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WiMax is an LTE alternative designed by an IEEE 802 committee. It is designed for last mile delivery and also meets the requirements to be considered a 4G and 5

WiMax is an LTE alternative designed by an IEEE 802 committee. It is designed for last mile delivery and also meets the requirements to be considered a 4G and 5G protocol. Although technically superior to LTE, phone companies (outside of Sprint, in the US at least) chose not to deploy it as it was not based on existing protocols (GSM and CDMA), even though that isn't an actual legitimate reason, as "true" LTE requires VoLTE deployment, which phone companies refused to do until forced to; VoLTE-enabled handsets perform a lot better than their pre-VoLTE or VoLTE-disabled siblings purely because of not needing to waste valuable spectrum on 3G connections, allowing that band to be reassigned to a 4G radio on the tower. On top of the VoLTE debacle, companies invested in the GSM and CDMA monopoly tried to claim WiMax did not perform well at long distances, the same distances that LTE does not work well with today (found frequently in rural areas in the US, or similarly in areas heavily shadowed by hills or tall buildings); however the adoption of 600/700mhz to fill in those gaps (plus the forced adoption of VoLTE to improve spectrum usage) has proven that to be false. LTE in areas that are partly covered by existing bands, with the gaps filled in by 600/700mhz, have finally caught up to WiMax in real world testing. Interestingly, Asia has adopted WiMax heavily but may be switching to LTE in the future for 5G deployment, even though WiMax beat LTE-A to the commercial gigabit deployment milestone, due to these continued misconceptions. Africa's few networks that were WiMAX are (or have already) switched to LTE (driving up the cost, and lowering the reliability of their networks). The one place WiMax survived in the US was fixed broadband links (as this is what WiMax was originally designed for, until it merged with Korea's WiBro spec more than a decade ago), but that seems to be finally being replaced in favor with LTE-A's fixed profiles. WiMax will probably beat LTE to working gigabit deployments, although you'll need to live in Asia for this to be relevant to you. WiMax is not related to WiFi; although the actual underlying technology of all standards are rapidly converging, they are designed for different purposes.

kalleboo 8y ago
WiMAX may have had technical potential in its standards (I am not equipped to evaluate that) but all the actual deployments of it were just worse than existing HSDPA networks. 10-20 Mbit WiMAX in the US got falsely branded by Sprint as "4G" which caused companies like T-Mobile and AT&T to also brand their faster HSDPA networks as "4G" which caused massive confusion in the the market (iPhones in the US will still show HSDPA networks as "4G"!! It's kind of insane) I live in Asia and actually have a WiMAX plan still active (since it's grandfathered in on the only still remaining "really really unlimited" plan) but it always sucked in performance even when I got it, and since then they've refarmed half the spectrum. They sell "WiMAX 2" now, but that's just branding - it's just LTE.
- DiabloD3 8y ago
  4G's sticking point is speed. Specifically, the ITU-R IMT Advanced proposal requires several things, of which, today, are easy to meet. What wasn't easy was 100mbit peak speeds for mobile users, gigabit peak speeds for fixed users. WiMAX in a lot of markets is not 4G, but neither is LTE in a lot of markets. In other words, a lot of markets do not, and seemingly never will, have 4G as defined by IMT Advanced. I live in a market that is LTE, is sold to me as 4G, will never meet 4G requirements. WiMAX was developed with proposals like IMT Advanced in mind: ability to have MIMO, all IP packet switching (non-VoLTE LTE networks cannot ever qualify to be called a 4G network due to this, btw), 20mhz and higher channel widths, and spectral efficiency above a certain level (which put a lower limit on how big your modem's DSP has to be due to coding techniques), forwards and backwards compatibility of future specs, and smooth handover between heterogeneous technology (ie, tower to home femtocell and back). WiMAX's original specification (802.16e-2005, which was based on the original 802.16 spec from 2001) met the IMT Advanced requirements. LTE was not developed from day one to do this, and did not really meet the requirements until LTE-Advanced. The original LTE specification (3GPP release 8 (2008); LTE-A was defined in release 10 (2011); LTE-A Pro was defined in release 13/14 (2016/2017); additions to LTE-A Pro for 5G (but does not meet 5G yet) were added to release 15 (2018)) fell short of the speed requirement. What makes this all interesting is, WiMax could do fixed modems 10 years before LTE-A added it, was "true 4G" (as how ITU-R defines it now due to how everyone rushed to muddy the definition with HSPA+ and whatnot) 3 years before LTE was, and is currently the only protocol that has hope of deploying gigabit to fixed users currently (via 802.16m-2011/802.16-2012 aka WiMax 2 or WiMax-Advanced). Also, they're trying to sell LTE as 5G, I've already seen ads saying 600/700mhz support is 5G (it is not, although it is welcome), just like how they tried to sell highest order (2x2 MIMO with dual cell and widest channels) HSPA+ as 4G (which would be more correctly be described as 3.5G, as newest spec LTE would be best described as 4.5G).
garmaine 8y ago
My point was the asked for standard already exists.
reaperducer 8y ago
I had WiMax via Clearwire in both Seattle and Chicago. When it worked, it was phenomenal. But it needed a nearly line-of-sight connection, and seemed to have problems in rain and fog.

kalleboo 8y ago

WiMAX may have had technical potential in its standards (I am not equipped to evaluate that) but all the actual deployments of it were just worse than existing HSDPA networks. 10-20 Mbit WiMAX in the US got falsely branded by Sprint as "4G" which caused companies like T-Mobile and AT&T to also brand their faster HSDPA networks as "4G" which caused massive confusion in the the market (iPhones in the US will still show HSDPA networks as "4G"!! It's kind of insane) I live in Asia and actually have a WiMAX plan still active (since it's grandfathered in on the only still remaining "really really unlimited" plan) but it always sucked in performance even when I got it, and since then they've refarmed half the spectrum. They sell "WiMAX 2" now, but that's just branding - it's just LTE.

DiabloD3 8y ago
4G's sticking point is speed. Specifically, the ITU-R IMT Advanced proposal requires several things, of which, today, are easy to meet. What wasn't easy was 100mbit peak speeds for mobile users, gigabit peak speeds for fixed users. WiMAX in a lot of markets is not 4G, but neither is LTE in a lot of markets. In other words, a lot of markets do not, and seemingly never will, have 4G as defined by IMT Advanced. I live in a market that is LTE, is sold to me as 4G, will never meet 4G requirements. WiMAX was developed with proposals like IMT Advanced in mind: ability to have MIMO, all IP packet switching (non-VoLTE LTE networks cannot ever qualify to be called a 4G network due to this, btw), 20mhz and higher channel widths, and spectral efficiency above a certain level (which put a lower limit on how big your modem's DSP has to be due to coding techniques), forwards and backwards compatibility of future specs, and smooth handover between heterogeneous technology (ie, tower to home femtocell and back). WiMAX's original specification (802.16e-2005, which was based on the original 802.16 spec from 2001) met the IMT Advanced requirements. LTE was not developed from day one to do this, and did not really meet the requirements until LTE-Advanced. The original LTE specification (3GPP release 8 (2008); LTE-A was defined in release 10 (2011); LTE-A Pro was defined in release 13/14 (2016/2017); additions to LTE-A Pro for 5G (but does not meet 5G yet) were added to release 15 (2018)) fell short of the speed requirement. What makes this all interesting is, WiMax could do fixed modems 10 years before LTE-A added it, was "true 4G" (as how ITU-R defines it now due to how everyone rushed to muddy the definition with HSPA+ and whatnot) 3 years before LTE was, and is currently the only protocol that has hope of deploying gigabit to fixed users currently (via 802.16m-2011/802.16-2012 aka WiMax 2 or WiMax-Advanced). Also, they're trying to sell LTE as 5G, I've already seen ads saying 600/700mhz support is 5G (it is not, although it is welcome), just like how they tried to sell highest order (2x2 MIMO with dual cell and widest channels) HSPA+ as 4G (which would be more correctly be described as 3.5G, as newest spec LTE would be best described as 4.5G).

garmaine 8y ago

My point was the asked for standard already exists.

reaperducer 8y ago

I had WiMax via Clearwire in both Seattle and Chicago. When it worked, it was phenomenal. But it needed a nearly line-of-sight connection, and seemed to have problems in rain and fog.