Mobile WiMax Makes Big Debut. In Jackson Hole?
July 1, 2008
We’ve been waiting for a commercial deployment of the WiMax Forum’s 802.16e mobile broadband standard since 2005. Yea, it’s been that long. Now it appears that the standard finally has a foothold in the United States. More specifically, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
There are a few different standards for wireless broadband in the United States. Clearwire, based in Bellevue, Washington, has been deploying in several US markets under the 802.16d standard for fixed wireless broadband. If memory serves, Speakeasy, based in Seattle but now a part of BestBuy, also toyed around with the “d” standard. Think of the 802.16, or WiMax, standard, as WiFi with much greater range. People used to refer to it as WiFi on steroids, but personally, I despise that cliche. WiFi, in almost all cases, is faster at transmitting data, but has a much shorter range than WiMax. WiMax travels farther and is more adept to being offered by broadband service providers for various reasons.
Fixed WiMax works well and has had deployments all over the world for a number of years. Mobile WiMax, the “e” standard, has been slow to take off. Some predicted it would never leave the runway. This is partially due to the wireless service providers following another path to mobile wireless broadband, called 3G. Rather than building entirely new transmission networks based on WiMax, service providers could upgrade their own networks to 3G and obtain just about the same performance.
And the citizens of Jackson Hole, Wyoming are the first to take advantage of it. Ashburn, VA based Digital Bridge Communications announced yesterday they’re providing mobile broadband service of up to 3Mbps in that tiny ski village. I’ve always been curious about how service providers choose test markets for their cutting edge services. It’s not really a “if you build it, they will come” kind of a market for edge of the envelope. To me, it more of a “if we can be successful here, we can be successful anywhere” kind of market.
For the sake of the future of mobile WiMax, I hope this deployment is a successful one. The standard needs a win, no matter what size the market.