3G's evolutionary roadmap could sideline WiMAX

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 October 2008 06:13

Opinion and Analysis

If anybody tells you that WiMAX or HSPA is a 4G wireless technology, they're wrong: they are both 3G, but the roadmap from HSPA to 4G is much clearer than that from WiMAX, which could consign WiMAX to being a niche technology, according to IMS Research.

The next step in the evolution of HSPA is the so called Long Term Evolution (LTE) which promises maximum download speeds of 100Mbps at least . Vendors have already demonstrated this in the real world and are now ready to ship cellular infrastructure that will require only a software upgrade to support LTE.

Telstra is boasting that its Next G investment roadmap is "already looking towards LTE technology in 2010 and beyond." According to one comment posted on iTWire's discussion forum, it will happen even sooner.

However. LTE needs large chunks of spectrum (20MHz) blocks to deliver this increased bandwidth and the ACMA has yet to decide how this will be made available.

As usual there is a lot of hype surrounding any new technology and many claims and counter claims from rival camps. According to IMS Research, "many in the WiMAX community are quick to emphasise the time-to-market advantage that 802.16e has over LTE..[and] it is true that mobile WiMAX networks already have subscribers logging on to 802.16e networks around the world, and LTE networks are still at least three years away from commercial deployment."

But IMS suggests that "this time-to-market advantage will not tip the scales in favour of mobile WiMAX. Network operators are just now beginning to see a return on their 3G investments as increasing numbers of consumers take advantage of mobile data plans [and] the fact that LTE won't be ready for another two to three years may actually turn out to be an advantage for LTE as the timeframe will allow mobile operators to get as much life as possible out of their existing 3G networks."

However, IMS suggests that the killer blow to WiMAX will be dealt by a technology not even precisely specified and probably a decade away for large scale commercialisation. "While it is certain that both standards [LTE & WiMAX] will achieve some level of success, the road to mass adoption for mobile WiMAX will certainly be more challenging than that of LTE. This is further evidenced by the fact that the 3GPP has already tabbed LTE as the 4G standard for the GSM evolution path." (my italics)

This is the so-called LTE-Advanced. It is not expected to be standardised by the ITU until mid 2011 and the expectations are that it will deliver downstream speeds of up to 1Gbps! Just one small snag: it will even more spectrum hungry than LTE, requiring 100MHz of spectrum to achieve this throughput.

However, Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson and other major cellular equipment makers are already working on LTE-Advanced and, according to a recent white paper from Nomor Research , the roadmap and timetable to a standard are now reasonably clear.

"LTE Advanced will be standardised in the 3GPP specification Release 10 and will be designed to meet the 4G requirements as defined by ITU...LTE Advanced, which is likely to be the first true 4G technology, will be a smooth evolution of the LTE standard...Work on the requirements is already progressing in 3GPP...while work on technology proposals is expected to go on for some time within the working groups."

And adding momentum to LTE-A is the now huge installed base of HSPA networks. According to the global GSM operators association  the number of subscribers using HSPA networks topped the 50 million mark in August, up from 11 million one year ago, the number of operators with commercial HSPA networks  reached 191 and there are now over 740 HSPA-enabled devices (including mobiles, dongles and notebooks) available from 116 manufacturers.

Expectations are that the number of users will grow at about four million per month for the rest of 2008.