8. WIMAX COULD BOOST GOVERNMENT SECURITY

In an emergency, communication is crucial for government officials as they try to determine the cause of the problem, find out who may be injured and coordinate rescue efforts or cleanup operations. A gas-line explosion or terrorist attack could sever the cables that connect leaders and officials with their vital information networks.
WiMAX could be used to set up a back-up (or even primary) communications system that would be difficult to destroy with a single, pinpoint attack. A cluster of WiMAX transmitters would be set up in range of a key command center but as far from each other as possible. Each transmitter would be in a bunker hardened against bombs and other attacks. No single attack could destroy all of the transmitters, so the officials in the command center would remain in communication at all timesHere's what would happen if you got WiMAX. An Internet service provider sets up a WiMAX base station 10 miles from your home. You would buy a WiMAX-enabled computer (some of them should be on store shelves in 2005) or upgrade your old computer to add WiMAX capability. You would
receive a special encryption code that would give you access to the base station. The base station would beam data from the Internet to your computer (at speeds potentially higher than today's cable modems), for which you would pay the provider a monthly fee. The cost for this service could be much lower than current high-speed Internet-subscription fees because the provider never had to run cables.

Network scale: The smallest-scale network is a personal area network (PAN). A PAN allows devices to communicate with each other over short distances.
Bluetooth is the best example of a PAN.
The next step up is a local area network (LAN). A LAN allows devices to share information, but is limited to a fairly small central area, such as a company's headquarters, a coffee shop or your house. Many LANs use WiFi to connect the network wirelessly.
WiMAX is the wireless solution for the next step up in scale, the metropolitan area network (MAN). A MAN allows areas the size of cities to be connected.
. If you have a home network, things wouldn't change much. The WiMAX base station would send data to a WiMAX-enabled router, which would then send the data to the different computers on your network. You could even combine WiFi with WiMAX by having the router send the data to the computers via WiFi.
WiMAX doesn't just pose a threat to providers of DSL and cable-modem service. The WiMAX protocol is designed to accommodate several different methods of data transmission, one of which is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP allows people to make local, long-distance and even international calls through a broadband Internet connection, bypassing phone companies entirely. If WiMAX-compatible computers become very common, the use of VoIP could increase dramatically. Almost anyone with a laptop could make VoIP calls.