M-WAG Maidstone trial results

July 24, 2017

Mobile WiMax Group (M-WAG), a collaborative group of companies that are trying to promote mobile WiMAX, announced yesterday the findings from a trial that took place in 2016 and 2017 in Maidstone, Kent.

The trial encompassed the first use of live end-to-end 2.5GHz Mobile WiMAX.

There were four principals that were highlight in the trials which took place over 7.5 square kilometres of the centre of Maidstone: CCTV monitoring, public safety, workforce mobility, and building inspection.

The deployments which were spread through the Maidstone Borough Council and the Kent Fire & Rescue Service resulted in findings that mobile WiMAX is able to offer positive benefits over the current processes and technologies and can help improve overall service and costs.

IT technical Services Manager of the Maidstone Borough Council, Chris Woodward, said that the trials showed the flexibility that is offered by Mobile WiMAX and shows there are clear and specific benefits to deploying the service throughout public service organizations.

M-WAG partners who participated in the trial included Alvarion who provided the WiMAX BreezeMAX base stations in the middle of Maidstone and MLL Telecom which was primarily responsible for the integration, design, and management of the network.

Despite the successful reviews of the service after the trial, Bluenowhere, a wireless network operator that is part of M-WAG, said that without any major operator to back the new technology it is most likely not going to actually get deployed and used widely.

M-WAG is a competitor of the 3G networks looking to assume the title of the future 4G network but LTE is currently the popular choice of most western world organizations for 4G.