International broadband wireless (particularly fixed wireless) technologies are fragmented and flailing to find their place in the high-speed service landscape.  The diverse, competing proprietary technologies confuse customers who are unsure how to parse the advantage claims of vendors.  It slows adoption by carriers and creates uncertainty in the customer's mind as to reliability and capability. 

Costs are high relative to competing broadband technologies.  This is a huge problem as broadband wireless access is perhaps the best choice to solve the data needs of many potential customers in rural and remote areas of the US or even developing countries lacking the basic infrastructure to support traditional wireline broadband products. 

On the Mobile side, there is great opportunity for a broadband mobile wireless standard that will deliver cheaper and higher capability broadband.  Current 3G technologies arguably are less inherently efficient and costlier to deliver per transmission bit.  In many ways, the rise of support for the LTE standard amongst mobile wireless carriers is the biggest validation for the value of what the WiMAX Forum™ has accomplished.  The LTE standard has been in the planning phase for years.  However, carriers and the mobile wireless industry would have been very content to steadily build-out 3G networks and maximize their ROI returns on these networks.  It is not unfair to say that WiMAX forced the acceleration of plans to shift to LTE (which is still a couple of years away) in order to compete with the capabilities that WiMAX brings to the table.  It is worth noting too that LTE technology is quite close to WiMAX technology with differences primarily being in the techniques used for uplink and downlink. 

The WiMAX Forum's ™ aim was to cure these ills by creating focus in the industry, consistent and improved technological capabilities and far lower costs for all.