WiMAX 2 should be approved before end of 2010

The final approval for the 802.16m standard, also known as WiMAX 2 is expected to happen before the end of this year. If all goes according to plan, testing by commercial WiMAX provider Clearwire should take place next year, with commercial deployment taking place as early as 2012. Clearwire is the largest commercial WiMAX service provider in the United States at the moment.

So what can users expect from 802.16m? For one, it will be backward compatible with the existing 802.16e WiMAX standard. As such, upgrade costs and disruptions are expected to be kept to a minimum. Beyond that, 802.16m will cover the same 31 square-mile area, though transfer speeds are expected to be significantly boosted over the current speeds of 3.7Mbps and 5Mbps. Indeed, WiMAX forum vice president Mohammad Shakouri noted that the goal of the new WiMAX standard is to create average downlink speeds of "more than 100Mbps" to users.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Network World

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