About 560,000 wireless fixed broadband access or WiMAX subscribers were added in the second quarter of 2009, according to Maravedis (News - Alert).

The average subscriber growth rate was 16.5 percent higher than the first quarter of 2009 and 74 percent year-over-year.

Separately, Time Warner Cable announced that it will launch a mobile WiMAX service in Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, N.C. on December 1, 2009. The company also plans to debut the service in Dallas and parts of Hawaii in the fourth quarter.

Time Warner Cable will use the Clearwire's (News - Alert) WiMAX network, but market the service under its own "Road Runner Mobile" brand. Customers using the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network can expect Internet speeds up to 6 Mbps, according to the company.

Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite gives Roadrunner broadband access customers unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable’s 4G Mobile Network and Sprint's (News - Alert) 3G EVDO network for $80 a month.

Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite gives current broadband access customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $50.

Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice gives customers buying at least two Time Warner Cable services access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $40. This tier also caps usage at 2 Gbps per month.

At the same time, the WiMAX Forum (News - Alert) is proceeding with its "WiMAX Release 2" effort based on the IEEE 802.16m standard. The effort will ensure backwards compatibility with the fixed version of the standard.

The WiMAX Forum has proposed an IEEE 802.16m-based standard for "IMT-Advanced" fourth generation networks.

There now are about 500 network deployments in more than 145 countries, which some WiMAX backers use to claim that WiMAX is the "leading" mobile broadband technology.

But some question how big the WiMAX market will be, given global support by mobile operators for the Long Term Evolution standard. There also are greater questions about the possiblity of merging the WiMAX and LTE standards.

By some estimates, the total number of WiMAX customers worldwide as of mid-2009 is about three million, including those on "pre-WiMAX" networks.

Hence the "average" number of customers on a WiMAX network is 6,000. Since a few WiMAX networks have between one hundred thousand to a few hundred thousand customers (Clearwire accounts for over 500,000 including pre-WiMAX), many WiMAX deployments have a customer base that is far smaller than 6,000.

In contrast the total number of HSPA (the faster version of 3G running up to 14 Mbps in the downlink) customers is close to 150 million as of mid-2009.

Almost all major wireless network equipment vendors are now devoting their development resources to LTE, one can observe. To the extent that volume production is required to get client side gear prices low, LTE should have a great advantage.