What the company claimed was the first commercially available WiMAX Forum-certified Mobile WiMAX network in the US has been launched in Jackson, Wyoming.

BridgeMAXX mobile service is provided by DigitalBridge Communications (DBC) Corp., based in Ashburn, Va., and uses WiMAX Forum Certified BreezeMAX 2.5 GHz equipment from Alvarion Ltd., a Tel Aviv manufacturer. DBC currently provides WiMAX service to a number of other cities in the Intermountain West, and will be upgrading those areas to mobile WiMAX over the next 12 to 18 months, said Stephanie Soscia, director of marketing.

Mobile WiMAX uses a technology known as multi-base station handoff that enables a computer in a moving location, such as a car, to continue receiving information from the Internet. Typically, WiMAX is stationary.

Soscia said Mobile WiMAX has been available in Jackson - the downtown and surrounding areas...for about two weeks. She would not provide numbers but said the company has seen a "significant amount of demand."

The service costs $39 a month for a one-year contract for 1 Mbps download and 256 Kbps upload, and includes the rent of a WiMAX card. The company has also tested speeds higher than that and hopes to offer higher speeds later for a higher price, Soscia said. Like cable modem, users share the bandwidth and so performance is to a certain degree predicated on how many people are using the service in a particular area at the same time.

Soscia would not say how many square miles the network covered nor how many towers it used, but said that in other deployments they typically saw a range of 1.5 miles up to 4 or 5 miles per tower.

After providing WiMAX service to a number of cities in Idaho and Montana, the company had intended to provide WiMAX service in Jackson, and pointed to the area's demographics as a reason to roll out Mobile WiMAX there.

However, Laramie-based Brett Glass, who said he was Wyoming's first wireless broadband provider, said WiMAX is not significantly better than existing wireless service and that there are other wireless providers in the area, such as Jackson Hole Compunet, that already provide service. Jackson Hole Compunet charges $65 per month for 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload, including renting equipment, but with a $250 installation charge and a one-year contract requirement.