 systems. There were a number of reasons to choose wireless: some regions did not have a wired infrastructure and the cost of new roll-out was excessive. Moreover, wireless systems could provide blanket coverage much more quickly compared with the time required to build a fixed infrastructure. Accordingly in the late 1990s 2G and 3G standards moved to incorporate fast data con- nectivity in addition to voice services. These systems initially specified transmission rates of several hundred megabits per second, for example the first 3G release supported a 384 kbps downlink transmission link. At the same time several companies developed proprietary systems based on the OFDM technology. An ecosystem grew over these systems under the auspices of two IEEE standardisation groups: 802.16 for wireless metropolitan area networking (MAN) and 802.20, known as Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA). In essence the two systems were targeting the same market, provision of wireless broadband connectivity using OFDM technology. Broadband Telecommunications Technologies and Management Of the two standards, 802.16, also known as WiMAX, gained more traction. Several countries rolled out commercial systems to provide broadband access in underserved areas, including Australia, Pakistan and Russia. The first set of 802.16 standards provided a point-to-multipoint star topology architecture through fixed antennas at cus- tomer premises. The 802.16 standard did not support mobility at first, however with the growth of the mobile broadband market, the specifications evolved to support a full- fledged mobile system. It was also specified in both TDD and FDD modes to take advantage of a lower competitive barrier in the TDD market. In 2006 Sprint, a major mobile operator in the United States and Clearwire announced they had selected WiMAX to provide broadband mobile service. A number of manufacturers, including Lucent, Nokia and Samsung, developed handsets and network equipment to support the roll out of the WiMAX system. While WiMAX created