Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) wants to shrink WiMax base stations even further so that they can be used to enhance data transfer speed and capacity in the home, Unstrung has learnt.
Sprint has already revealed some of its plans to ensure decent WiMax coverage inside larger buildings with picocell WiMax radios for campuses, offices, shopping malls, and conference centers with picocells. The Reston, Va., operator also has an RFP out for what it calls "Low Cost Internet Base Stations" but most others in the industry call home base stations or "femtocells." (See Sprint Taking WiMax Indoors.)
A home base station, or femtocell, is a low-cost, low-power 3G cellular radio system that users can put in their dwellings to boost bandwidth and coverage and enable new applications such as fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) in the home. Such mini-base stations have become more interesting to vendors as operators have started to take the devices more seriously, both as an alternative to WiFi hotspots or as a complementary technology.
Sprint has already made it clear that it anticipates that in-building coverage will be an important aspect of its WiMax rollout. "Femtocells are on our radar," says a spokesman for the operator.
The spokesperson, however, wouldn't be drawn on any specifics about particular RFPs. "As a matter of policy we don't comment on RFPs," he says.
Sprint is said to be looking for several hundred thousand of these mini-base stations along with smaller -- but still significant -- numbers of picocell-scale equipment for its WiMax deployment, which is at a testing phase right now and due to go live in many major cities in the U.S. in 2008. CDMA and EV-DO support could also be part of the specifications for these appliances.
The problem for vendors wishing to compete will be pulling together these disparate networking technologies. Indoor wireless specialist RadioFrame Networks Inc.
has been upfront in its plans to bring a WiMax home base station to market. The company has already worked with Nextel on indoor systems and must be considered a strong contender for any new contracts. (See Femtocells Gear Up for 3GSM.)
Meanwhile Unstrung Insider analyst Gabriel Brown considers AirWalk Communications Inc. , Airvana Inc. (Nasdaq: AIRV), and Samsung Corp. to all be in the running since the three vendors are established in the CDMA business. Samsung also has the WiMax chops and experience, especially now that it has been involved in early deployments in South Korea.
Silicon could be key in enabling a multi-radio mini-base station. Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) has already started to express an interest in developing chips for this type of application. Major players such as Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN), as well as smaller companies like picoChip Designs Ltd. , are already working on dedicated femtocell chipsets. Meanwhile, RadioFrame is extending its own OmniFrame silicon to support WiMax. (See Qualcomm's Home Invasion.)
Insider analyst Brown, author of the recent "3G Home Base Stations: Femto Cells & FMC for the Masses" report, says that no matter what happens with Sprint's WiMax-related work, femtocells are one of the new hot technologies in the world of wireless. (See Base Stations Come Home.)
"A major operator will roll out a femtocell deployment this year," says Brown. He predicts that either a CDMA operator in the U.S. or a European operator that has a serious GSM footprint but few 3G networks will be first. [Ed note: No names, no packdrill, eh?]
Yes, it’s not clear how frequency re-use for femto applications will work in OFDMA networks. In CDMA systems re-use is 1 (sort of, as I understand it), so the issue is less acute.
In general femtos seem a good idea. Clearly the best way to higher speeds is to have smaller cells and IP backhaul is good. Finding something that’s easier to use (on a phone) than WiFi would also be nice.
But, regardless of radio interface, most people who might have a femto or FMC service probably already have a phone at home and on their desk. And they probably also have cell phone coverage, so it’s going to take something special to make end-users really desire this kind of service/technology.
Getting good indoor coverage using a macro-cellular WiMAX service at 2.5GHz will be indeed difficult. However, one will get _some_ indoor coverage from the macrocells. If same-band WiMAX picocells/femtocells are deployed in buildings, they will have to be taken into account in the overall network planning, given that the macrocells will interfere with the pico/femtocells and vice-versa. That’s no easy network planning. IMHO, this will most likely lead to inefficient spectrum utilization. I can imagine that one could live with a few GSM channels being dedicated to indoor coverage, but would one really want to do that with a 10MHz WiMAX channels? At least with Wi-Fi does not use the same precious licensed spectrum. That said, using two different technologies does introduce some other headaches.
You make some good points, but it isn't quite as negative as you suggest.
Firstly, although the boosters *claim* WiMAX can do everything, it does still obey laws of physics. The simple fact is that high frequencies, high data rates & indoor coverage do not mix. MIMO etc make things better, but attenuation of metalized windows at 2.5GHz is a problem!
In other words, if you are selling WiMAX on the story of "mobile broadband" there is a problem; you cannot deliver that to the places people most want to use data.
Hence the need for indoor cells to complement the ubiquitous service.
This then comes to the area where WiMAX overlaps with WiFi. It is certainly possible that you could combine the two, and do a cross-technology handoff.
The questions are then what is easier / better for carrier / better for consumer.
Sprint probably have the attitude that it will be easier to manage QoS, to deliver consistent services, to manage billing and security etc if the control the whole network -- and as a result, that they require indoor WiMAX.
No doubt other carriers will judge things differently. For example, BT own a big public WiFi network, so if they were to do WiMAX it might make more sense to plan on a hybrid network. (Especially as they are also doing IMS so they may have more confidence in x-network handoff & service parity).
Finally, part of the business case for femtocells rides on bundling and reducing churn, so you want to tie the broadband and mobile together.
WiMax FEMTO makes no sense to me. In current cellular networks, one of the key touted benefits is to offload traffic from the macro network and leverage "free" wireline backhaul already in the home/business. With WiMax being touted as the mother of all wireless technologies, with better cell radi, MIMO etc leading to better inbuilding penetration, why do I need to provide indoor coverage when i already get it from my macro network?
Besides, in a case of both FEMTO and macro coverage, wouldn't we now negatively impact our overall signal environment?
Also, with the extremeley strong ecosystem for 802.11 and its evolution flavors (n, r, who knows what next), xlarge volumes, and low cost points, why would I want to establish WiMax as the last meter connection in the home? I already have WiFi for that. And plenty of it.
And as a previous poster pointed out, WiFi battery problems will long be solved before WiMax end devices reach the scale of today's WiFi devices (if ever).
Lastly, the key benefit touted for WiMax is that it finally has enough capacity to bring the majority of wireless data services to the sub wirelessly. Why would a wireless operator tie themselves back to the wireline infrastructure to support indoor wireless, especially when they may not control or own the wireline infra. How about SLAs? How about net neutrality?
Except for SMB, Enterprises won't be interested, as they have, in moste cases already capitalized PBX and WiFi installed. Why have a FEMTO to "tempt" employees to use their mobiles more when they could use an already paid for infra? And with IMS coming, our address books will be synchronized across desktop and device already, so not even that argument for using the mobile device is left.
So Sprint's approach of Pico for WiMax makes no sense to me. Only adds to the muddled "we'll do everything" approach coming out of Reston these days....
atiller, I think enterprises want a single wireless network in the office, be able to leverage their telephony infrastructure and the convienience of a single device for mobile employees.
GSM-based solutions give them only 2 out of 3 no matter how you slice it.
Wavefront, in general I agree that WiFi is what enterprises want (for data), but there are good alternatives using picocells integrated with PBX capabilities for voice. For example, take a look at what Spring Mobil offers in Sweden - http://www.springmobil.se/english/default.asp
Splat, low-end 3G base stations don't help enterprises. They want their employees to use their internal telephony infrastructure when they're in the office (PBXs, voicemail, private trunks between sites, etc).
This is, of course, in opposition to Carriers wanting the enterprise to use more cellular minutes. It's unlikely that a carrier will fund deployment of base stations if they don't get the associated call minutes.
Dual-mode phones make a lot of sense for the enterprise market; the battery life issue will be solved.
Carrier operators will soon be testing and deploying Enterprise, Campus and Residential low power 3G Base Stations. Subscribers will not require dual radio phones i.e, burn up handset batteries. This means off the shelf GSM or CDMA handsats for FMC. This will be a huge technology inflection point for the mobility and home broadband market.
The blogs and comments are the opinions only of the writers and do not reflect the views of Light Reading. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
To save this item to your list of favorite Light Reading content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Managing Risk with Analytics - by IBM 7/28/2010
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit