TAG | More woes for WiMAX? 802.20 rises from the dead - UPDATED. |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 17 June 2008 | |
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Mobile WiMAX now clearly has a considerable head start on 802.20, nevertheless, finalisation of the standard is expected to pit the world's largest chipmaker, and heavily commited mobile WiMAX backer Intel, against one of the leading makers of chips for mobile wireless technologies, Qualcomm, which has long been an ardent supporter of 802.20. The IEEE Standards Board approved creation of the IEEE 802.20 working group in November 2002 with the mission to develop the specification for an efficient packet based air interface optimised for the transport of IP based services for business and residential end users and able to support data rates above 1Mbps for mobile users at vehicular speeds to 250 km/hr. The original plan was to complete the work by November 2004. A key advantage claimed over both WiMAX and 3G was that 802.20 was designed from the outset, uniquely, to use IP which had been cobbled in to 3G and WiMAX. An early backer was Flarion Technologies. Back in 2005 it was claiming that its pre-802.20 wireless technology would offer services at costs an order of magnitude below 3G technologies. It suffered a major blow when US carrier Sprint rejected its technology in favour of WiMAX, but clearly had something going for it because Qualcomm bought the company for $US600m and became a highly active supporter of 802.20. Another backer was Navini Networks whose pioneering proprietary technology enabled Unwired to be an early player in wireless broadband. However, in 2004 Navini joined the WiMAX Forum and has evolved its proprietary technology to mobile WiMAX. However mobile WiMAX is running later than anticipated and its prospects in many markets are being seriously undermined by the rampant success of HSPA. So there may be a new window of opportunity for 802.20 if it can offer sufficient performance and or cost advantages over WiMAX. 802.20 was more or less written off in mid 2006, thanks, it was claimed, to the differing positions of Intel and Qualcomm on the working committee and the tactics being employed. The IEEE suspended work in mid 2006 and, in October 2006, in a bid to break the deadlock took the drastic step of dismissing every member of the working group and appointing a new bunch. That alone did not fix the problem: a year later the IEEE rewrote the voting rules of the group. And there has been no news of progress, so this week's announcement came as something of surprise The group's next meeting is scheduled for July, but the agenda was not available when this article was written.
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