WiMax By The End Of The Year

Nothing wrong with being a bit ambitious. The WiMax Forum is shooting for the release of 802.16a compliant systems before the end of this year. The official specification still isn't set - but a revision from last week is close enough that chip makers are comfortable moving ahead, so that chips will be ready when the spec is approved. This is always a slightly risky move, but seems to be pretty standard these days and is unlikely to lead to any real problems. Of course, while everything will be ready to go by the end of the year, no one really expects the WiMax market to pick up until at least early into next year. Still, it should be interesting to see how quickly this wide-area broadband solution catches on.