Broadband Subscriber WiMax

Broadband access
Many companies are closely examining WiMAX for last mile connectivity. The resulting competition may bring lower pricing for both home and business customers or bring broadband access to places where it has been economically unavailable.
WiMAX access was used to assist with communications in Aceh, Indonesia, after the tsunami in December 2004. All communication infrastructure in the area, other than Ham Radio, was destroyed, making the survivors unable to communicate with people outside the disaster area and vice versa. WiMAX provided broadband access that helped regenerate communication to and from Aceh.
In addition, WiMAX was used by Intel to assist the FCC and FEMA in their communications efforts in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Subscriber units (Client Units)
WiMAX subscriber units are available in both indoor and outdoor versions from several manufacturers. Self-install indoor units are convenient, but radio losses mean that the subscriber must be significantly closer to the WiMAX base station than with professionally-installed external units. As such, indoor-installed units require a much higher infrastructure investment as well as operational cost (site lease, backhaul, maintenance) due to the high number of base stations required to cover a given area. Indoor units are comparable in size to a cable modem or DSL modem. Outdoor units are roughly the size of a laptop PC, and their installation is comparable to a residential satellite dish.
With the potential of mobile WiMAX, there is an increasing focus on portable units. This includes handsets (similar to cellular smartphones) and PC peripherals (PC Cards or USB dongles). In addition, there is much emphasis from operators on consumer electronics devices (game terminals, MP3 players and the like); it is notable this is more similar to Wi-Fi than 3G cellular technologies.
Current certified devices can be found at the WiMAX Forum web site. This is not a complete list of devices available as certified modules are embedded into laptops, MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), and private labeled devices.