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Frequently Asked Questions
WiMAX
Why is WiMAX needed?
To answer this question it is important to understand the current state of technical fragmentation of the fixed broadband wireless industry. Early broadband wireless systems began as extensions of indoor local area network (LAN) technology known as Wi-Fi or the 802.11b protocol. This standard has evolved into a ubiquitous and widely available standard used in short range hotspots all over the globe. However, the media access controller (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications for this protocol are suboptimum for outdoor citywide wireless networks or metropolitan area networks (MAN). Recent updates and new standards such as 802.11g and 802.11a have improved these elements. However, once again these technologies are configured for best performance in small venues and at short range. It should be noted that recent developments in the ratification standard of the IEEE 802.11n protocol offer the promise of significant improvements to Wi-Fi---improvements that will blur the lines of capability between WLAN and more robust WMAN (wireless metropolitan area network) systems somewhat. While 802.11n is not necessarily optimized for great range, its bandwidth capabilities will be a major leap ahead from Wi-Fi. Its range improvements in the hotspot will be significant also. However, despite hopes for a final standard this specification remains mired in the competing desires of various camps and their approaches to its implementation. A number of companies, including, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys and others have nevertheless launched so called Pre-N or pre-certified 802.11n products. These do seem to offer some improvement over even 802.16a/g systems; however, testing by ZDNet has shown that the gains remain modest. Also, interoperability between the various products is problematic at best.
To compensate, vendors developed proprietary MAC and PHY layers based on the root LAN standard of 802.11. Many of these systems are in use today and possess significant improvements in modulation scheme, polling technology and data transport that enable effective and modestly affordably citywide or rural wireless networks. However, none of these proprietary iterations of the technology are exactly the same. No two companies products will work with each other. This means that broadband wireless carriers must use base stations and customer premise equipment from the same vendor in any given city---which may not be the best solution in some geographic and radio frequency (RF) environments.
In the mobile arena, the standards for broadband wireless delivery are less fragmented. More importantly however, the cost, speeds delivered and time to market of broadband mobile solutions have been suboptimum.
The promise of 3G services has been slow to emerge. And while that is changing with wide deployments coming from Verizon using its EVDO system as well as from Sprint and Cingular, mobile WiMAX systems based on newer technology such as OFDMA® offer the promise of cheaper, more effective and faster deployments of broadband mobile wireless systems. More recently 3G deployments do appear to have accelerated with a number of high-profile GSM-friendly broadband technology (called UMTS or its updated version HSDPA) have gained some traction, mostly in Europe. In the US, Sprint is in the process of rolling out a CDMA network with the newer, and faster Revision-A version. As of November, 2006 the company had 8 cities deployed with plans to re-fixture its entire CDMA network with Rev. A. However, Sprint has also announced plans for a massive nationwide WiMAX network as well.
