It hasn’t been all that long since WiMAX was rolled out and the first WiMAX smartphone the Sprint HTC EVO 4G is expected soon, but now according to an article over on gizmodo, the next release of WiMAX, WiMAX 2 is coming.

According to a release by businesswire, a group of heavy hitters in the mobile arena including Samsung, Motorola, ZTE, and Sequans have formed the WiMAX 2 Collaboration Initiative in support of the backwards compatible 802.16m standard.

The WCI is pushing interoperability in the new protocol which hopes to push things along a tad speedier in the battle against LTE. They do note though that current WiMAX users Sprint and Clearwire are absent from the group.

The objectives of the WiMAX 2 Collaboration Initiative includes technology collaboration and joint performance benchmarking, early network level interoperability testing, joint testing of 4G applications over WiMAX 2 solutions and plugfests to prepare for WiMAX Forum certification.

Image courtesy of dailytech