Nortel's WiMAX: cheaper, faster, better than 3G

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 18:35

Business IT - Technology

Nortel was the incumbent vendor of Telstra's soon to be obsoleted CDMA network, so it will be some small consolation that it has announced its mobile WiMAX offering claiming it can outperform 3G on just about any measure.

Nortel claims that its offering is "the industry's first end-to-end mobile mimo-powered WiMAX solution to deliver 4G mobile broadband content - including Internet-everywhere, mobile video, VoIP, streaming media, data applications and mobile electronic commerce."

Nortel claims that its mimo (multiple input multiple output) technology will enable operators to deliver video-grade content for as little as one-tenth the cost per bit of current 3G wireless networks, and "can deliver three times the speed and twice the subscriber capacity with greater range and building penetration in urban areas compared to non-mimo WiMAX solutions."

It claims that its mobile WiMAX solution "will deliver speeds rivalling current home broadband Internet technologies with much greater efficiency than current wireless capabilities." Nortel is demonstrating the new products at the WiMAX World USA 2006 trade show in Boston.

Nortel claims that it is able to achieve such capabilities because its mobile WiMAX solution is built on the foundation of OFDM-MIMO, "a combination of innovative transmission and antenna technologies that maximises spectrum usage to deliver the lightning-fast speeds and high bandwidth essential to high-quality mobile video and TV."

Nortel says it is the only company to date to have promised both OFDM and MIMO in its mobile WiMAX solution when initially available. Both technologies are specified within the 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard, but are not mandatory.