WiMax starts to take off * Where? * Who? * Experiences

July 24, 2008

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WiMax: What's Working Now

After two or three years of trials and early small-scale or niche deployments worldwide, WiMax is finally moving towards large-scale deployments by some Tier 1 and Tier 2 operators, particularly in emerging markets. Table 1 gives a snapshot of some of this global activity, which the WiMAX Forum in June 2008 believed had reached 305 deployments in 118 countries – up from 260 deployments in 110 countries in April 2008.

Table 1: Some Current WiMax Operators & Service Deployments

Operator

Location

WiMax activities

Alg�rie T�l�com

Algeria

Deploying WiMax-based Business WLAN service

Altitude

France

Deploying regional 802.16e WiMax networks to supply corporate, ISP and residential users with primary broadband services

Always On Network Bangladesh

Bangladesh

WiMax network deliveingr free Internet access to Bangladesh primary schools and colleges, as well as broadband services to underserved rural and urban areas

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL)

India

To spend up to $750 million on mobile 802.16e WiMax networks in India, covering both urban and rural areas. Initial services in late 2008 or early 2009 for broadband and voice; other applications to follow

Bollor� Telecom

France

Pilot in Paris region in 2007; has 12 regional 802.16e WiMax licences in France

Brasil Telecom

Brazil

Deploying 802.16e WiMax network in in the cities of S�o Paulo, Curitiba and Porto Alegre and surrounding areas

Casema

Netherlands

Trial in 2007 as part of government-sponsored Smart Homes project to increase community welfare through telecoms

Clearwire / Sprint Nextel (merging into new Clearwire company)

USA

Plans to cover 120 - 140 million people by end 2010. First services in some city areas from existing nonmerged companies due late 2008

Comstar UTS

Russia

Deploying 802.16e mobile WiMax network in Moscow area for service launch in 2008

Consolidated Telecommunications Company

USA

Deploying WiMax networks in central Minnesota for broadband voice and data services

Digicel Group

Caribbean

Deploying 802.16e WiMax to deliver primary voice, data VPN and residential broadband to both corporate and residential customers in various Caribbean countries

DigitalBridge Communications

USA

Deploying WiMax broadband services to small and medium-sized communities of up to 150,000 people nationwide. First service in Rexburg, Idaho, in 2007; 12 cities covered by April 2008. Mobile services introduced in Jackson, Wyoming, in June 2008

Enforta

Russia

Small office, home office, or business communications services offered by a mix of technologies, including WiMax and pre-WiMax, in a network rollout that reached 32 cities by end 2007

Ertach Argentina

Argentina

2007 802.16e WiMax trial in the city of Rosario, targeting SME and corporate users with primary fixed and nomadic broadband services, high-speed Internet and advanced voice services

Etihad Atheeb Telecommunication

Saudi Arabia

Deploying WiMax network to offer widespread broadband access; first service beginning in 2008

Far EasTone Telecom

Taiwan

Deploying Taipei urban WiMax as part of governments M-Taiwan project

FREEDOM4 (formerly Pipex Communications)

UK

Two small pilot city rollouts in 2007; plans national mobile WiMax network

Grupo TVCable

Ecuador

Voice-over-WiMax service

HiTs Africa

Africa

Planning to use WiMax in various African countries

Iberbanda

Spain

Offering high-speed Internet, telephony, data transmission and value-dded services in various regions

Kenya Data Networks

Kenya

KDN Butterfly WiMax-based network offers voice and data services in various Kenyan cities

KPN

Netherlands

Ran WiMax versus HSPA test in 2007

Iliad

France

Trials in 2007

Libya Telecom & Technology (LTT)

Libya

Deploying 802.16e WiMax network to cover Tripoli and seven other main cities

Max Telecom

Bulgaria

Deploying national 802.16e mobile WiMax broadband service

MetroBridge

Canada, USA

Fixed WiMax (no mobility) serving businesses only (no residential customers) in British Columbia, Utah and Arizona

Mipps

Canada

Trials of 802.16e fixed broadband wireless access in 2007

Mobilink

Pakistan

Deploying 802.16e WiMax broadband service in major cities

Monarch Communications

Nigeria

Deploying 802.16e WiMax services for businesses, SOHO, SME and residences. Rollout is planned to begin in Lagos and later in Abuja and Port Harcourt

MSTelecom

Angola

Depolying 802.16e WiMax to support residential and SOHO IP services in Northern Angola

MyTel

Pakistan

Started deployment of WiMax for voice and data communications in Northern Region in 2006

ONEMAX

Dominican Republic

Offers Internet, multimedia and VOIP on 802.16e WiMax

OPEL

Australia

To deploy 1361 WiMax base stations by mid-2009 as part of government-backed Australia Connected national broadband open wholesale service (also uses DSL)

Pacific Internet Philippines

Philippines

Initial WiMax deployment in Greater Metro-Manila area for business services

Personal

Paraguay

Network completed in Asunci�n and Great Asunci�n in 2007, with continuing national rollout, offering business and residential services

Pipeline Wireless

USA

Pre-WiMax deployment in Boston metro area being migrated to WiMax mid-2008 for fixed high-bandwidth services with QOS

Primus Telecommunications Canada

Canada

Trials of 802.16e broadband wireless access in 2007

Reliance Communications

India

Plans to deploy WiMax in India

Saudi Telecom

Saudi Arabia

Deploying 802.16e WiMax network in major cities, including Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam

SHD (SFR/Neuf Cegetel JV)

France

802.16e WiMax service in Paris, and planned for Ile-de-France (IDF) and Provence-Alpes-C�te d�Azur (PACA) regions by mid-2009

Solo Direct Connect

USA

802.16e WiMax broadband service in greater Quad Cities Area including Davenport and Bettendorf, IA as well Moline/East Moline and Rock Island, IL

Sprint Nextel (meging with Clearwire to form new Clearwire)

USA

XOHM mobile WiMax commercial services start in Baltimore (third quarter 2008) and in Chicago and Washington, DC (fourth quarter)

Summa Telecom

Russia

Plans to build a nationwide WiMax network that will cover some 330 cities by 2010 with fixed and later mobile broadband serivices

Tata Communications

India

Deploying in 10 Indian cities, including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. Plans to spend between $500 million and $600 million by 2010 on WiMax networks in India

Telekom Slovenije

Slovenia

WiMax trials began in 2007

Telenor

Norway

Deploying WiMax as fill-in to DSL coverage in rural areas

Telkom

South Africa

Launched Do Broadband Wireless WiMax service in 2007 as DSL fill-in initially

Towerstream

USA

Deploying commercial 802.16e WiMax fixed service in several US cities during 2008; may introduce nomadic services later

TransTelecom

Bulgaria

Initial deployment of 802.16d WiMax in 2006, now upgrading with 802.16e mobile WiMax network, covering central business districts and hot spots in the country's major cities

TVA

Brazil

Trial in Rio Janeiro of 802.16e WiMax

United Information Highway Company

Thailand

Trials completed in 2008 in Bangkok and Phuket of 802.16e WiMax

Unwired Group

Australia

Pre-WiMax ISP to deploy 802.16e mobile WiMax

VDC

Vietnam

Trial deployment in remote village with Intel

Vipfone

Spain

Broadband access in Almeria province since 2007

VSE NET

Germany

802.16e WiMax Saar regional 6Mbit/s broadband service in 2008

VTR

Chile

Deploying 802.16e WiMax to reach 3.4 million homes nationally

Warid

Uganda

Deploying IMS/WiMax network to support advanced services

Wateen Telecom

Pakistan

Deploying national 802.16e WiMax network in Pakistan

Wideway Do Brasil

Brazil

Deploying national WiMax network in Brazil

WiMax Telecom

Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, Croatia

Deploying 802.16d and 802.16e WiMax networks mainly for residential broadband Internet and VOIP since 2005. Currently expanding in Croatia (initially the areas of Split and Osijek followed by other regions) and Switzerland. Plans advanced multimedia services

Worldmax

Netherlands

Deploying national 802.16e mobile WiMax service

ZAIN

Bahrain

Deployed national WiMax network for high-speed fixed and nomadic internet and voice services in 2007

Most of these deployments were announced or became operational during 2007 and 2008. Many of the more recent ones use the so-called 802.16e standard, even if only fixed or nomadic services are currently offered. Source: Light Reading, 2008



In the U.S., despite the increasing commitment to WiMax by numbers of smaller operators and service providers, there has been some media feeling that WiMax has stalled a little. This is primarily because of the on-again/off-again Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) and Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR) national mobile WiMax project. This acquired symbolic significance as potentially being the first Tier 1 mobile operator in a big developed market to commit to WiMax for a major national service – but things seemed to be going awry. (See, for example, Sprint Quiet on WiMax Launch Date and Clearwire Q4 Drops, WiMax News Doesn't.) The feeling went that, if Sprint Nextel, which clearly needs something to boost its sagging competitive position in mobile, couldn’t make national Tier 1 WiMax fly, would anyone else bother to try?

However, the recent proposal to fold Clearwire’s and Sprint Nextel’s WiMax assets into a new company (confusingly also called Clearwire), and the bringing in of substantial big-name strategic investors such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), and Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) could mark a change in perceptions. (See Sprint, Clearwire Create $14.5B WiMax Giant.)

“Sprint's WiMax plans had almost meant there was one major player behind WiMax in the U.S., but Sprint's recent troubles had always cast some doubt on whether the project would ever really take off,” says Jan Dawson, practice leader for Wireline, Wholesale, and Regulation at Ovum Ltd. “The new deal puts a number of other serious players and considerable investment behind the project, and makes it much more likely to achieve significant results. The real test will be when the new Clearwire actually starts to offer services, but it at least has the potential to make a big impact on the U.S. market.”

He points out, too, that a consortium of this size is bound to benefit the global market for WiMax through the additional scale it will bring to infrastructure and device markets, which will help to lower prices. Success would also lend credibility to other deployments around the world. However, although Intel and Google are involved, and will contribute to Clearwire's success, both companies have much more interest in maintaining a degree of neutrality in order to boost the much wider markets for wireless services, so they will not give the new venture preferential treatment. The cable companies and other partners also provide a significant potential distribution channel for the services, although each will use its own brand, so the overall impact that might have been achieved under a single brand will be diluted. The U.S. WiMax story is still running.

Indian Summer
But it is with some major operators in emerging and developing markets that the WiMax story seems at last to be turning the corner into sizable mainstream deployment.

Tom Flak, senior VP of Company Operations at WiMax vendor SOMA Networks Inc. points out that the Tier 1 Indian operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) , will deploy a WiMax network that will be two-and-a-half-times larger than the Clearwire network by the number of people covered.

“I think that we are seeing the initial large announcements. For the real market-share battles, the large customers that are going to drive this market – we are just now starting to see some decisions being made,” he says. “I think that we will see more as 2008 rolls on, but WiMax is just now starting to get traction with the Tier 1 operators.”

Wolfgang Mack, chief marketing officer of WiMax vendor Telsima Corp. , characterizes India as “the epicenter of WiMax in the world today” following the award of 3.3GHz-band spectrum to major operators such as BSNL, Tata Indicom , Reliance Communications Ltd. , and Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Mumbai: BHARTIARTL), and the basic economics of a dearth of wireline options for broadband connectivity.

“The scale of the Indian operators is evidenced by the 10 million mobile phone subscribers added to their networks in March 2008 alone. The need that WiMax fills in India is last-mile broadband connectivity that can be rapidly and economically deployed,” he says. “There are certainly other geographies where WiMax is also achieving market traction, but they’re just not close to the scale that is being deployed in India.”

All this sudden interest in WiMax is not coincidental, as the technology has some very strong technical attractions for certain types of operator, market, and applications. These include being standardized, having an all-IP technology (so supporting service convergence on a single network), and having a favorable cost structure, according to Tom Gruba, senior director of Product Marketing, Wireless Broadband, and WiMax Infrastructure at Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT).

“As it is a standard, you will – or do – have chipsets by multiple manufacturers that will drive the CPE price down. And there are two big components of the business case: the costs of CPE and backhaul,” he says. “WiMax is set to be an opex-driven business case as opposed to a one with heavy capex.”

An obvious practical advantage of the combination of standardization and IP operation is that applications such as VOIP can run over multivendor platforms. This could have a further significance in a market currently characterized by many small new-entrant operators, as it would lessen the technical impediments to any future consolidation among operators.

And, as Margaret LaBrecque, Intel WiMax strategist, points out, much more is coming soon on the device side: “The leading global infrastructure and device vendors are committed to building WiMax devices and infrastructure – 34 chipset suppliers and 94 system vendors in total,” she says. “The first mobile WiMax products will be WiMax Forum Certified around mid-2008, with more than 100 products expected this year. By 2011 we estimate more than 1000 products will be WiMax Forum Certified.”

So what’s real now?
This report aims to look at what operators are really doing with WiMax currently, and to see whether any trends and lessons in its successful use are emerging. It gives a quick overview of the global picture on WiMax deployment, pulls out some key application areas, and examines some of these in a bit more detail through examples provided by specific operators. All this suggests some pointers for WiMax’s future development, and the report ends by looking at the imminent rollout of commercial mobile WiMax services – and the sticky issue of WiMax versus Long-Term Evolution (LTE).

Here’s a hyperlinked contents list:

— Tim Hills is a freelance telecom writer and journalist. He's a regular author of Light Reading reports.

Next Page: Current WiMax Deployments

There is now lots of WiMax activity, both trials and early rollouts (for examples, see Table 1), and the transition to commercial services is now underway, but mainly in what might be called first-phase applications – developing economies, areas with little fixed infrastructure, economic hotspots, and so on. These are applications that play directly to WiMax’s obvious strengths and for which there few technical alternatives. In contrast, in the developed economies, the main interest (with the notable exception of Clearwire in the U.S.) seems currently to be smaller operators and service providers for niche competition with the wireline Tier 1s, or in areas where the Tier 1s have little interest.

Mostly omitted from Table 1, but relevant, are some Tier 1 operators that are interested in the technology’s potential for various special purposes: for example, KDDI Corp. in Japan, KPN Mobile in the Netherlands, and possibly BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) in the U.K. (very much a special case as BT does not have its own mobile network, so WiMax could be a way for BT to get back in to that market – probably for business customers).

WiMax grows up
The basic message is that significant numbers of service providers and operators are starting to roll out real networks for fixed/nomadic WiMax services, and that mobile WiMax products (the next technology phase) are appearing. So, in general, WiMax is beginning to happen, and some vendors think that 2008 is going to mark the transition to a more mainstream status for the technology.

Also, the first steps have been taken to establish the commercial environment for mobile WiMax, with the signing in March 2007 of the world’s first mobile WiMax roaming agreement by members of the WiMax Spectrum Owners Alliance (WiSOA) . (See WiSOA Wants WiMax Roaming.) “The agreement and partnership is the crucial first step in what will provide for seamless ‘GSM-like’ roaming amongst WiMax networks, and roaming partnerships with global WiFi and 3G networks – expediting the rollout of interoperable WiMax services worldwide,” said the WiSOA.

So the industry cheerleader, the WiMax Forum, bullishly predicts more than 133 million WiMax users globally by 2012, with approximately 70 percent using mobile and portable WiMax devices to access broadband Internet services. More concretely, the Forum announced the first ten MIMO 2.5GHz Mobile WiMax Certified products in June 2008, and said that it expected 3.5GHz certified products by the end of the year.

A very obvious trend is that hotspots of WiMax deployment are appearing, particularly in India, Africa, Russia, and parts of South America, the Middle East, and Asia/Pacific. The basic point here, of course, is the pressing need to deploy broadband communications in large regions that are chronically underserved by telecom, traditional or otherwise. But interest in WiMax’s potential to aid economic development and improve general social welfare is alive also in developed and well-served markets.

The Dutch government, for example, subsidizes trials of WiMax as part of its Smart Homes project to increase social welfare though telecom, while in June 2007 the Australian Government’s Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy launched its “Australia Connected – Fast affordable broadband for all Australians” initiative. Essentially, the government is backing a private consortium of Optus and Elders (OPTEL) to build, by mid-2009, a national open wholesale network for broadband services, based on a mix of DSL and WiMax access (with fiber backhaul). The aim is to cover 99 percent of the population, with speeds up to 12 Mbit/s. This is part of a larger program aimed at both making broadband available to rural and regional parts of Australia, and helping people make the best use of broadband.

And on an even grander scale, the Taiwanese government has the M-Taiwan project, which will ultimately partly rest on the availability of urban mobile WiMax. This is a major government initiative, partly aimed at creating an entire WiMax ecosystem (from silicon chips to applications), as the government has identified WiMax as one of the next big things after WiFi for the Taiwanese ICT industry.

In a similar social vein, WiMax, like WiFi before it, seems to have an inherent tendency towards appealing to self-help and local initiatives in smaller communities, with various operators taking a proactive approach to getting local people involved with the broadband Internet. Roughly, wireless enables services to be distributed about a community in a way that wireline doesn’t – possibly an interesting point for future business-development strategists.

It’s a mistake to see the earlier fixed/nomadic WiMax as appealing more as a solution to increasing fixed broadband access in developing markets where the fixed network is weak, and mobile WiMax being of more interest to developed markets as a robust carrier-grade alternative to public WiFi. Just about everyone is now deploying (or converting to) the mobile 802.16e version of WiMax, even if they will initially use it only in fixed/nomadic mode. And developing markets do want the capability for sophisticated WiMax-based services, even if these will be rolled out only in later phases.

And some of the big emerging-market operators see a wider opportunity with WiMax by looking to exploit the technology to build global businesses. For example, Global Cloud Xchange , which is rolling out a large WiMax network in its home country of India, said in April 2008 that it would invest $500 million over the next two years to provide WiMax broadband IP access in 20 developing countries, via the acquisition of eWave World, a U.K.-based telecom group.

But it’s notable that the mainstream 3GPP mobile operators (so just about everyone that counts in mobile service provision) are generally shunning mobile WiMax in favor of continuing with deploying and enhancing current 3G technologies, while pushing for their 4G next generations, such as GSM Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Finally, something for Light Reading’s closet war-mongers, as military applications of WiMax are appearing. Although these can hardly count as proper (telecom or perhaps moral) deployment, vendors are producing adaptations of the technology to provide broadband links between general headquarters and deployed divisional and brigade headquarters, and also further down to company level.

Next Page: Operator Types & Their Market Focus

It’s clear from the examples in Table 1 that different types of operator are using WiMax. At a very high level, one possible division is into two very broad segments. The first comprises established wireless ISPs, largely working in unlicensed spectrum with traditional non-WiMax gear, such as Motorola’s Canopy. For these, WiMax represents a way of moving upmarket into licensed spectrum, higher bandwidths, improved QOS, new services beyond simple data, and so on, and generally improving their competitive position.

“The second segment is the greenfield providers, and those guys are the darlings of the industry at this point because they don’t have the baggage that the traditional wireless ISPs have,” says Steve Jones, VP of marketing and business development at wireless application provider Alianza Corp. "Their advantage is that they are really building from the ground up."

But within these segments, particularly the second, it is possible to discern a wide variety of differences in operator characteristics and their market focus. For example, on whether they are in a developed or developing country, serving primarily urban or rural markets, are primarily a telco, mobile operator, cable operator, small new entrant, etc., or are an international, national, regional, or local operator. And so on.

Some examples are:

  • Metro-area ISP and broadband service provider in a developed high-tech locality (such as Pipeline Wireless, U.S.)

  • Operator focused on urban SOHO/SME telecom services in emerging markets (such as Enforta, Russia)

  • National business and residential telecom services in smaller emerging markets (personal, Paraguay)

  • Broadband access in remote/poorly-served regions (rural/small towns) of a developed country (such as Vipfone and Iberbanda, Spain; and DigitalBridge, U.S.)

  • Major national rapid urban telecom infrastructure project in large high-growth emerging market (such as BSNL and Tata Communications, India)

  • Mass-market mobile broadband Internet in developed market (such as the new Clearwire, U.S.)

  • Addition of wireless capabilities by cable operators (such as the cable operators participating in the new Clearwire, U.S.)

  • Addition of voice service by cable operator in developing market (such as Grupo TVCable, Ecuador)

  • As DSL fill-in to speed infrastructure development or to cover out-of-range rural areas (such as Telkom, South Africa; VSE NET, Germany; and Telenor, Norway)

  • Combined with IMS to offer advanced services in a small developing market (such as Warid, Uganda)

  • New-entrant broadband mobile operator in developed market (such as Worldmax, Netherlands)

  • New-entrant broadband mobile operator in developing market (such as Max Telecom, Bulgaria)

The following pages take a closer look at how WiMax is working for some specific operators and their target types of market and applications.

Next Page: Emerging Market Last-Mile Broadband Infrastructure

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is India’s state-owned and largest telecommunications company, providing a comprehensive range of telecom services in India. It is making focused efforts and planned initiatives to bridge the rural/urban digital divide. The company is deploying mobile WiMax to bring a wide range of multimedia services to an area serving more than 200 million people over the next three years.

This is one of the largest WiMax deployments anywhere and represents a large step in realizing the Indian government’s Vision 2010 mandate to make broadband services ubiquitous and turn India into a global information-technology force. With a rapidly growing middle class and highly educated population, India currently has an enormous unmet demand for broadband services: BSNL, for example, has nearly 7 million subscribers on the wait-list for DSL, but mobile WiMax broadband will help to relieve this.

The deployments will be in India’s fastest-growing and highest-income states – Gujarat, Maharashstra and Goa, and Andhra Pradesh. The country is also divided into Telecom Circles, of which these states happen to make up three. (See A Guide to India's Telecom Operators.)

A particular challenge with BSNL’s deployment is the scale and varied terrain of the three states involved, and the deployment will encompass nearly 400 settlements – ranging from small villages to large cities with several million inhabitants – as well as rural areas. The deployment uses SOMA Network’s FlexMAX Mobile WiMax System, including base stations, tower-mounted radios (with MIMO and AAS), a home agent, authentication server, indoor non-line-of-sight (NLOS) subscriber gateways, and an outdoor NLOS gateway. Important technical requirements for BNSL were all-IP operation, high NLOS penetration, extremely high subscriber density, and the ability to serve subscribers at long distances without service degradation.

Over time, BSNL will offer subscribers a range of services and applications. These will be based on the type of subscriber (for example, urban versus rural), and will include various entertainment, educational, and financial services. The first application will be broadband services, followed by voice services, as these represent the greatest immediate need for subscribers.

Next Page: Developed Market Metro Business Customers

Pipeline Wireless is a fixed wireless ISP, covering nearly 2,100 square miles of eastern Massachusetts in the U.S. It deployed its first fully compliant WiMax system towards mid-2008; previous systems were pre-WiMax. The target markets are, and will continue to be, multipoint, multimegabit business customers that demand QOS, high-availability, and high levels of customer service.

“The market is difficult to service due to the normal terrain and foliage of the Northeast. Due to the lower frequencies used in 3.65GHz WiMax deployments, we are able to install more customers in near-LOS [line-of-sight] and non-LOS situations than before,” says Mike Daly, the company’s president. “WiMax allows for multiple profiles of customers to be serviced on the same platform, so we no longer need a platform for lower-bandwidth customers and a separate platform for high-bandwidth customers. We can deliver a wider range of services for both private networks and Internet circuits over the same platform, while ensuring QOS is maintained regardless of the type of customer circuit.”

Other attractions of WiMax are that it allows Pipeline to use different frequencies, carrier-class equipment, and low-cost CPE. It believes that the market will continue to drive costs down, and eventually the customers will be able to purchase their own CPE at local electronics stores, further reducing the cost of customer acquisition to the company.

By providing high-quality, high-bandwidth services over a quasi-licensed frequency, WiMax reduces the possibility of interference, providing higher link budgets and the ability to offer a no-truckroll installation to customers. Pipeline sees WiMax as separating it from some of the smaller competing wireless providers owing to the complexity and cost of deployments, and allowing the company to continue to offer high-quality, high-bandwidth services even in highly congested RF areas.

“We see WiMax fitting into our network strategy as a complementary offering, not an all-encompassing,” says Daly. “The larger slices of spectrum available in unlicensed areas such as 5GHz are good to operate in, as they provide for larger channel bandwidths and therefore greater capacity per sector. We would like to see the FCC open these types of spectrum to more quasi-licensed operations for WiMax systems.”

A basic pitch for the company is providing local infrastructure bypass to a client with a very scalable network architecture at lower cost than the traditional networks. This can be done relatively quickly – within hours in principle, although within three days of placing an order is more usual – and additional bandwidth can later be turned up immediately, rather than the client having to order another circuit and wait for the installation and then add another port to their router.

And it's not just for backup, Daly says. He says about 70 percent of clients use his service as their primary network connection. “Part of that, I think, is that people don’t fully understand wireless,” he says. “Although wireless is much more prevalent than it was, there is still some skepticism, too – does it really work as well as fiber? Typically, if clients bring it in as a backup, frequently it works so well they will turn it over to their primary and use the fiber as a backup.”

An advantage for the company in using wireless in Boston is that the metropolitan area has a very dense business population, most of which has a direct LOS path to the Pipeline Wireless’s facilities based on the top of the 800-foot John Hancock Tower. (See Figure 1.)

3585.jpgTowerStream is a wireless-based ISP currently offering service in nine U.S. markets – New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas-Fort Worth, and the greater Boston, Providence, and Newport, R.I., areas. It plans to be in the top 20 U.S. markets in the future, and focuses entirely on business customers – principally small businesses, but also some medium, large, and enterprise customers.

Its initial strategy is to use WiMax services to connect businesses that its traditional fixed wireless services cannot reach. For example, for potential customers that do not have LOS to one of its network points-of-presence (POP), WiMax technology – combined with the frequency sets used – offers much better non-LOS characteristics than the traditional fixed-wireless technology, especially at close range.

The attractions of WiMax include standardization, better QOS, and the ability to support fixed, nomadic, and mobile applications, and suits the company’s need for a “faster, better, cheaper” technology that could play a similar role in the WAN to that of WiFi in the LAN. Initially, the focus will be on fixed applications, but nomadic ones are likely to follow.

“We look at WiMax as the natural evolution of our network. Since the WiMax platform uses a different frequency set to what we have been using, it coexists with our current network nicely. As a result, we don’t have the problem of having to manage a costly upgrade – so it will help us reach more customers at a lower cost,” says TowerStream’s CEO, Jeff Thompson. “Although we have no intention of swapping out our entire customer base to WiMax, 802.16e WiMax equipment helps us futureproof our network – and we can roll this technology out in a fixed fashion. As CPE starts to ship in quantities at attractive price points, we will be ready and able to take advantage of this. CPE costs are a significant part of our capital spending, and we estimate that we’ll be able to cut CPE costs by half with WiMax in the future.”

Rolling out wireless in the largest cities in the U.S. poses some coverage challenges, but Thompson sees the better non-LOS characteristics of WiMax giving better coverage while decreasing the amount of facilities needed to service the market. He adds that the performance of the 802.16e WiMax equipment from Alvarion Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR) being tested and deployed to date has surpassed expectations: “We were expecting varying throughput and latency results after a 0.5-mile radius. Instead, we are seeing close to the same results out to 1.5 miles.”

Next Page: Developed Market Remote, Difficult, or Poorly Served Business Customers

MetroBridge is a fixed WiMax provider (no mobility) serving businesses only (no residential customers) in British Columbia, Utah, and Arizona. Target customers range in size from two to 20,000 employees and are looking for connectivity from 2 Mbit/s to 2.5 Gbit/s. WiMax (and other fixed-wireless technologies) is seen as an alternative to fiber, ADSL, and T1s, and allows deployments to odd locations such as oil rigs, anchored barges, remote areas that are “off the grid,” and businesses near water and railroad tracks where wireline services are very weak.

“Often ADSL and fiber are unavailable, or T1s and DS3s are priced far out of reach of a business client,” says Dorian Banks, president and co-founder of MetroBridge. “WiMax aids the company deploy via wireless, but it is only one technology in our arsenal of wireless equipment. WiMax is interesting as it is a standardization of fixed wireless for 2- to 20-Mbit/s connections. Higher speeds are achieved through traditional fixed-wireless technologies that have been used for years.”

Standardization, interoperability, and competition have brought WiMax customer premises equipment prices down by a factor of 10 over the last few years.

The company’s most popular use of WiMax is to provide a redundant second path to businesses – via a roof-based antenna as opposed to a ground wireline, because having two completely independent paths increases service uptime considerably. Mobile WiMax might be considered in the future, but this would not be for at least another three years, and 2-Mbit/s to 20-Mbit/s fixed connectivity remains the core WiMax application.

Next Page: Developed Market Poorly Served Residential & Business Customers/b>

DigitalBridge Communications (DBC) is a telecommunications service provider that uses WiMax technology to deliver broadband services to underserved U.S. communities of up to 150,000 people nationwide. The company sells services to consumers and small to medium-sized businesses, as well as enterprise solutions in five states across the U.S. The markets are diverse and represent a wide range of coverage-area situations. By April 2008, DBC had WiMax networks in 12 cities, covering 200,000 households.

“WiMax-based services, such as fixed and mobile Internet, are core to the DBC strategy. DBC is focused on being the leader in the delivery of WiMax services to underserved markets in the U.S.,” says Kelley Dunne, CEO of DBC. “WiMax allows companies, such as DBC, to bring broadband services to smaller communities that were previously too costly to serve with older technologies. It is the clear choice in the delivery of wireless high-speed Internet, both today and in the future.”

The company launched its WiMax service on 2.5GHz licensed spectrum, using Alvarion’s BreezeMAX 802.16e platform. The service features plug-and-surf technology using BreezeMAX Si (self-install) WiMax CPE, which allows customers to set up and begin using the high-speed connection in a matter of minutes, Dunne says. He stresses that customers have been very pleasantly surprised at the ease of self-installation, which has translated directly into lower support calls per customer.

In addition to its current fixed and portable WiMax services for consumers and businesses, DBC launched a mobile network in Jackson, Wyo., in June 2008 for subscribers and visitors, and will also offer a VOIP service. (See Mobile WiMax Goes on the Piste).

Next Page: Developed & Developing Market Residential Customers

WiMAX Telecom is a WiMax operator with operations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, and Croatia. Based on licensed 3.5GHz frequencies, it provides wireless broadband Internet (Internet access at up to 4 Mbit/s, email, etc.) and voice (VOIP-based) services mainly to residential subscribers. Currently, networks are deployed in Austria, Slovakia, and Croatia, and serve a total of about 13,000 customers.

The company has no plans to use any other wireless technology than WiMax, which it sees as supporting high-speed and low-latency Internet services, and enabling personal broadband services. Further, WiMax will be embedded in many laptops, ultra mobile PCs, mobile Internet terminals (such as the Nokia N810 WiMax Edition), and consumer-electronics devices, so customers will effectively buy WiMax connectivity automatically.

Later, it is planning to offer multimedia services (video streaming) and TV broadcast. WiMax is seen to be very well placed to support high-speed broadband access (10 to 20 Mbit/s) and also supports an attractive uplink ratio and very low latency (so VOIP and online gaming are supported). The multicast and broadcast features defined in the WiMax standard are also seen to be much more advanced than current DVB-H or 3G technologies, as WiMax will allow interaction with unicast streams and support user-specific advertisements.

Initially, WiMAX Telecom covered mainly rural areas where it was the only company offering broadband Internet services because of the availability of the technology for this use-case. Currently, however, the technology allows the company to implement networks in dense urban areas, where the addressable market is significantly bigger and the network can be built more efficiently.

So the rollout has been from rural areas in Austria with Alvarion equipment (about 70 sites) since mid-2005, and in suburban and partly rural areas in 64 counties of Slovakia (about 70 sites, also Alvarion, starting mid-2005), to today in all major cities of Croatia with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) equipment (about 350 sites to end-2009). A small deployment will be done in Switzerland in 2008.

“We believe the right WiMax market in urban and suburban areas is where there is mobility of people commuting from home to work or school,” says Peter Ziegelwanger, the company's CTO. “Coverage of rural areas is possible as well, but the service offering there is rather a fixed-wireless access than a mobile or personal broadband service, mainly due to coverage and distance between user and base station.

“Nevertheless we also have to consider different broadband market penetrations, and competitive situations, as well as the availability of wireline infrastructure, depending on the market we are working. Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Croatia) shows dramatic generic broadband growth rates and little competition, so WiMax has a very good position even for fixed wireless access. Being able to support mobility later on gives an extra USP.”

Ziegelwanger says that operational, service, and customer experience to date are very good, and that WiMax delivers on the promise of high-speed data, and is comparable to DSL. Its voice service is a first-line-replacement service, allowing subscribers to cancel the incumbent’s PSTN line and port their numbers onto the WiMAX Telecom network.

“Of course, there are a lot of issues still to be solved – certification, finalization of networking standards, and roaming, as well as in the improvement and stability of the equipment by the vendors. Embedding WiMax chipsets into various devices is in the early stages and still requires some time,” he says.

Next Page: Developed Market Mass-Market Mobile Broadband Internet

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel announced in May 2008 that they would merge their WiMax businesses to form a new wireless-communications company to be known also as Clearwire, thereby creating the first significant WiMax player in the U.S.

Not only is the new Clearwire targeting a network deployment that will cover between 120 million and 140 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2010, but it has brought in a raft of big-name telecom industry players – Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks – to invest to the tune of $3.2 billion. (See Sprint, Clearwire Create $14.5B WiMax Giant).

The idea is to help kickstart a mass-market mobile WiMax movement in the world’s biggest single developed telecom market by creating a virtuous circle of interested parties in mobile broadband Internet: Intel will provide the processors, or chips, for WiMax-enabled devices; Google will supply applications; and Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House will offer service bundles from wholesale WiMax to their customers. This would give the cable operators a mobile wireless capability for much less than the cost of each going it alone – something that is bothering the industry and its investors.

While triple play was originally seen as the cable operators’ strong suit, the telcos are now hitting back with ultrafast broadband (fiber and VDSL2), and they have wireless services, too, thereby potentially shifting the game to a quadruple play of voice, video, data, and mobility. Cost-effective WiMax mobility might be just what the cable operators need.

However, until the merger is approved by (old) Clearwire’s shareholders and the Federal authorities (expected by end 2008), the two companies have to continue separately. This means that (old) Clearwire will continue with its current non-WiMax fixed wireless service (but aimed for conversion to WiMax in 2009/2010), while Sprint Nextel’s XOHM Business Unit will continue to prepare to launch its commercial service in Baltimore, Washington, and Chicago (and also some other unnamed cities) during the second half of 2008. Once the new Clearwire is approved and up and running, the customer-facing side of the two WiMax services will be integrated into one.

Sprint Nextel, which will have a 51 percent interest in the new Clearwire (although the new company will not be a subsidiary because of the way it is structured), is betting that mobility and broadband IP will be a winning – and transforming – combination for consumers.

“There is a very, very large demand – and therefore market opportunity – to do for the Internet what cellular did for mobile voice. That is not a technology-driven issue. That is a customer-demand-driven issue,” says Atish Gude, senior VP Mobile Broadband Operations for Sprint's XOHM Business Unit. “We are not about cellular; we are really about the Internet. It’s about making the Internet mobile, it is not about another version of cellular.” (See Figure 2.)

3586.gifFor more from Atish Gude on WiMax services, please watch this exclusive LRTV interview:

{column}The argument is that huge numbers of people – children as well as adults – now use the Internet so much for work, information, entertainment, and social interaction, that it is part of their everyday lives. Add to that the convenience and utility that mobility and (eventually) stylish personal devices bring, and the new types of location/person-aware applications make possible, and the result could be extraordinarily attractive to many customers, irrespective of whether they have a fixed broadband connection or not.

Sprint will begin the launch of XOHM WiMax commercial services in the third quarter (September 2008), starting with the Baltimore market because of the extensive network coverage there and its being a well-defined market. Commercial services will be activated next in the Washington and Chicago markets during the fourth quarter. Access devices that will be available in 2008 include a Samsung Corp. aircard, ZyXEL Communications Corp. modem, ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) USB dongle, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) Internet tablet (N810), and Intel Inside laptops – and others will follow.

The company says its WiMax launch was moved from the earlier announced second quarter and into the third as elements of the service associated with the customer experience were optimized, including high-capacity backhaul and the innovative back-office systems associated with an enhanced mobile Internet experience.

Current trials of real-service cellsites show better than expected performance – for example, about 5 Mbit/s on the downlink on average and about 2 Mbit/s on the uplink, compared with expectations of about 2 to 4 Mbit/s on the downlink and about half that on the uplink. Although some tweaking of the technology has been inevitable, the main challenges to rollout have been logistic and financial because of the large numbers of cellsites and associated backhaul needed for a major network.

“We have a long roadmap of features and functions that allow us to improve throughput and manage the customer experience to ensure greater coverage, greater quality of service, including features like location-based capability and QOS and presence,” says Gude.

A fundamental aspect of the Internet focus is openness. (See The Future of Mobile Open Access.) The intention is that all existing Websites and IP applications should function normally over the WiMax network, and that customers should be able to use any approved devices (the company is already certifying chipsets for use with its network, for example). But this is only the first step.

“Very soon after this, we want to introduce specific application enablers like QOS and location,” says Gude. “I think what will happen is that some of those Internet sites will work exactly the way they do today on the wired world, but by giving them location and QOS those sites will work even better for the customer because they are much more context aware, location aware, and we can give the right QOS to improve the experience.”

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, along with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Intel, and Samsung Electronics, are also founder members of the Open Patent Alliance (OPA), formed in June 2008 to accelerate the adoption and deployment of WiMax technology and products. The idea is that the OPA will form a WiMax patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost. The patent pool will aggregate essential patent rights needed to implement the WiMax standard as defined by the WiMax Forum and the IEEE 802.16e standard, and is intended to give a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products.

Next Page: WiMax Pointers

Today’s early experience of WiMax deployment is necessarily limited, but it’s probably safe to draw a few tentative practical lessons or pointers from it for the near future.

WiMax generally is becoming an important technology for emerging markets. This looks pretty obvious, given wireless’s practical and cost advantages in areas of little fixed infrastructure, and the need to do something quickly about poor or nonexistent broadband and other advanced services (and also basic ones, as WiMax has a huge narrowband capacity for VOIP, for example).

WiMax equipment is here, standardized, becoming increasingly available (especially on the crucial CPE side), and cheaper, and the technology has two or three years’ lead over the main alternative standard, LTE. This means that most of the WiMax vendors see emerging markets as the big immediate opportunity for WiMax – at least in its fixed or nomadic applications.

Fixed WiMax has a role in competitive business access in certain developed markets. Again, this is a fairly obvious play on the general virtues of wireless access as they affect businesses – an alternative physical medium to provide back-up and redundancy, and rapid service setup – combined with the IP base and QOS capabilities of the technology.

Fixed/nomadic WiMax provides an add-on wireless capability for some types of operator in developed markets. WiMax does not have to be used by an operator as its primary means of providing broadband connectivity – although, of course, it can be, and is, designed for that role. Instead, it can be used by telcos of all types as a special-purpose infill for fixed broadband services in areas that are difficult to serve by wireline technologies. Essentially, this makes fixed WiMax an extension of an existing network, and therefore more of an adjunct technology in developed markets.

However, the opportunities for this depend greatly on the national and local telecom environment – they still exist in parts of the U.S., for example, but not really in Japan. But there will also be demographic segments in some areas, such as college students, that are rather nomadic and don’t want to sign one- or two-year contracts for fixed broadband service, and which could be targeted by fixed/nomadic WiMax.

And SOMA Networks points out that the economics of fixed WiMax as a DSL replacement service do work with the latest generation of high-density equipment in the U.S. A limited market-test deployment with AT&T has shown that over 300 subscribers can be supported by a single WiMax sector to offer broadband access at essentially the same price and terms as DSL, and so generate enough revenue to make a nice business case. AT&T is also evaluating using WiMax in out-of-market, out-of-region plays to enter markets where the company does not own the copper loops.

The key parts of the WiMax business case are becoming clearer. Jon Hambidge, chief marketing officer of the NextWave Wireless Inc. (Nasdaq: WAVE) Network Products Division, identifies four main parts to the WiMax business case that operators need to examine carefully. These are:

  • Technology – Is the technology where it needs to be?

  • Capital – Is the money there to fund this network?

  • Business/service model – Is it viable?

  • Operator – Does it have the operational capabilities to deploy a major-scale network?

He points out that, given that the technology is maturing and the cost falling, Tier 1 operators are entering the WiMax market. This market transition changes the landscape by bringing in considerable capital and operational capabilities, and more solid business cases – something that earlier greenfield startups with pre-WiMax wireless systems often lacked.

“There were a lot of greenfield operators who had grand plans, but the operational-expenditure line of their business case probably ended up tripling because it was so hard for them to get and deploy cell towers,” says Hambridge. “And at the business-case level, every time someone does one, the first line of revenue is always a DSL-replacement model. The second layer is: How do I get to a laptop? The third layer is typically some nebulous next-generation multimedia services – which are really hard to get if you are putting your business case in front of someone to fund it.”

Low CPE costs are clearly crucial to the mass-market deployment of WiMax, as is self-install to avoid the high cost of truckrolls and the deployment bottlenecks they cause. Both of these are now within the technology’s reach.

And, on the cost side, backhaul is a very big issue with broadband networks, both fixed and wireless. It is a fundamental economic challenge for many operators – even Sprint Nextel has been talking of this being one of its challenges with its U.S. WiMax deployment.

“As soon as you go to broadband services giving multimegabit speeds to users – and lots of users – you are into the range where you really need broadband backhaul, and that means you need fiber (or high-speed, point-to-point, microwave backhaul systems, but the implications in time and money are pretty much the same),” says SOMA’s Flak. "And if the fiber isn’t there you are into construction, laying cables (aerial or burying them) and getting them to hundreds or thousands of cellsites. That is a big job, and it takes a long time, and it costs a lot of money.”

However, it is easier for the Tier 1s to handle this.

Spectrum issues remain. WiMax faces some constraints on spectrum, which could have a detrimental effect on the technology in the longer term. Recent and upcoming spectrum auctions have revealed tensions between the needs of WiMax operators and the established mobile operators. In Europe, for example, WiMax protagonists are concerned over how much frequency in the 2.6GHz band will be assigned to time-division duplex (TDD), currently used for WiMax, and frequency-division duplex (FDD), currently used for 3G and billed for 4G/LTE. And there is the added danger that the big IMT-2000 mobile operators might buy the TDD sub-bands anyway and just hoard them so as to keep the WiMax operators out.

A further complication is that a TDD mode is also being looked at for LTE, and WiMax might develop an FDD version. So just how the various spectrum bands for 4G are TDD/FDD regulated is a big factor in the use of WiMax.

And it’s not just the raw spectrum that’s at issue. As Pipeline’s Daly puts it:

“We would love to see more spectrum become available with a little bit higher power so we could reach further with higher bandwidth and hit more customers with the product. WiMax begins to accomplish some of that with a new set of frequencies – and also with the U.S. quasi-license. We are very excited about that. But the more spectrum they turn out to us, and the more throughput we can put out to folks, the more we can grow.”

Need to add value through applications. Of course, there are still many startups and smaller operators in the WiMax business for which financing is a big factor, and, in developed markets, even Tier 1 operators will need to bolster their business case as much as possible. This means adding value through applications, and here, for smaller wireless ISPs and the like, that currently means VOIP.

“Tomorrow it will be multimedia, video, and perhaps even cable programming. But today voice is the value-added killer,” says Alianza’s Jones. He estimates that an established wireless ISP could provide a comprehensive voice platform to midsized businesses that would double ARPU and provide margins of around 60 percent, as well as reducing customer churn considerably. But even business VOIP applications will quickly become commoditized, making it crucial to have a low-cost platform in order to maintain margins.

And added value leads very neatly to the really big potential interest in WiMax in developed markets – mass-market mobile broadband.

Next Page: WiMax’s Mobile Vision

So far, despite the widespread use of the 802.16e mobile WiMax standard in current deployments, it is very early days for truly mobile services. But this is due to change as mobile WiMax devices become more widely available and operators move to implement mobile services on their WiMax deployments.

And this is where the real interest in mass-market deployment of WiMax in developed markets lies. And it explains why companies like Intel have been making a huge push to promote the technology as the next step to WiFi in providing universal broadband IP connectivity for all types of consumer electronics devices. Beyond this, some see a new business model that uses WiMax embedded in devices other than mobile phones to extend the Internet to new places beyond the home or office.

And there is the added attraction that, in heavily penetrated fixed-broadband markets, an operator with an existing fixed capability but no current wireless operations, such as cable operators or some telcos, can use WiMax as an add-on wireless capability to its service platform to provide mobility.

As Telsima’s Mack points out, WiMax technologies and solutions are advancing – from 802.16d to 802.16e and now to the future 802.16m version – allowing more advanced features to be deployed. This means that the emphasis will not be along the lines of just fixed, nomadic, or mobile connectivity but on the services delivered.

“Intel will ensure that notebook computers will be WiMax enabled, and shortly after, mobile phones and consumer electronics devices will be WiMax enabled,” says Mack. “As WiFi is now included in myriad devices as an invisible cost, but as an important check-box item, WiMax will be included in Intel’s solutions, and the CPE cost will all but vanish.”

But at this stage the story is not so much about WiMax, because WiMax is just a supporting technology. Instead, it is really the quality of the applications and devices that will give players a way to penetrate or expand their footprints in an already highly served and developed market like the U.S. And the mobile environment will be more complex than the fixed, because there are a lot of variables beyond just the applications – such as the different types of devices, how flexible they are, how easy to use, and so on. As the recent Light Reading report, The Future of Mobile Open Access, points out, the combination of openness, mobility, and broadband IP will create new kinds of applications and extend the business opportunities to millions of devices beyond the classic mobile phone.

The Sprint Nextel XOHM scheme depends upon WiMax devices being sold by many outlets, opening up distribution channels well beyond the carrier-sponsored store. The company is stepping away from the device subsidy model, which requires lengthy contracts to recover costs and represents a business expense. So, with WiMax, the consumer buys the device she wants in retail channels and replaces it as often as she likes, using a subscription for service that does not require a contract. The XOHM subscription will cover bundles of devices, in home and away packages, representing a new business model.

Mobile TV and multimedia in general always come high on lists of promising applications and are subject to a lot of innovation. One particular angle on mobile TV, promoted by NextWave Wireless, is for WiMax operators to use their infrastructure to provide a mix of broadcast live TV and downloaded TV to their customers. This is done essentially by plugging a content-delivery system into the backend of the WiMax radio access network (RAN), without making any changes to the RAN itself, devoting a fixed amount of capacity to handle the broadcast live TV, while allocating extra capacity in quiet periods to handle accumulated download requests for later delivery.

“NextWave’s MXtv is a model we think appeals to a lot of WiMax operators,” says NextWave’s Hambidge. “You could use it as an additional revenue source or as a marketing tool – take mobile broadband from us and you get 10 free broadcast TV channels on your laptop. Either way, I think it bolsters your business case, because there is no new radio access network.”

And WiMax vendor Alvarion points out that various adaptations and optimizations can be introduced to the base-station's scheduler and service-flows to maximize spectrum efficiency and content delivery, as is done in the combined Alvarion-NDS mobile-TV-over-mobile WiMax solution.

Intel’s mobile push
Although this report has a lot to say about WiMax operators and a little about infrastructure vendors, there is one influential company largely outside the traditional telecom infrastructure business that has a clear vision of what mobile WiMax means and is pushing very strongly to realize it. This, of course, is Intel.

Intel has clearly decided that WiMax-based mobile broadband is a key enabling technology for its processor/chipset business and that a big part of its future lies in the kinds of mobile computing, applications, and IP networking of the kind that WiMax enables. So the company has been promoting WiMax for several years with the intent to educate service providers/operators, application vendors, device manufacturers, global standards bodies, and government regulators about what the technology is, how it works, its benefits, its usage models, and so on.

And it is putting money into its beliefs through Intel Capital , which is investing in WiMax operators in developing markets – for example, with Orascom Telecom WiMax and Worldmax (mid-2006). It also put $600 million into U.S.-based Clearwire (mid-2006), and invested in U.K.-based Freedom4 (formerly Pipex, early 2008). And Intel is also collaborating with WiMax operators to assist network and service rollouts – for example, with Comstar United Telesystems JSC (London: CMST) in Russia.

Intel is pushing WiMax capability heavily in new devices scheduled to begin appearing in 2008 – the Centrino 2 processor technology, which Intel code-named Montevina, for laptops, and the Menlow platform designs for the MID (Mobile Internet Device; see Figure 3) and ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) categories – for what Intel calls Full Internet In Your Pocket. It also formed the Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance in early 2007 to help promote the development of these devices.

3587.jpg“It’s strategic to Intel to have an economically viable business model for mobile Internet,” says Margaret LaBrecque, Intel's director of Broadband Wireless Spectrum Policy. “The consumers of our platforms need it. The reigning ‘mobile data services’ model today, with its large device subsidies, activation fees, high device and service costs, is not scalable for what is expected to be a 100-fold increase in mobile data use over the next 10 years. So it has been, and is, imperative for Intel to make sure the vision of ‘true mobile broadband Internet' is achievable.”

She points out that Intel and other WiMax Forum members have worked closely in the Certification Working Group to develop a certification process that saves operators and OEMs time and money when deploying WiMax devices. For OEMs integrating pre-certified WiMax modules into their devices, it is expected to reduce their time in the certification lab from the six to eight weeks for a typical 3G-device certification to two weeks or less for WiMax Forum certification.

“The first integrated WiFi/WiMax embedded modules from Intel came out at a price to PC OEMs of less than half of the latest 3G embedded modems,” she says. “In response to this, we hear that 3G embedded modems may dramatically come down in cost over the next year. This highlights the lack of competition in the 3G embedded-modem market, and the impact of a player like Intel coming into the market.”

WiFi/WiMax embedded modules will be commercially available from Intel later in 2008 as an option for OEMs to build into laptops – initially in the U.S. and then increasingly available in other parts of the world as networks are built out. The company believes that this will be critical to widespread deployment of WiMax in developed markets.

MIDs are partly intended to bridge the current gap in terms of functionality, portability, and usability between fully fledged laptop PCs and smartphones. But WiMax is only one of several wireless technologies that MIDs will support.

“If we’re successful with MIDs, it will drive smartphones to have the same level of Internet and usability capability – and eventually it will be hard to tell the difference between a MID and a smartphone. What’s important to Intel is that the benefits of Intel Architecture – in particular, a satisfying Internet experience – be delivered to users of these more advanced devices,” says LaBrecque. “If the vision of mobile broadband Internet is achieved, users will be able to easily do the same things on the Internet while on the go as they do today in their homes and businesses. We believe this in itself is a killer app.”

Next Page: Mobile WiMax & LTE: Collision or Convergence?

The specter at the impending WiMax feast is that it is not the only 4G mobile in the offing, and a lot of industry money is riding on the GSM/3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the technology that will result in (almost) a single global mobile system, with multiband handsets being usable anywhere and with ultrafast broadband capabilities. So it is being promoted by many in the mobile industry as the 4G successor to the current 3G technologies, split between W-CDMA, CDMA 2000, and (perhaps) the upcoming Chinese TD-SCDMA. The advantages and opportunities presented by a single global mobile technology are obvious and would represent a major break with the fragmentation that has bedeviled mobile since the plethora of 1G technologies in the 1970s and 80s.

Given that GSM/3GPP technologies hugely dominate current systems, the big mainstream mobile operators are looking closely at LTE, and some have been campaigning to speed up its standardization process. Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD), Verizon Wireless , and China Mobile Communications Corp. are running (or will run) LTE trials. Vodafone’s began in Europe in February 2008. NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM) has said it will start commercial deployment in 2009, Verizon in 2010/11, and Vodafone after 2010. KPN ran a trial in 2007 to compare 3G HSPA with WiMax to determine which would be the best technology to use for providing broadband access in rural Netherlands – a decision is due during 2008. And both AT&T and Verizon say they will use spectrum won in a recent FCC auction to build LTE 4G networks in that 700MHz band that will be able to deliver video and other advanced mobile services, with network rollout beginning around 2010.

LTE is acquiring heavyweight support from the mainstream mobile vendors, which are taking steps to boost the technology. In April 2008, Alcatel-Lucent, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications , NEC Corp. (Tokyo: 6701), and Nokia Networks created a framework for LTE IP licensing, intended to keep royalty payments low and hence encourage the takeup of their LTE technology.

Technically, two versions of LTE will coexist: Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) LTE and Time Division Duplex (TDD) LTE. These are a compromise technology hangover – FDD follows on from W-CDMA, and TDD from TD-SCDMA. A key issue for the industry is to produce chipsets that can handle both forms, so that a single handset can automatically switch between them and be used globally. In theory, LTE will support connections speeds of up to 50-100 Mbit/s (or even higher) eventually. In comparison, 3G is expected to approach 30 Mbit/s eventually, but is currently limited to about 4 to 7 Mbit/s.

Mobile WiMax versus LTE 4G looks like a sticky issue that could affect WiMax operators and the development of the WiMax market generally. Ericsson, for example, has given up on mobile WiMax to concentrate on LTE 4G. Some mobile operators have complained at the slow pace of 4G development, and have hinted that they will used WiMax instead. There are also some conflicts of interest among vendors and among operators over the two technologies.

However, technically, WiMax and LTE look as if they could converge pretty closely in the long term, as they share common features (such as MIMO antennas and beam forming), and both are OFDM based. Perhaps more to the point is the "natural" realm of application of the two technologies. LTE is being developed as the obvious 4G extension for the mainstream big mobile operators. In developed markets, where they already have good 3G coverage and a roadmap to increase 3G speeds over the short-to-medium term, the arrival of the first LTE rollouts in two or three years’ time means that they have little motive to scramble to introduce another new technology, such as WiMax. And these operators clearly want to generate as much revenue out of their current new HSDPA/HSDPA+ networks between now and, say, 2012/13 before they are forced into another upgrade by LTE.

WiMax supporters may, however, suggest that waiting for LTE to arrive could prove a false economy for these operators.

“They should be clear that there is no ‘evolution’ or ‘upgrade' to LTE from existing 2G or even 3G networks,” says Asas Inbar, Alvarion's senior manager of corporate marketing. “It's, at the very least, a radio access network fork-lift upgrade. In that respect, the question the operator should ask is whether the competitive landscape allows taking no action for the next three to four years while waiting for LTE to arrive. The alternative is to deploy WiMax now.”

Both LTE and WiMax 802.16m are proposing up to 20MHz bandwidth with 4x4 MIMO and beam-forming advanced radio techniques to increase spectral efficiencies. According to Telsima’s Mack, the main differences are evident in LTE’s SAE (Service Architecture Evolution) network topology, which is being designed to accommodate legacy 3GPP standards. He points out that this typically requires an expensive box with complex software to make the accommodation within a given network.

“However, the premises of both WiMax and LTE are sound: all-IP networks connected to base stations able to communicate to mobile subscriber devices over advanced OFDMA air interfaces,” he says. “The questions surrounding which technology are more those of – when is the deployment to take place? in what spectral band? for what targeted consumer applications? and with what legacy support requirements?”

Further, some vendors seem already to be preparing for WiMax/LTE coexistence (or, at least, are hedging their bets). For example, NextWave’s V5 TD-CDMA base-station platform (available later in 2008) will “support the installation of both WiMax and LTE radio shelves – all supported by a common digital baseband unit,” according to the company. Motorola has made a similar move by developing a common baseband control unit for both WiMax and LTE. And Telsima says that it will support both technologies, as it will require minimal changes to its base station and supporting ecosystem to accommodate LTE.

Extra impetus for WiMax/LTE convergence comes from the International Telecommunication Union, Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) ’s recent call for candidate technologies for IMT-Advanced, a new generation of mobile systems that go beyond the current IMT-2000 specifications. Neither LTE nor WiMax currently satisfy the needs of IMT-Advanced, but the organizations behind the two – the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) , respectively – are working on proposals for the necessary enhancements, such as the IEEE’s 802.16m. However, some in the industry see this a good opportunity to merge the two to avoid a fragmentation of effort and markets, and to stop standards running too far ahead of market realities.

Overall, the immediate outlook seems for WiMax and LTE to coexist, but with LTE focused largely on the established cellular operators and markets, and with WiMax focused more on alternative and emerging operators and markets. However, the two technologies are at different phases of development, with WiMax being at least two years ahead of LTE in terms of commercial deployablity. So there may well be some timing interactions between them: Should mobile WiMax prove obviously successful, there would be pressures on the cellular operators to speed up their LTE deployments.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that both WiMax and LTE are but a means to a similar long-term end – bringing IP broadband access to myriad mobile and other widely distributed devices, many of which have never been able to communicate before. There could be a new business model building out there.

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