WiMAX is more often mentioned as a potential residential broadband or mobile broadband alternative than it is as an enterprise solution, but there is plenty of reason to believe we'll see a lot of WiMAX in vertical enterprise markets. For one thing, enterprise verticals have proved pretty friendly to broadband wireless thus far. Just ask wireless ISPs like AirBand and NextWeb, which are making a living off them already.

Mark Spagnolo, president and CEO of AirBand, said recently: “We felt that medium and large enterprises presented a market void. Having been with a carrier [Spagnolo had previously been CEO of Broadwing], it seemed like there was no one among the carriers who were really doing all that well in serving the enterprise, and with broadband wireless, we can dial up more bandwidth for those enterprise customers much more quickly.”

Vendors like point-to-point system supplier GigaBeam also have had success catering to enterprises, particularly to government customers, on its own and through carrier channel partners. “It's because federal government buildings are now mandated to have physically diverse communications paths in and out of the buildings,” said John Krzywicki, vice president of marketing, strategy and business development for GigaBeam.

Now, WiMAX is prepared to offer an upgrade for enterprise broadband wireless deployments. Late last year, the WiMAX Forum issued a White Paper titled “Can WiMAX Address Your Applications?” It notes that WiMAX's deployment flexibility for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint architectures, its support for both the triple data encryption standard and the advanced encryption standard — plus its built-in quality of service for popular enterprise applications like voice over IP — make it an apt technology for deployment in enterprise verticals such as banking, education and public safety.

At last month's WCA International Symposium and Business Expo, Sequans Communications, one of the first two WiMAX chipset developers to earn WiMAX Forum product certification, announced a deal to supply LG Electronics with silicon for a variety of devices. Having field programmable gate array chips that can be configured for laptops, PDAs, phones or other subscriber stations will go a long way toward making WiMAX viable for the enterprise, said Bernard Aboussouan, vice president of marketing and business development for Sequans. It appears that WiMAX's prospects to have enterprise success are falling into place.