Following up on the initial announcement of the standard in April along with the formation of a new coalition, the marketing director of the WiMax Forum has confirmed that the WiMax 2 standard will be finalized by the IEEE this November, while the timeline for certification and commercial availability of devices and hardware remains in place from the original announcement in 2011and 2012.
WiMax 2 is expected to be significantly faster than the current version currently deployed in the US by Clearwire, owing to its basis in the 802.16m transmission specification, allowing for 1Gbps throughput and supporting real-world speeds around the 100mbps mark. The increase in throughput and downlink speeds is achieved by utilizing a broader 20MHz broadcast channel and MIMO antennae array while remaining backwards compatible with the current 802.16e standard.
For its part, Clearwire has made previous statements confirming that it would not begin WiMax 2 trials until next year while also launching simultaneous WiMax/LTE trials later this Fall.
