WiMAX technology can offer many of the advantages of wired broadband Internet access with much less investment in infrastructure. The time and complexity of implementing a broadband system in metro and rural areas could also be greatly reduced with WiMAX.
In many areas of the world, ordinary communications lines are difficult to come by. The cost of providing the wiring infrastructure to support broadband access is simply out of the question. In any country, the economic model for telecommunications services depends on the availability of viable service providers, a certain density of subscribers, the ability to pay for capital expense for infrastructure (either through private or government investment), and the will to make it happen.
The sort of ubiquitous, universal telephone and cable-TV facilities we find in the developed areas of the world are rare to nonexistent in less-developed regions. Even countries that have good communications availability in most of their larger cities, often have impoverished or less-developed areas that are impossibly behind. The cost, construction delays, and logistics of providing wire-based facilities are almost insurmountable.
Even in areas surrounding our largest cities, we cannot provide access to DSL or cable-modem technology. How can we expect developing countries to pay for these access technologies for broadband, when a simple voice circuit is beyond their means?
And yet, with the addition of one ingredient, WiMAX, a developing country or underdeveloped region of an industrial nation can have the most modern level of terrestrial communications available today - broadband access. This would not only mean broadband Internet access, something most of us could appreciate, but also would provide the means and the method for fixed-wireless voice lines, through VoIP over WiMAX.
This new communication access could be provided by employing an appropriate number of WiMAX base stations on a grid throughout an area to be covered. If wired backbone connections to the base stations were not feasible, the back-haul could also be provided through WiMAX. The economic hill to climb would be much lower than for wired infrastructure. The service could be very quickly deployed, so long as power and wired or wireless backbone facilities were available.
WiMAX has several advantages over standard WiFi, even on shared frequency bands. However, if WiMAX is deployed on licensed bands, the service provider would avoid the range-limiting interference problems of WiFi, while retaining the exclusive right to their bandwidth (and thus subscriber fees). Although WiMAX is a little expensive today, the prices of the base-station and subscriber radios will decrease rapidly over the next several years, as chip sets are produced for WiMAX. Experience with WiFi has shown that this price decrease can be dramatic, on the order of 10:1 to 20:1.
In addition, unlike wired infrastructure, the base station is the only part of the WiMAX infrastructure that must be pre-installed. Once the base station grid is implemented, subscriber equipment can be added individually and almost instantaneously. If the base stations have the proper technology, fixed, mobile, and back-haul WiMAX stations can be served.
WiMAX technology offers the best promise of modern, high-speed communication and Internet access for developing countries. Subscribers can be businesses, residents, care-providers, and public safety officers , virtually anybody who needs voice and broadband connectivity.
