Taiwan's Tatung University made history today by becoming the first campus in the world to provide mobile WiMAX to its college community. The fixed-location network was put into place by Alcatel-Lucent and Via Technologies is providing WiMAX-enabled netbook computers to use with the system, but a wide array of companies contributed to the project, including China Television, D-Link, Gemtek, Intel Taiwan, and ZyXEL Communications.
The idea behind blanketing a large area with wireless internet access is not a new one - over the years there have been many proposals to provide WiFi at the community level. However, WiFi has such a limited range that these deployments have not proved widely successful. A fixed WiMAX network, though, can provide a much broader coverage area even through buildings and the superior bandwidth capabilities mean that more users can share the connection.
While carriers in the US are (slowly but surely) working on bringing WiMAX to various markets, the experiment at Tatung University could serve as an interesting example of what else providers like Clearwire could be doing with their technology.
