WiMAX Internet deployments have reached 519 in 146 countries, including 95 WiMAX networks deployed by 2G operators, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. Of the 519 deployments, 112 were added in 2009, while 86 products received WiMAX Forum Certified status.

FDD WiMAX was accepted into the IMT-2000 family of standards and more than 50 companies endorsed the IEEE 802.16 IMT-Advanced candidate proposal for a future-proof roadmap. Leading suppliers and operators, including Alvarion, Beceem, Cisco, Clearwire, Huawei, Intel, KT, Motorola, Samsung, Sequans, UQC, Yota, and ZTE expressed their commitment to build and trial WiMAX Release 2, based on the IEEE 802.16m standard.

The WiMAX forum has also announced that it will finalize its WiMAX Release 2 specification parallel with IEEE 902.16m and IMT-Advanced in 2010. The Release 2 networks will remain backward compatible with Release 1, which was based on IEEE 802.16e.

Companies Show WiMAX-related Growth

One WiMax Forum network that has grown rapidly this year is Yota, which reached 250,000 active commercial users on its Russian network, more than 2300 new subscribers per day. In 2010, Yota expects to add a new GSM and Mobile WiMAX phone that supports Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) over WiMAX.

Another company, Clearwire, has reached more than 550,000 subscribers this year, with its network covering more than 30 million consumers in 34 markets. Packet One Networks in Malaysia has reached 130,000 subscribers, while KT covers more than half of the Korean population and UQ Communications covers most of Japan’s population.

Imagine launched its 4G Mobile WiMAX network deployment to cover Ireland, which will also reduce the average cost of broadband and phone services by as much as 50%. Nearby, Freedom4 received permission to offer WiMAX services in the United Kingdom using its nationwide 3.6-GHz spectrum.

WiMAX has also helped several equipment vendors grow in 2009. Motorola shipped its 10,000th WiMAX Access Point and 1 millionth WiMAX customer premises equipment (CPE). Intel launched notebooks with its embedded Wi-Fi/WiMAX mini card solution in the United States, Russia, and Japan. These were embedded into 80 notebook models from several leading PC manufacturers. Finally, Beceem Communications announced that it shipped more than 3 million 4G WiMAX terminal chipsets this year.

2010 WiMAX Outlook

In 2010 the WiMAX Forum plans to continue its expansion with the certification of WiMAX 2.3-GHz products, launch of the Open Retail Certification Program, and completion of the WiMAX Forum Release 2 specs based on the new IEEE standard 802.16m.