THE WiMax wait is predicted (or rather promised) to end come 2008.

Last month, Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik made two important announcements: the calling back of the under-utilised 2.5 and 3.5 WiMax spectrum licences, and the official decision to have 2.3 Gigahertz (GHz) as the WiMax spectrum for Malaysia at the Asean Communications & Multimedia Expo and Forum (ACM 2007).

The minister says that the apparatus licences issued for the recalled spectrum were under, or never utilised.

However, those using proprietary standards such as the Izzinet’s i-Burst 1.7GHz spectrum shall remain. With all these radio frequencies flying about, a small country like Malaysia, he argues, would be too crowded with towers and radio waves. So the need to recall the licences.

The eyes of the world however, is on Packet 1 Sdn Bhd, since it will be the first to roll out its 2.3GHz WiMax services in June next year.

Some folks at this point will be asking: why such fuss about WiMax? Aren’t there alternatives available to solve the last-mile poser with copper-riding asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL)?

Just ask Motorola Home & Networks Mobility, South & East Asia’s head of technology Dr Ray Owen. He thinks that with alternatives such as 3G network, which shares resources with the voice network, telco operators will have to halve their voice network income.

At the recent ACM 2007 WiMax Summit, Owen says 3G is not big enough to cope with users’ demand from a broadband Internet connection.

Packet 1 Sdn Bhd’s chief executive officer Michael Lai says WiMax is the solution that the world has been waiting for.

WiMax, he says, is purely built for data, which differentiates it with other last-mile solutions.

“In the data world, voice and other uses are just applications running on IP (Internet protocol) technology,” he says. This means WiMax could be the voice carrier of choice in the future if things bode well for the technology to catch on: good and cheap.

That’s how the Malaysian public likes it. Because of these reasons, WiMax will be the technology of choice for emerging markets.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, it remains a numbers game to drive broadband penetration – so it’s not based on the need for speed.

WiMax, in this case, is meant to compliment ADSL and for those hard-to-reach parts of the nation; it was never meant to compete head-on.

There are still a lot of trailblazing to do: Packet 1 intends to have 25 per cent of Malaysia covered in the first year. The company intends to grab 10 per cent of the current market share for broadband services. It might not seem too ambitious but Packet 1, the offshoot of the successful Green Packet outfit, is only a year old.

In the past, WiMax has evolved a lot and finally gained a lot of momentum. We have been waiting for a solution for the last-mile problem since ADSL was rolled out. Let’s hope that it doesn’t take another six months to become a reality.