Bluenowhere, a municipal wireless wholesale network operator, has warned that Mobile WiMAX broadband wireless technology is unlikely to see a proper UK-wide deployment because none of the country's five major Mobile Broadband operators have given it any firm backing.

Instead the super fast fixed wide area Wi-Fi style service is likely to remain a niche technology, used only by a small number of ISPs, such as FREEDOM4 and UrbanWiMAX etc. The move is unsurprising, with most operators having long appeared to envisage Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology as a replacement to existing HSPA (3G) based Mobile Broadband services.


Instead mobile WiMAX is likely to be promoted as a ubiquitous DSL (e.g. SDSL, ADSL etc.) land-line broadband alternative, albeit in more isolated areas and across some town centres. For the record, both mobile WiMAX and LTE are often referred to as 4G (4th Generation) technologies.

However we do think there is scope for WiMAX to be used as an effective technology for helping to fill in some of the country's remaining gaps in broadband coverage, though the government barely even managed to name it in their recent Digital Britain report.