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Intel Pushes 802.16a Wireless MAN Standard
An anonymous reader writes "The 802.16a standard, approved in January of this year, is a wireless metropolitan area network technology that will connect 802.11 hot spots to the Internet and provide a wireless extension to cable and DSL for last mile broadband access. It provides up to 50-kilometers of range and allows users to get broadband connectivity without needing a direct line of sight with the base station. The wireless broadband technology also provides shared data rates up to 70-Mbit/s."
To clarify,
And every one of them has got to have backhaul
WiMAX isn't expected to be what you use to hit the 'hotspots' with your notebook. It is expected to feed the hotspots... it *is* the backhaul. Naturally it must have it's own, land-based backhaul, but that's no sweat for guys who'll be rolling this out.
The idea of 'free' zones will largely pass when the people with the money to make wireless internet work finally get the tech and the business model worked out. Yes, I said *business*. Sure, there will be people, organizations and towns who'll foot the bill for small hotspots, but to make it work, to make it ubiquitous such that you *expect* it to work, will be require a commercial model. 802.16a is the first major technological step toward this model's feasibility.