Intel, Motorola Stimuli To WiMAX Will Not End Uncertainties

By: BY KIRTIMAYA VARMA, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
( 1 Oct 2006 )

In July, Intel and Motorola announced investing $900 million in Clearwire, a wireless service provider offering WiMAX in the US. What should designers and developers read in this announcement? The investment is to demonstrate to carriers the technological capabilities and commercial viability of the technology, and help promote the deployment of technologies based on the emerging 802.16 Rev 2004 and 802.16e standards. Let us see the WiMAX situation today. Intel's efforts over the past few years to project WiMAX as broadband wireless technology for fixed and mobile wireless has been only marginally successful. Some wireline carriers such as KDDI, Verizon, BellSouth, and British Telecom are commercially, but in a limited way, deploying fixed WiMAX, especially in rural areas not properly served by existing broadband technologies. Some carriers in developing countries, for instance, China Netcom and China Telecom in China, and Reliance Infocomm, BSNL, and VSNL in India, have deployed WiMAX to provide broadband services to residences and small-size enterprises in urban areas. Intel has developed a fixed WiMAX chipset solution compliant with 802.16 Rev 2004, and has worked with OEMs to develop system solutions for fixed WiMAX access. However, at best WiMAX has been able to penetrate niche applications. While WiMAX is just starting to evolve, to me there does not seem to be any compelling reason for WiMAX to become mainstream technology in wireline. Designers and developers should keep in mind the limited scope of WiMAX products for wireline.

Meanwhile, South Korea, which is the first country to offer WiMAX service, plans to entirely cover Seoul with the technology in 2007. Sprint Nextel will launch WiMAX in some American markets in late 2007, partnering with Intel, Samsung, and Motorola.

MOBILE WIMAX

iSuppli believes that WiMAX will have significant market opportunities in mobile. On the mobile front, IEEE has ratified 802.16e standard for mobile WiMAX. Meanwhile, the cellular industry is developing standard for GSM/GPRS/EDGE, as also for CDMA-based technologies, including WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, and CDMA2000. While 2.5G and 3G technologies mature, WiMAX evolution has still been primitive. Can it look forward to becoming the dominant standard at 4G?

Intel, Samsung, and Motorola would like to see this happen. Intel's interest in WiMAX as the dominant 4G standard stems from the advantages the Company would get if it could displace WiFi and embed a WiMAX chipset solution into a significant number of laptops. Samsung is experimenting with its own version of WiMAX, known as WiBro, in collaboration with Sprint Nextel, and KDDI. The commercial deployment is still in early stages. Motorola could gain significant market share both in cellular infrastructure market and in mobile phone market if it can acquire leadership in WiMAX.

I think even if technological and commercial feasibility of WiMAX is proved, WiMAX will have to cross many hurdles in its quest for leadership. 4G standard is expected to be based on OFDMA technology. This technology is the same as that underlying WiMAX, but there is no indication that WiMAX will be the standard. In all probability it will not be; the supporters of other technologies will try to ensure this through every possible means. Besides, WiMAX faces competition from upgrades to existing installed options, such as EDVO and UMTS. But if WiMAX can harmonize with the next generation of cellular technologies, its chances of emerging as mainstream is good.

APPROACH 4G CAUTIOUSLY

Wireless developers investing heavily in 4G must recall that companies supporting 3G invested billions in license fees, and have so far not made any profit. 3G is yet to become mainstream. There seems to be a divide between 3G equipment offered and the services available, thereby preventing consumers from making full use of 3G, and frustrating them. There does not seem to be any killer application pushing customers from 2/2.5G to 3G. Some developers had reasoned that providing customers with higher-speed wireless connections making information accessible anywhere at anytime, enabling phone calls, quick movie and music downloads, fast Web-surfing would be sufficient reasons for customers to move from 2.5G to 3G. This reasoning proved false. The same reasoning is now being advanced for 4G. Bluetooth is another example that should put developers on the alert. Bluetooth was once touted as the choice technology of the future with great market share. However, it has been confined by its own technical limitations to PAN. Notwithstanding efforts of Bluetooth SIG, Bluetooth is nowhere close to addressing a broad usage front and evolve either to WLAN or to wireless sensor arenas.

The new WTRS forecast of integrating as many wireless protocols as possible into one chipset, and thus one device, should be of interest to designers. They will face an enormous task integrating a multitude of RF protocols into a single component.

Based on the analyses of competing technologies by segment, combined with WTRS market forecasts, two key areas emerge for the greatest RF activities. These are, first, Wireless Telecom, where the decisions made regarding integration of various RF technologies in handsets will potentially impact all wireless, and, second, Wireless Sensors in the Wireless Telecom segment, projected to achieve annual shipment of 390 million with a CAGR of 132 percent over 2005-2011 period for IEEE 802.15.4 components. (WTRS figures.)

The road to integration is uncertain and blurred, but seems to be the way out from the jungle of standards that wireless has seen.