WiMAX In The US: How It Could Affect The Enterprise Wireless Infrastructure

As standards have matured, WiMAX has garnered increased enterprise interest and vendor hype. If key providers in the US, notably Clearwire and Sprint, deploy the service as planned over the next 12 to 18 months, enterprises can look at WiMAX as a WAN connectivity option in populated areas with the strong potential to augment and eventually replace fixed, portable, and mobile broadband connections. But its window of opportunity is limited because other providers plan to introduce their own wireless broadband services in the years ahead. For companies that are interested in using WiMAX within a building or campus environment, it can act as a WLAN extension technology that can serve backhaul and failover needs. It's unlikely many domestic enterprises will use WiMAX as a complete replacement for WLAN technology like 802.11n, WWAN 2G, or 3G services. Rather, enterprises should plan on operating a hybrid infrastructure in both the WWAN and WLAN environments for at least the next five to seven years.