WiBro is an acronym for wireless broadband and is actually a term that is in the process of being phased out in favor of the more collaborative and generic Mobile WiMAX. Korean standards makers early on adopted the term to describe their initiatives towards adopting a version of the 802.16e standard. Basically, the Korean standard chose to accept a specific mobile WiMAX iteration of 802.16e, rather than any future version that included backwards compatibility to fixed wireless 802.16 systems. Korea enjoys probably the most extensive 3G deployments in the world already, and its fixed broadband access per capita is the highest in the world. What it needed was an improved mobile broadband. In fact, the Korean government issued the first three deployment licenses for WiBro/Mobile WiMAX in January of 2005.. Since the WiMAX Forum has chosen to interoperate with WiBro/Mobile WiMAX, this will ultimately result in compatible systems. WiBro/Mobile WiMAX in many respects is driving the mobile side of WiMAX at least from the point of view of vendors eager to provide products to these early deployments. This decision however, results in a backwards compatibility problem with Fixed WiMAX standards or 802.16-2004. The economics of mobile WiMAX however are too compelling to ignore the far majority of Forum members have already solidified on a 802.16e approach.

The smooth interoperability of previous WiBro gear from Samsung with other vendors such as Motorola should be cemented this year as these two companies along with Intel have been chosen as the primary vendor for Sprint Nextel’s WiMAX deployment. The two companies clearly have a powerful incentive for their products to work seamlessly.