As WiFi gets increasingly ubiquitous, people are becoming more and more aware of its real limitations: speed, distance and security. A technology known as WiMAX (WiMAX is a backronym for “Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access,” and no, I don’t know what it means either) offers the possibility to improve access to mobile users as well as extend coverage to areas that currently have no broadband Internet.

WiMAX – also known as the IEEE 802.16 standard – is like WiFi but offers better throughput, longer shots and can support a great many more users. WiMAX seems ideally suited to areas where there is not currently a wireline infrastructure and pulling new cable is cost-prohibitive: in the developing world, sure, but also in the dense urban cores of much of Old Europe, where cable TV was never run.

­ A WiMAX system consists of two parts:

• A WiMAX base station, arranged in a sectoral (or cell-tower-like) configuration
• A WiMAX subscriber unit, either a gateway box like a home router, or a card in a laptop

WiMAX, like WiFi, carries data via wireless (radio) signals. While the fastest WiFi connection can transmit up to 54 megabits per second under the best conditions, the WiMAX protocols can support up to 70 megabits per second. Furthermore, WiMAX is capable of much greater distance transmissions: potentially covering a radius of up to 30 miles: subject, as all wireless systems are, to obstructions like terrain, weather and large buildings. With a well-planned, properly installed infrastructure, though, WiMAX can provide seamless coverage over extremely large areas.

WiMAX is also (archaically) known known as WirelessMAN, for Metropolitan Area Network. As the name implies, it is potentially a step along the path to a global area network (GAN). The proposed IEEE 802.20 standard lays out the guidelines for how a GAN would function. It would bear a lot of similarity to present-day cell phone networks, allowing people to travel long distances while retaining connection to the global Internet.

The technology has been in the ramp-up stage for a very long time, and it remains to be seen if providers can get a large number of WiMAX networks deployed so that it can be seen as a viable technology. Like the spread of faxes two decades ago, the more WiMAX networks there are, the more valuable the technology will become. Without wider adoption, there’s always the risk of it going the way of ISDN (remember that?)

Nevertheless, as a “last mile” technology with special applicability to rural comunities and the developing world, WiMAX can play an analogous role to cellular phones in spreading communications technology to underserved areas.