I read about this too. Apparently it uses a wider range of frequencies in the microwave band than existing WiFi. That means that it has A ) greater range
B ) wider scope for avoiding interference
and C ) more potential to cause interference
Here's what I expect will happen. New providers will emerge and will run powerful transceivers, they'll have high bandwidth connections to the regional backbone. End users will take out a contract with the provider and never have to worry about location or wires ever again. They'd be able to use their connection anywhere in their home city/district/region.
Also... I expect this will make the internet even harder to police. Short of using microwave triangulation, it's going to be hard to pinpoint a hacker's geographical position in the near future. GSM networks are able to fairly quickly locate a phone user or a GPRS user if they're ordered to do so by a court, because they have many transceivers. Triangulation is easy for them and they can usually fix the location to within a few metres. I suppose as this new WiMax (dangerous name - it's not likely to be the 'max' for long) technology becomes more popular, the larger providers may invest in multiple transceivers... who knows, we may even get national or international coverage. If this happens, it will once again be relatively easy to locate users.
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