Chicago Pre-WiMax Not About WiMax At All
We pretty much figured this was true considering the state of the WiMax standard, but TowerStream’s announcement last week that they were offering “pre-standard WiMax” in Chicago has absolutely nothing to do with WiMax at all. While a number of reporters picked up the story and left out the whole “pre-standard” part, WiFi Planet even got the company to ‘fess up that what they’re offering won’t be upgradeable to WiMax either, and that they’ll basically have to build an overlay to make their networks WiMax compatible. In other words, it’s not WiMax at all, and it’s not even pre-WiMax, it’s just wireless broadband – but since WiMax is hot, they just declared themselves pre-WiMax. Well, that’s just dandy. Apparently, it’s now okay to declare the technology of your choice as “pre-standard” on any standard that has not yet been set. Seems something like false advertising to me.
