X Forum Forecast WiMAX Forum has published a report that summarizes User, Subscriber, Operator and Country Forecasts from 2007-12 for both Fixed and Mobile WiMAX technologies. Some highlights of this report are as follows [20]: WiMAX is expected to have a subscriber base of about 133.66 million worldwide at the end of 2012. WiMAX is expected to be deployed by 538 operators in 201 countries by 2012. There is more than one user per subscription today; as mobile and portable subscriptions become an increasing part of the subscriber mix theaverage number of users per subscription will fall. For example, South Korea has about 1.05 users per subscription in 2007 while it expected to have about 1.01 in 2012. By 2012 the Asia Pacific region will lead the market in total actual users, with North America in second place followed by Europe, Africa/the Middle East and the Americas. User numbers in India will overtake those in the USA in 2012, and it is estimated that by then China will have almost as many users as the whole of the Americas region (Latin America and the Caribbean). 4.8 Next Steps/Evolution The IEEE 802.16 working group and WiMAX Forum, are both working on the evolution of WiMAX. The WiMAX technology roadmap includes two major enhancements namely IEEE 802.16m and WiMAX Forum Release 2.0 as shown in Figure 4.21. In 2009 the IEEE completed the 802.16-2009 standard (formerly known as P802.16Rev2). This work (802.16-2009) resulted in the third major revision of IEEE Std 802.16, following IEEE Std 802.16-2001 and IEEE Std 802.16-2004. It consolidates and obsoletes IEEE Standards 802.16-2004, 802.16e-2005 and 802.16-2004/Cor1-2005, 802.16f-2005, and 802.16g-2007. 4.8.1 IEEE 802.16m The IEEE 802.16 Task Group m (TGm) [21] is working on the P802.16m project that intends to amend the IEEE 802.16 WirelessMAN-OFDMA specification SO that, while offering continuing support for legacy WirelessMAN-OFDMA equipment, it can meet the emerging cellular layer requirements of IMT- Advanced next generation mobile networks. The IEEE 