Clearwire CTO John Saw has confirmed that the mobile WiMax service provider will not be upgrading to the soon to be ratified 802.16m WiMax 2 specification for the foreseeable future, but will consider preliminary trials in 2011.
802.16m, otherwise known as WiMax 2, is expected to be ratified by the IEEE standards body later this year during the summer. The standard leverages 4×2 MIMO transmission antennae arrays in order to increase theoretical maximum speeds to 120Mbit/s downlink and 60Mbit/s uplink over a larger 20MHz broadcast channel, effectively doubling current maximum data rates available on the Clear service.
Russia’s Yota WiMax network is expected to be the only major WiMax carrier testing the new standard once officially ratified with assistance provided by Samsung later this year, who were also hardware partners with Sprint’s XOHM network before the Clearwire venture was formed in 2008.
makes sense, they need to spend the $ on increasing their footprint first.
[…] its part, Clearwire has made previous statements confirming that it would not begin WiMax 2 trials until next year while also launching simultaneous […]