BOSTON (WiMAX Day). An obtuse news release issued last week by Yankee Group stated that “standardized mobile WiMAX will not become a reality until early 2008.” The report contends that the hype surrounding the technology and the lack of standards has “lead to increased frustration of potential WiMAX adoption.”

In fact, there are many global industry standards that support the air interface via IEEE 802.16e. These are tied to limited and well-defined frequency bands, via the profiles of the WiMAX Forum, which also has educated the industry about these standards.

Alliances such as WiSOA have united network operators and spectrum owners to drive business models for mobile WiMAX.

It is expected that the ITU will recognise mobile WiMAX when the approval process for a new Mobile BWA ITU-R Recommendation is completed next month.

The only missing link for standards is to have spectrum allocations identified in radio regulations. It is likely that mobile WiMAX spectrum will be recognised as IMT bands at the World Radio Conference next year. The IEEE has also initiated a step to have successive evolutions of 802.16 included in IMT-Advanced by 2010.

Given the Herculean efforts that have gone into the process of standardising mobile WiMAX, there remain few uncertainties for service providers and vendors alike as to what standards will prevail in the market.

The Yankee Group report further noted that one of the challenges for (the users of) 802.16e is to define customer segments: “It is crucial for vendors to clarify just who this technology will truly benefit and why the service providers will want to invest in the technology.” Given that billions of dollars have been committed to mobile WiMAX, and some of the world’s largest corporations are backing the technology, one could only hope that someone has given thought as to why the industry has invested such large sums of money into WiMAX, and who might possibly benefit from the technology.