News

Waiting for LTE: Rural need for WiMAX H&S stopgap?

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 04 March 2010

A few weeks ago, Urgent Communications (Lynnette Luna) suggested that WiMAX could help country folk, waiting for full LTE wireless:

"WiMAX could be a rural solution, particularly in the short term."

Her argument was that public safety bodies "take a look again at WiMAX — not as a long-term alternative for a nationwide Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, but as a stopgap measure until a nationwide network is in place, which could take five years or more."

And she added:

"Certainly I received the usual comments arguing that commercial providers are not up to public safety's standards (i.e. reliability, priority access). I get it. But does it have to be, at this point, for public safety to take advantage of WiMAX?"

Read further: http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/wimax/commentary/wimax-rural-solution-20100303/