WiMAX has an excellent opportunity to expand China's market for fixed, portable, and mobile broadband access, but WiMAX development in China is still confronting some barriers: immature 802.16e products, competition from the 3G industry, and uncertain spectrum allocation.

WiMAX does have many advantages in cost, flexibility and deployment convenience. WiMAX is a data network access technology, which means no circuit switching (CS) domain is required, whereas 3G, the alternative technology, is divided into CS and packet switching (PS) domains, which carry voice and data.

It is predicted that in an aggressive scenario, the subscriber base in China will increase from 8,000 in 2005 to over 3.5 million by 2010. In a conservative scenario, the subscriber base will grow to over 1.2 million by the year 2010.

In early 2006, China Netcom began to deploy WiMAX 802.16-2004 systems (3.5GHz) for fixed wireless access (voice and data) in Guangdong province, aimed at small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and the residential market.

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