multipoint fixed wireless technology that was bandied about a few years ago. Its specifications demand a last-mile access technology that supports voice and data and up to 10 Mb/s of capacity in the 2 GHz to 11 GHz frequency ranges. But the WiMax standard isn't cut from the same cloth as the broadband wireless technologies of old. The critical difference is that WiMax isn't being developed as a proprietary technology by one company. It's designed as a be-all standard, allowing interoperability among all of its products, said Mohammad Shakouri, WiMax forum vice president and business development vice president for Alvarion.

“I have been in the broadband wireless business for 10 years now, and I've learned that you need standardization to push the industry forward,” Shakouri said.

So far, 18 vendors have circled under the forum's banner, encompassing 75% of the entire broadband wireless market. Big wireless players like Nokia are joined by some of the original point-to-multipoint companies, such as Ensemble Communications and Stratex Networks. The most significant member is probably Intel, which helped drive the Wi-Fi revolution last year with the launch of its Centrino chipsets.

Intel has already committed to marrying WiMax with silicon, and other vendors are lining up to include those chips in their new products. “We have this vision of a billion connected PCs out there, but at the current rate of broadband adoption we'll have a while to wait,” said Margaret LeBrecque, marketing manager for Intel's broadband wireless access business and president of the WiMax Forum. “If we can make wireless broadband a viable form of broadband access, we can easily achieve that goal.”

Don't expect an immediate WiMax explosion any time soon, though. LeBrecque said the forum has just begun to press for the new standard, and a period of product development and interoperability testing is in order. The first products should hit the market by the end of 2004, which is a long time to wait considering there are already several next-generation wireless products on the market. But LeBrecque isn't worried that the forum's thunder will be stolen. After all, WiMax is essentially about networking, and standards have always driven networks to success.