The WiMAX Forum is reporting that WiMAX technology now covers 620 million people in 147 countries around the world. Further, it expects that figure to hit one billion by the end of 2011.
"WiMAX networks continue to expand at a very healthy pace despite challenges from the slowly recovering global economy," said WiMAX Forum President and Chairman Ron Resnick in a statement. "These new deployment numbers and population statistics demonstrate that the WiMAX ecosystem has strong momentum for the start of the New Year and will continue to meet the global market demand for high-speed broadband access in developed and emerging regions."
The WiMAX Forum also said the growing device ecosystem of 4G devices would help spur growth over the next year. More than 178 devices were WiMAX-certified in 2009 and ten were certified in the first month of 2010. The Forum estimates there will be more than 1,000 certified devices on the market by 2011.
WiMAX is most widely adopted in the Asia Pacific region, where there are 100 network deployments covering 237 million people. Central American and Latin America come in second with 109 deployments covering 113 million people. Africa and the Middle East have 142 deployments covering 108 million people while Europe's 153 deployments cover 115 million people.
North America came in last, where WiMAX technology covers 47 million people thanks in large part to the efforts of Clearwire. The company plans to roll out its 4G service in several large metro areas over the next year including New York and San Francisco with the goal of covering 120 million people by the end of the year.
"The expansion of our footprint will help meet the pent up demand for true mobile broadband in the U.S. and allow us to continue to serve as a global resource for best practices in 4G network development around the world," said Clearwire Senior Vice President of Global Ecosystem and Standards Ali Tabassi in a statement.