WiMax will become a last-mile access technology integrated in laptops and other end-user devices. In the near term, however, WiMax will probably have the most viability for backhauling the rapidly increasing volumes of traffic being generated by Wi-Fi hotspots. The United States is looking to expand the spectrum to satisfy what could be enormous demand for WiMax technology. In 2006 and 2007, the U.S. government is expected to auction off the separate 1.71GHz and 2.11GHz frequency bands for WiMax applications. Also, the United States hopes to shift the TV market to digital by 2009, thereby freeing up more spectrum, possibly for WiMax. By early 2009, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will auction off the 700MHz band, which is currently occupied by analog TV. Although WiMax has an edge because it is an open standard backed by multi- ple companies-notably Intel (www.intel.com)-it still faces plenty of challenges. Today, vendors must wade through many competing standards and proprietary technologies. There are also multiple WiMax spectrum bands to contend with, which makes it difficult to roam between networks. We are headed toward multiple WiMax systems, including 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz in the United States and Asia and 3.5GHz in Europe. Again, in the United States, WiMax vendors hope to get some of Chapter 15 WMANs, WLANs, and WPANs the 700MHz spectrum the U.S. government will reclaim from analog TV stations in early 2009. Although it is technically possible to have roaming across all these works, stitching together a patchwork of global WiMax spectrum bands is another challenge. However, at this time, the industry consensus seems to be that 802.1 16e has the best shot at a mass market, although costs must come down first. WiBro Korea's ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute; www.etri.re. kr/www_05/e_etri/), along with Samsung (www.samsung.com), is the leading developer of the Wireless Broadband (WiBro) technology, which it calls the "porta- ble Internet." Before WiBro, there was HPi (