A stamp of approval for 802.16 standards
“WiMAX is not a technology, but rather a certification mark, or 'stamp of approval' given to equipment that meets certain conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 family of standards.“
Janne Kerttula, sales director of Airspan’s Northern European district, used a quote from Wikipedia, to define what WiMAX is.
The WiMAX Forum was founded in 2001 and has over 400 members, including operators, system vendors, silicon vendors, and integrators.
Kerttula said that WiMAX technology is very robust since it was originally designed for carrier-class IP data services.
Other strong points of WiMAX include flexibility with both fixed or mobile access and multiple spectrum bands. It also is an all-IP technology. He expects that the open standard based approach would result in attractive economics and mass adoption of low-cost subscriber units.
Key customers: System integrators, distributors
Key problems: End user expectations are too high -- the network speed will not be 70 Mbps at 70 km/h; in real life it is closer to 10 Mbps at 10 km/h
Airspan's WiMAX network