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Intel predicts WiMax Boom
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 09 January 2008, 20:30 IST
Sderot (Israel): WiMax, an emerging long-range, high-speed wireless technology, is expected to grow fast globally.
"In a year or two, we will see it in many metro zones and areas of heavy demand," said Dan Eldar, Head of Intel's Design Center in Israel. "It will take time to reach a massive deployment," he added.
Sprint Nextel, a U.S. wireless carrier, said on Tuesday that it was soft-launching its Xohm mobile Internet service for employees in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington D.C. ahead of a commercial WiMax launch later in 2008.
According to company sources Sprint Nextel will spend $5 billion by 2010 on a WiMax network using the new 802.16e standard.
WiMax, which is expected to bring in higher revenues to the telecom sector, allows for high-speed Internet connections in the tens of megabits per second, which is faster than the very popular WiFi, which users connect to networks over short distances.
"It will enable the same type of (broadband Internet) on the road as you have at home," said Gaby Waisman, GM of Europe for Alvarion, an Israeli maker of WiMax modems and equipment.
WiMax can cover a stretch of as much as tens of kilometers, depending on the number of users. He said that in addition to the United States, mobile WiMax is close to being rolled out in some European and Asia-Pacific countries including Russia and Japan.
