More than 150 pilot and commercial deployments of WiMAX networks are currently in use and the first group of certified fixed network products is expected to become available by the end of the year, the president of the WiMAX Forum reported late Thursday.

"WiMAX products are shipping and we expect to see strong momentum of rapid deployments around the globe," said Ron Resnick, who is also an Intel executive, in a statement. "The growing list of 350-plus WiMAX Forum members--comprised of operators, equipment and chip suppliers and content providers--continues to unveil new products and solutions."

While the first group of WiMAX Forum-certified products is slated to be for fixed outdoor networks, Resnick said that the WiMAX Forum is on track also to provide certification of equipment supporting not only fixed, but portable and mobile WiMAX applications.

In product tests at Plugfest, this week's WiMAX-oriented meetings in China, the WiMAX Forum said average throughput of equipment tested ranged from 2.8 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps. The implementations were conducted in the 3.5 GHz frequency spectrum.

Companies that participated in the Plugfest testing for interoperability included Airspan Networks Inc, Alvarion, Aperto Networks, Axxcelera Broadband Wireless, Huawei Technologies, PicoChip, Proxim Wireless, Redline Communications, SEQUANS Communications, Waveset Wireless Inc., WiNetworks and ZTE Corporation. Test equipment manufacturers Invenova Corporation and Sanjole also participated.

The WiMAX Forum noted that wide-area wireless technology has been playing well in China. Song Junde, a professor at the Beijing University of Posts and telecommunications, summed up the importance of WiMAX for China. He stated: "In China this is especially important as WiMAX is capable of connecting the next billion broadband users globally, especially in regions where there is no wired broadband infrastructure available."