The consortium has retained Gartner Group, Inc. to advise on industry issues, strategies and best practices. Gartner will also assist in the organization and administration of the consortium body. Broadband wireless access is now in commercial trials on a global basis. In the United States, both Sprint and WorldCom have initiated commercial trials in a number of their markets. Latin American operators have also begun to deploy services in the MMDS band.
Open standards are a critical maturation step for widespread service deployment.
Efforts such as these by the consortium will help facilitate the adoption of open standards and will work to speed the deployment of broadband wireless services to residential and business users. The 2GHz to 4GHz band is ideally suited for providing broadband wireless services to the home as well as to business. The FCC has allocated spectrum in the 2.5GHz MMDS band for the U.S. market, and International authorities are making spectrum available in the 3.5GHz band. Several standards bodies, including IEEE and ITU, have begun to address standards for air interfaces. The Wireless DSL Consortium will be an important resource for these organizations as they prepare standards for the industry.