2008: the year of mobile WiMAX, at last!

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 20 December 2007 01:32

Opinion and Analysis

However, Mobile WiMAX is one to two years behind where it as supposed to be, but Wright was not about to admit this. Instead he claimed that "With the recent and impending launches of commercial service by major broadband wireless operators worldwide WiMAX is set to become a mainstream broadband wireless technology at least two years ahead of other alternative technologies."

Australian wireless operator, Unwired which has been eager to upgrade its network from proprietary pre-WiMAX technology for some time has made no secret of its frustration with delays in the expected availability of commercial products. CEO David Spence said in August 2007: "[unavailability of WiMAX equipment] has slowed us down from where we set out from in 2004 and 2005. We are virtually a year behind."

Motorola had co-opted analyst firm Yankee Group to back its bullish forecasts, quoting Phil Marshall, vice president, Enabling Technologies, Yankee Group as saying: "We expect that in 2008 several large scale national WiMAX deployments will be announced in Asia and Europe. Currently our conservative forecasts are calling for 37 million WiMAX subscribers globally by 2011."

Also this week NEC announced commercial availability of its mobile WiMAX product suite with the rather bizarre name of PasoWing. It said the first products would be shipped this month with networks being rolled out in early 2008.

NEC has been shipping trial equipment worldwide during 2007 and has carried out trials in Japan, Taiwan and other countries. Its first order for a commercial systems ins from Tatung in Taiwan.

PasoWing is a complete WiMAX system comprised of subscriber terminals such as PCMCIA cards, wireless access products such as base stations and antennas, and application servers such as user authentication servers or user positional information management servers.

Motorola meanwhile says it ends 2007 with 15 contracts for commercial WiMAX networks, 57 WiMAX 'engagements' in 38 countries and the with the world's first commercial mobile WiMAX network, operated by Wateen Telecom in Pakistan,  now delivering services nationwide.

Motorola has teamed up with Intel to launch another initiative to better position WiMAX against competing alternatives, principally HSDPA. The two have co-authored a white pater: "WiMAX and WiFi Together:  Deployment Models and User Scenarios'.

It argues that "Together, WiMAX and WiFi are ideal partners for service providers to deliver convenient, affordable mobile broadband Internet services in more places. Both are open IEEE wireless standards built from the ground up for Internet Protocol (IP)-based applications and services. By combining WiMAX and WiFi access together, service providers can deliver high-speed Internet connectivity that subscribers desire in more places. And WiMAX and WiFi technology synergies enable seamless integration into laptops, CE devices, and a new category of devices called 'mobile Internet devices'."

The expectation seems to be that WiMAX functionality will soon become as pervasive in laptops as WiFi. "The integration of WiFi into notebooks has accelerated the adoption of WiFi to the point where it is nearly a default feature in notebooks. Over 97 percent of laptops ship with WiFi integrated, and an increasing number of handhelds and Consumer Electronics (CE) devices are adding WiFi capabilities."

Not surprisingly HSDPA gets short shrift: "Although the wide area Internet connectivity offered by 2.5 and 3G cellular data services has been mobile, these services do not provide the broadband speeds to which users have become accustomed and that WiMAX can deliver."