Technology news and Jobs arrow Telecommunications arrow Ericsson gives up on WiMAX
Ericsson gives up on WiMAX E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Sunday, 25 March 2007
Ericsson has abandoned all its work on WiMAX infrastructure and has chosen, of all places, a WiMAX conference to tell the world about it.

Mikael Persson, strategy and business development in Ericsson's Networks business unit is due to deliver a presentation titled "WiMAX, Why Indeed?" at the conference, being held in Dubai 16-17 April, and in the programme notes for the event  Ericsson states: "Ericsson has chosen as of December 2006 to discontinue development in WiMAX infrastructure. This presentation will outline some of the key areas Ericsson considered before choosing to abandon this technology in favour of HSPA (high speed packet access). Specific areas for discussion include; historical lessons learnt around establishing a standard to achieving the mass market growth, comparison of physical performance of WiMAX versus HSPA and finally some poignant questions as to the commercial viability of WiMAX, given the ongoing success of HSPA and the needs this platform can deliver to, for operators, developers and end users alike both now and in the future."

There have been several reports recently comparing WiMAX unfavourably to HSPA, including one for Arthur D Little, reported in ITWire http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9442/127/. However WiMAX protagonists suggest that this comparison is not the one that should be made. Rather WiMAX should be compared with the next iteration of 3G, the so-called Long Term Evolution (LTE) and in this comparison WiMAX stacks up much better.

Ericsson claims the lead in LTE development. It staged what was claimed to be the first demonstration of the technology at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February. The demonstration achieved speeds up to 144Mbps on a 20MHz carrier in the 2.6GHz band.

LTE supports operations in both the paired spectrum (FDD) and unpaired spectrum (TDD). Channel bandwidths of 1.25-20MHz are supported. According to Ericsson, "LTE enables efficient spectrum utilisation for both legacy and future wireless frequency bands. The large wireless industry behind LTE ensures economies of scale, providing very cost-efficient solutions."

Commenting on Ericsson's decision, Light Reading suggested that "Ericsson's worst nightmare is that big operators will decide to go for mobile WiMax instead of waiting for long-term evolution (LTE) to develop, which is the next technology upgrade."

Motorola, which is a strong champion of WiMAX, claims that WiMAX v LTE is the appropriate comparison and that WiMAX has a lead. Simon Leung, resident of Motorola Asia Pacific, told this author recently that: "The competing technology to WiMAX is not really 3G, it is LTE which is meant to be an IP network like WiMAX and that will be available 2010 and beyond, so WiMAX has a time to market advantage."{moscomment}

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