I've been keeping an eye on WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) and the impact it will have. After reading several articles like "WiMAX in the UK. Here's why it won't fly." on the register, I tried to find out more about the technologies' future while attending the European Mobility Summit in London.
A chap called Tom Foale from Urban WiMAX was a dicussion panel speaker. Urban WiMAX will be the first to offer WiMAX business servics in the UK from November.
Tom gave an honest if bleak picture, citing the many issues his company has had in the UK implementing the technology. This ranged from limited licensed frequency available, to decent WiMAX infrastructure hardware not being produced in a timely fashion. In short, there appeared to be some fairly major quality issues that will take a while to resolve.
In the UK, we will see Fixed WiMAX (802.16d) first, but won't see Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) working for some time. Based on what I heard at the Mobility summit, mobile WiMAX on laptops won't appear until late 2008, and mobile WiMAX capable devices like smarthones and pocket pcs' possibly won't be around until 2010.
Mobile WiMAX gives all the regular benifits of high speed broadband, but has the potential to be much more. For the enterprise, one main issue with running VOIP applications on mobile devices has been ensuring QoS when relying on ad-hoc public domain connectivity to the internet. Due to the large geographical range, SLA's around eventual QoS and speed, external and internal VOIP telephony solutions and the cost savings they bring may finally be possible for enterprise business in city locations. This will probably not be a serious offering until 2008/9 however, and trying to compete for business against the traditional network operators won't be easy, especially when they are still trying to claw back revenue from their 3G implementations.
In summary, WiMAX Mobile, which has the true benifits of WiMAX opposed to WiMAX Fixed, is still a while off, but has potential. However, I can see the technology taking a long time to be a viable option for many in the enterprise, and the next "big" communication network technology is always just around the corner.
Neil
For more info on WiMAX and any definitions of the above, go here.