According to reports from foreign media, Declan Byrne, marketing director of the WiMAX Forum, recently stated that the WiMAX 2 standard is expected to be finalized in November this year and will begin construction in early 2012.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) will finalize the WiMAX 2 standard in November this year. This standard was formerly known as 802.16m, and the certification of relevant equipment will begin in 2011. Network operators will begin commercial use of the WiMAX 2 standard in 2012, while AT&T and T-Mobile and other US operators will begin offering LTE network services.
The speed of 802.16m will greatly exceed its predecessor, and the new WiMAX standard will provide an average downlink speed of 100Mbps. Sprint was the first telecom operator to provide WiMAX networks. When it was officially commercialized in 2008, the standard offered downlink speeds of only 3.7M to 5Mbps. In addition to the new 802.16m standard, the average coverage of a single access point will increase to 31 square kilometers.
802.16m will also be backwards compatible with the 802.16e standard, which is currently being used by U.S. operators operating WiMAX networks. This also means that current existing network systems will be smoothly upgraded to new standards and do not need large amounts of Update costs.