The benefit of a consistent technological standard alone to the service provider community is significant. The collection of numerous best of breed technology innovations into one consistent package will improve service. The WiMAX spectrum efficiency gains are very solid, which will leverage the ability to provide service to denser customer bases for lower costs. A more consistent technological approach is a key ingredient to identifying best practices for delivering broadband wireless access consistently across multiple geographic and radio frequency (RF) environments.

The cost savings from silicon chip based support of WiMAX technology offers profound implications. The WiMAX forum states that it expects the first wave of customer premise equipment (CPE) to be available to carriers in the $350 US price range. Second generation gear which will offer improved self-installation capabilities (per the Forum) should sell in the $250 US cost range. Whereas the third generation of WiMAX gear usable for laptops and other portables could sell in the $100 range.

Industry pundits widely believe that sub $100 CPE is essential for the broad acceptance of BWA technology. More recent conversations offer hope for integrated chips that could drop below $50 each when volume manufacturing comes online. Lastly, the opportunity to shop vendors for enhanced feature sets while being able to consistently count upon a base set of radio capabilities can only help the service provider industry in creating market differentiation from wireline products---hopefully heralding a new era of enormously flexible, mobile and powerful broadband services.