1,000 WiMAX products expected by 2011

According to the WiMAX Forum, over 1,000 WiMAX-enabled products could be launched into the market by 2011. Around 100 will launch in 2008 alone.

Ron Resnick, the president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum, revealed the figures at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Resnick noted the 2.3 GHz spectrum band will be certified for use by WiMAX-based services in South Korea shortly. Korea Telecom has approximately 100,000 WiMAX subscribers, and this is expected to grow to 400,000 by the end of the year.

WiMAX is also growing in the US, with Sprint Nextel and Clearwire expecting to receive certification for use of the 2.5 GHz band for their WiMAX joint venture.

The WiMAX Forum estimates that there are 260 WiMAX networks currently in commercial deployment around the world, although some of these do not yet have services running.

The available spectrum for WiMAX could provide coverage to 4 billion people.