WiMAX will cover one billion people in 2011, coming soon to NYC and San Francisco
By Tim Stevens 
posted February 19th 2010 10:01AM
posted February 19th 2010 10:01AM
Thought WiMAX was just beaming high-speed internets to a very few lucky technosapiens in far-away lands? Think again! If all goes according to plan, more than 800 million people from the future will be wrapped in its soothing vibrations by the end of this year, and over a billion worldwide in 2011, surpassing expectations. That's an impressive spread given that Sprint just got things rolling domestically in Baltimore about a year and a half ago. Next up will be stops in New York City and San Francisco, good news for urban folks, but will it be enough to hold off the progression of LTE? Don't you love a good wireless format war? We don't.[Thanks, COCOViper]
@roman7927
Man this is the 3rd time I've had to post this link in this article...
Clearwire/Sprint are by far not the only ones defining this standard:
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/02/17/wimax-growth-in-the-us-lags-worldwide-growth-explodes/
My neighbor (in Atlanta) signed up for Clear. Perfect signal, until you turn onto my street. 2 car lengths onto the street, it went from strong to no signal. I'm sure the 120 million will not include us anytime soon.
San Francisco!!! Yay. It's only 3 hours away, I actually got there occasionally.
Do u get faster 3g speeds or will u need a 4g phone no even kno the difference
@Spillzz
Just like with the 2G to 3G transition, you'll need a 4G phone to use a 4G network. But it should probably be noted that as heavy data users move off the 3G network onto 4G, 3G should become slightly faster (e.g. EDGE after the iPhone3G launch).
I noticed the same silence (in smartPhones fr Sprint) I suspect manufacturers are done make 3G only devices for Sprint, and wil focus on 4G. Who wants to produce a device (or buy a device) that will be 2nd class in a few months? But, since other manufacturers are still getting new devices, this tells tells me their 4G is further off. It kind of makes me wonder what is up with Verizon, they seemed to tease people with iPhone 4G² rumors then that al went silent.
@twoone
Verizon never teased anyone that they would have any iphone. That was the media/blogs creating rumors since they are fed up with their AT&T service. Verizon will likely not have an iPhone for quite awhile, and I'll be perfectly ok with that (my Nexus One/Win Phone 7 will keep me quite happy).
We have WiMAX in LA through Towerstream. We pay for 10Mb but it is usually running between 12-13mb.
It caters to businesses though so is expensive, but has SLAs like you would get if you were ordering standard T1s or T3s.
I'll be perfectly happy with the upcoming T-Mobile HSPA+
WTF, why do companies always ignore Los Angeles it's americas second biggest city...
@zebrainez compared to SF and NYC, not enough "head up their ass" hipsters.
Is it possible? No. Its just too much to hope for....that I may finally be able to tell Comcast to fuck off?!?!
Please let it be true!
What about LA ?!!?!!??!!
I am more excited about 4G LTE than this. What percentage of the world is actually going to WiMax over LTE?
@SlickVic There is 1 LTE network in Sweden or wherever.
Then there is this...which doesn't even have Clear networks on it as far as I can tell:
http://www.wimaxmaps.org/
So without reaching too much, I think the answer to your question is, "A very large percentage."