Escazu and Santa Ana will be the first towns to benefit from Wi-Max access in Costa Rica, RACSA has announced its new program for 2006.  This will allow properly equipped PCs, laptops PDAs and cell phones wireless broadband access to the Internet.

The main advantages of the technology are lower cost (no wires), higher speeds( 500kbit/s and 2 Mbit/s) and better range (5 to 8 km from cells as opposed to 3 km for DSL lines).  RACSA plans to install one cell in Santa Ana - Escazu in January to serve 500 accounts. During the remainder of 2006 they plan to install 6 cells in the GAM (Grand Metropolitan Area) to serve 20,000 users. 

 Wi-MAX technology is promoted by the WiMax Forum, the board includes enterprises like:

According to the Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax)
WiMAX is an acronym that stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, a certification mark for products that pass conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 standards.  Products that pass the conformity tests for WiMAX are capable of forming wireless connections between them to permit the carrying of internet packet data. It is similar to WiFi in concept, but has certain improvements that are aimed at improving performance and should permit usage over much greater distances.

Visit the Wikipedia for complete information about WiMax.