WiMAX - Ready For Prime Time... in 2008

Recent research from Pyramid in the UK has concluded what we've been saying for a while: WiMAX will eventually be a significant standard, but it needs to be standardized first. Many firms in the WiMAX space are jumping the gun, since the so-called standard has three versions, and runs from 2GHz to 60GHz. That wide variance will not provide the necessary economies of scale of production to hit escape velocity the way WiFi did. Nor will the variance promote roaming. My apologies to the WiMAX community, but choosing a catchy name is not the only part of the WiFi standard that should be copied. What should be copied is: a standards body that sticks it out until a single standard emerges with provisions for security, authentication, and roaming.