It's been a year since WiMAX was introduced in the United States and one year later we are already seeing another release. WiMAX 2.0 is said to be in the final stages of approval from The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is huge! If you are in a WiMAX/4G coverage area you already know that this service offers the fastest mobile internet speeds currently available claiming an average of 6MB per second, which is up to four times faster than typical home DSL. WiMAX 2.0 will be able to attain average downloads speeds of 100mbps! Mohammad Shakouri, WiMAX Forum president says if all goes according to plan we should see WiMAX devices one year after the IEE finalizes the standard (802.16m). The new standard is said to be finalized in September, 2010.
Shakouri goes on to say, "think of it like you're building a 20-lane highway," says Shakouri, describing how 802.16m can use multiple channels to deliver data. "While it would be complicated to build out 20 lanes on the same highway, you could instead use two 10-lane highways or four five-lane highways. So this is how you can get higher data rates by using a combination of multiple channels." So what's CLEAR about WiMAX? Currently, Clearwire is the first company to offer WiMax services in the United States with aspirations of having a much larger network than some local WiMax providers in other countries. Clear states that they plan on testing WiMax 2.0 sometime next year with aspirations of deployment in 2012. WiMax 2.0 is not yet available and WiMAX providers in the US (CLEAR, Sprint) are still working on building out their existing WiMAX networks. 4Ginfo will continue to update you on WiMAX 2.0 as it continues its development.
