The focus of wireless broadband, and in particular WiMAX has now shifted towards the area of mobility, although there will still be some opportunities in the fixed broadband markets. WiMAX is well suited to the mobile sector as the future of wireless/mobile rests very much with personal broadband - where broadband is delivered to individual personal devices which are enabled for mobility.

In terms of developments, after years of waiting, the WiMAX standard was finally ratified in late 2005 and by early 2006 the first certified products entered the market. However, it will not be until 2009 that more commercial viable services will become available. In the fixed broadband market, niche opportunities will reside in metropolitan areas where WiMAX can deliver premium broadband services. WiMAX may also be of use in some regional markets where it is uneconomical to use fixed networks. In the developing markets such as China and India, WiMAX will certainly be able to tap into the fixed broadband market, simply because there are no fixed networks available at all.

It is however becoming more and more apparent that wireless broadband is much better suited for the delivery of mobile data and this infrastructure also has better potential for the delivery of VoIP. These are two reasons why wireless broadband could start challenging 3G in the next decade. 3G is obsolete in terms of being able to deliver a business model that offers affordable mass market wireless broadband services - and all roads will eventually lead to IP based 4G. Both WiMAX and 3G HSPA (the latter one through the LTE technology) can be used to move towards 4G, somewhere around 2012.

While WiMAX is still trying to get a foothold in the market, the mobile operators are moving forward and employing HSPA for 3G networks; the latest addition in the long list of mobile data technologies. While the capabilities are impressive, the high user charges of the services on offer are inhibiting its business potential. Interestingly however, under the pressure of capped mobile prices there is a significant increase in data traffic both over 2G and 3G networks, indicating that the key to mobile data and wireless broadband is communications , rather than portals or PSMS. Under these newly emerging business models users are mainly using these services for email and Internet access.

Meshed wireless broadband services for city centres and major suburbs are also being developed, and together with WiMAX, WiFi is set to continue to play a key role. Hotspots can be easily connected to create a mesh-network and we are also beginning to see WiMAX technologies being used for the backbone, making WiFi more and more independent of incumbent networks. Some interesting developments are certainly happening in the USA along these lines (funded by advertising). These networks could put further pressure both on fixed broadband and mobile networks to increase their network speeds at more affordable prices.

While Bluetooth arguably predates WiFi, it has been the latter technology that has monopolised the limelight in recent years, while Bluetooth has ended up with an image of never having been able to deliver on its promises. Nevertheless Bluetooth has, in the meantime, become seamlessly integrated into billions of products; in 2007 it is estimated that the number of Bluetooth device users has passed the 1 billion mark. In this process the technology has become more of an enabling technique than a stand-alone development. However the technologies of Bluetooth/UWB conceptually, at least, will have a strong influence of future developments of WiMAX.