The Hurdles and Hopes of WiMAX in New York City

New York City, one of the most densely-populated, fast-paced, and forward-thinking cities in the world, may soon be moving even that much faster thanks to WiMAX.

Whether holding a corporate meeting outdoors in Central Park using video conferencing or streaming live TV to your laptop while waiting for relatives to arrive in Grand Central, WiMAX may be the tool to make this all possible.

This 4G technology has the promise of ensuring that customers and businesses will have more freedom and mobility in staying connected at all times.

After Clearwire and Sprint unveiled their CLEAR service in Portland, Oregon in January 2009, WiMAX rollout has expanded across the US and is currently available in 27 major cities nationwide, including Atlanta, Honolulu, Chicago, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Seattle.

Recent announcements for future WiMAX rollout include Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Washington, DC and New York City.

Though an exact date has yet to be revealed, Sprint is targeting 120 million customers using its 4G service by the end of 2010.

Originally targeting poor, underdeveloped, rural communities where there was little or no access to Internet, WiMAX is now the wireless solution of choice in urban, suburban, and rural markets worldwide.

In the past few years, the process of buildout in rural areas had a number of barriers including no access to resources, inadequate infrastructure, and a lack of power sources to name a few.

After mastering these challenges, it will be interesting to follow how WiMAX develops in a massive metropolis like New York City.

This being said, there will be a variety of hurdles to overcome before WiMAX in New York will become a real possibility. The city's extremely dense population, challenging topology, skyscrapers, and mirrored surfaces and buildings must all be taken into consideration when planning the configuration and launch of WiMAX.

Engineers will have to find innovative and practical solutions to scale these barriers and it has been reported that Clearwire has already begun the search for engineers capable of such planning in the tri-state area.

Buildout of WiMAX in New York City may take over a year but looking ahead to the future of 4G shows that the sky's the limit in terms of worldwide broadband access for everyone.

After having a major impact with international deployment in rural communities and large cities alike, the success of WiMAX in a fast-paced, competitive, and ever-evolving market like New York City will demonstrate the staying power and superior quality of this cutting-edge technology.

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