WiMAX growth in the US lags, worldwide growth explodes

WiMAX is slowly and steadily expanding in the U.S. through the efforts of Clearwire, the primary provider of WiMAX stateside. Globally, WiMAX is on a different track, exhibiting explosive growth with Asia Pacific and Europe leading the pack. The numbers, compiled by the WiMAX Forum, are revealing:
■Asia Pacific: 237 million people covered by 100 network deployments
■Europe: 115 million people covered by 153 network deployments
■Central/Latin America: 113 million people covered 109 network deployments
■Africa/Middle East: 108 million people covered by 142 network deployments
■North America: 47 million people covered by 51 network deployments
Though Clearwire is currently behind the curve globally, it has set a lofty goal of blanketing 120 million people by the end of 2010. If achieved, Clearwire will be sitting pretty on top of a large potential user base while its competition, namely Verizon Wireless, is only beginning to roll out LTE commercially on a small scale. Look for things to get interesting in 2011 and beyond when the two 4G technologies begin competing head to head on a more level basis.