Thoughts from the Shelf

Our penultimate technology in The Shelf’s predictions list, tipped to make it big in 2008, is a wireless technology that is aimed at providing high speed broadband over vast distances.

Already big in the US with Spirit and with the backing of Intel, WIMAX is also being trialled in countries including Nigeria, but is yet to take off in Europe and 2008 could be the year that situation changes.

Standing for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, the WIMAX name was created from the WIMAX Forum which was created in 2001.

In Milton Keynes the first commercial WIMAX service has just been launched with the aim of making the city the first WIMAX -powered wireless internet city.

The WIMAX project was first trialled in the city in 2006, and unlike wi-fi technology, WIMAX offers multi-megabit speeds over areas many kilometres in size instead of a few meters.

The two driving forces of internet modems are broadband, and wireless. WIMAX aims to combine the two by delivering high speed broadband internet access over a wireless connection. Because of its ability to be used over long distances, it is an effective “last mile” solution for delivering broadband to the home, and for creating wireless “hot spots” in places like airports, college campuses, and small communities.

WIMAX is based on the IEEE 802.16 Air Interface Standard, delivering point-to-multipoint architecture, making it an ideal technology to deliver broadband to locations that would traditionally be to difficult or costly to provide for with cables or wi-fi.

‘The so-called “last mile” of broadband is the most expensive and most difficult for broadband providers, and WiMax provides an easy solution.’ - wisegeek

The technology requires a tower much like cell phones and instead of delivering a tr4aditional ISP connection dividing the bandwidth between customers, WIMAX uses microwaves to establish each individual connection.

WIMAX provides a greater range and more bandwidth than wi-fi and so will become an increasingly big player in providing end user broadband connection as investment is finally being made in the infrastructure of the technology in the UK.