What is WiMAX?

See the pretty picture? It's an Intel-eye view of what your neighborhood could look like with WiMAX providing ubiquitous wireless access over fairly substantial chunks of terrain.

Now think about this. What if you could skip the cable or DSL connection to your home, skip the technician, and just be connected wirelessly to the Internet both inside and outside of your home? What if you could walk down the streets of your town or into any restaurant or public place and know it was wireless? Welcome to the world of WiMAX, and if you haven't heard that acronym yet, you will soon.

WiMAX isn't a new technology; it's a new standard (WiFi 802.16) to make sure that all of the emerging wireless protocols and equipment, capable of handling much larger areas of coverage, know how to talk to each other. The term was coined from one of those "roll off the tongue" phrases: Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.

The intent behind the WiMAX initiative is to be able to blanket large areas (think Portland or Philadelphia) under a single cloud of wireless connectivity. This involves the installation of WiMAX towers. The range of a fixed WiMAX tower is about 30 miles—a lot farther than the typical 802.11 wireless connection we use in our homes today, which only runs about 100 to 300 feet. A variation of the standard calls for a mobile WiMAX that will let you hop on the Internet using your laptop, phone, or PDA from wherever you are at broadband speeds.

What does WiMAX mean to us? At the moment, probably not much unless you happen to live in places like South Bohemia (part of the Czech Republic) where Intel and partners have deployed a WiMAX tower that provides the 29,000 residents access. As a matter of fact, things are happening in WiMAX quickly in China, India, and Russia, where broadband access has been difficult.

But things are chugging along in the United States as well. According to the WiMAX Forum, you'll first see outdoor stations that look like small satellite dishes available for residential use. (They'll cost about $350.) Next you'll see products that look more like modems and can be self-installed in your home. After that you'll start to see WiMAX cards you can add on to your PC or chipsets integrated directly into portable devices.

Clearly, the WiMAX players want to take a bite of the traditional cellular telecommunications company. Some companies are not waiting around for specifications from committees, either. Companies like Clearwire are already offering WiMAX services to a number of smaller cities—typically ones that did not have good wired broadband alternatives, such as Jacksonville, Florida, and Medford, Oregon. Cities and municipalities all over the country are debating the financial pros and cons of Wi-Fi vs. WiMAX. Many of the WiMAX providers may turn out to be companies most of us have never heard about.

To learn more check into WiMax.com.

To see a road map of how WiMAX fits in with existing Wi-Fi and cellular technologies look at JiWire.

To read more about the speeds and feeds behind the WiMAX visit the WiMAX forum.