The six companies are Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel Corporation, Samsung Electronics and Sprint. To accomplish its goals, the OPA will form a WiMAX patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost.

WiMax would provide high-speed Internet connections for laptops and cell phones. WiMax will cover wide areas of the United States while providing the next generation of high-speed Internet access for cell phone users.

The main difference between WiFi and WiMAX is that the latter has a radius of up to 2-3 miles that allow for handoffs from one base station to another, as users move about a region or metro area. Additionally, WiMAX networks integrate technology designed to maximize the quality of service for each subscriber.

The Open Patent Alliance expects to secure participation of an additional six to nine investor companies to encompass the WiMAX value-chain and broad geographic representation.

Last year Sprint has also announced a 20-year agreement with Clearwire Corp. for building a WiMAX network all across the United States, which is expected to eventually providing coverage to about 300 million users.

Sprint plans on launching commercial WiMAX service in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area this year. Samsung has been working with Sprint in the United States to test and build Sprint’s XOHM mobile broadband Internet service compliant to the mobile WiMAX standard.