Keep On Waiting For WiMax
from the taking-their-sweet-time... dept
Remember the good old days when reporters said that WiMax was this huge success story before it even existed? Then came the WiMax backlash, and various delays in actually getting certification testing started. Finally, back in July we were told that certification was really (no, really!) starting and we could maybe expect actual, honest-to-goodness, certified WiMax equipment by the end of the year or early next year. Except, of course, that the company expected to be the biggest provider of equipment didn't actually send in any equipment to be tested, and now Broadband Reports points out that actual testing won't start until October, suggesting that, once again, the whole concept of WiMax may have peaked way too early. In the meantime, the companies who are really interested in WiMax have moved on to focus on mobile WiMax equipment which isn't even standardized yet, let alone certified. So, for all the hype around WiMax (which often focuses on the mobile capabilities), we're still talking about years before you're actually going to be able to use the technology to surf the internet from anywhere, by which point there will be plenty of other alternatives available as well. Update: Right on cue, Computerworld has a story about some of the more well known alternatives.
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