ROUNDTABLE: Industry Should Let WiMAX Mature Properly

( 1 Jul 2008 )

By Stephen Las Marias, Editor


Elvis Tucker, Director, Solutions and Alliances, Aperto Networks; Michael Murphy, Head of Technology, Asia-Pacific, Nokia Siemens Networks; and Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, Vice President of Marketing, WiMAX Forum, discussed with Wireless Design and Development Asia the major changes that have occurred in the WiMAX space during the past year, as well as the challenges facing WiMAX in the next 18 months. They also talked about the WiMAX ecosystem development in Asia, and how the region compares with what is happening worldwide. Excerpts:

What were the major changes that have occurred in the WiMAX space during the past year?
Dr. Shakouri: The biggest change was to achieve multi-vendor operability and certification. There has not any technological issue with WiMAX. The biggest challenge for the industry was the ecosystem of vendors building products that can work with each other in a real open environment. This was the biggest hurdle that the industry was able to overcome. Overall we are seeing good industry traction. We are excited that after all of these years, we are now starting to see real products, and this is the proof that the industry is maturing; we're not talking about paper works anymore.

Tucker: The major change that had occurred clearly has to be the adoption of, at least in the mindset of the WiMAX community, the IEEE 802.16e standard. Although the market still has to mature a bit, there had been a tremendous amount of activity from the operator community in investigating 802.16e systems, learning about those networks, how they will be deployed, what types of services they can run over them, how they can make money, do they need to be mobile or just deploy 802.16d and be fixed, and if that is the right technology or is 802.16d better. So the interest in 16e has really been the defining moment in the past year. And we are participating in that at Aperto Networks. We have segmented our R&D efforts to 16d and 16e to make sure that we address the needs of our customers who are looking at 16e.

Where do you think WiMAX is headed?
Murphy: As of March, there were 606 licenses planned to be awarded in the WiMAX spectrum globally. About 700 vendors are involved in WiMAX, we have a lot of small vendors, and there are a lot of chipset suppliers. So when you put all those number together, I think what it means practically is that there are no more doubts whether WiMAX is going to live or die; it's going to be here, and it's going to be here for a very long time.

Dr. Shakouri: Basically the most important thing is that today, there are more than 260 operators who are deploying WiMAX in a 110 countries. We have 39 companies who are developing chipsets and RF components for the WiMAX industry, and we have close to 100 companies who are developing products. The industry has moved from standardization, to the products, and is now going to commercialization

Tucker: I think WiMAX is headed to be the first true mobile broadband technology that offers services to consumers. If you look at those two concepts¡ªmobile and broadband¡ªthey really don't exist together, anywhere in the world. If you look at mobile data, pretty much all of us have the ability to get some level of data on our phone or some similar device. Mobile data usage was sort of legendary in Japan and Korea. It is truly mobile, but is it truly broadband? You can't really consume a broadband level of data on a mobile device; even if you have a 1Mbps pipe coming down to your phone, how can you use it? You cannot.
The other concept is broadband. If you are using your terminal outside, and there is a Wi-Fi service available, you can see and log on to one of them. It's a pretty forward broadband connection. But, you cannot get it in a passenger seat of a car or bus or train and travel with it. So, mobile broadband does not exist.
I believe that WiMAX will be the first technology that offers that on any scale to user segments. That's where I think it is headed. There are a lot of talks about competing and similar and dissimilar technologies. But clearly if you look at the elements that WiMAX is bringing—OFDM, MIMO, etc.—the vendors developing WiMAX will bring those technologies to market on a mature way and a usable way much sooner than any other technology out there.

How do you see the WiMAX ecosystem developing in Asia, and how do you compare this to other regions worldwide?
Murphy: There's interest globally, and proof of that are regulators issuing licenses worldwide. As a rule of thumb, operators who have 3G already, with HSDPA, maybe have a little bit less incentive to go after WiMAX, because they already have a broadband capability. But even then, we see operators with 3G still going out for WiMAX. It's difficult to compare the world, even in Asia, because we have developing countries and very developed countries. But I do think that Asia, in terms of innovation and services, and perhaps with some countries having less of fixed line broadband capability, for example in India and Indonesia, WiMAX is more interesting.

Dr. Shakouri: I think development in the Asia market will be at a later timeframe because of the spectrum allocation issues. But Asia will most probably become the number one market for WiMAX, driven by the broadband need, as most Asian countries do not have a lot of wired infrastructure. Meanwhile, Korea Telecoms, of course, already has closed to 140,000 customers. They expect half a million subscribers by the end of this year. Japan has already allocated a spectrum and they are talking mid-2009.
India will be a big WiMAX country. We also see a lot of movement in Malaysia, Vietnam, and other countries in this region. But it is Taiwan, which has a program called M-Taiwan, that I think will have the highest momentum and energy.

Tucker: If you look at the United States, you have one big guy who's committed to WiMAX that's making a statement for the rest of the world—Sprint—which is sort of setting the tone in the region. And it is obviously specific to the spectrum that it has, which is 2.5GHz. And I don't think that really exists in Asia, but perhaps outside of Korea. That is one dynamic that I see different from the rest of the world. I don't really see a Sprint stepping up in Southeast Asia, in India, Middle East, or in Eastern Europe, or in Europe. I don't see anyone making a major commitment that the rest of the world, or even the rest of that region, can rally around and even follow, apart from Sprint.
For this part of the world, that would be helpful if someone did that; but so far, it hasn't happened.
But I think, once the issues have been sorted, including spectrum, and especially if China comes online, it's a no brainer; I would expect Asia to be the dominant, largest market. But right now it will be helpful if someone made a major commitment or made a major statement.

Most operators in developing markets are deploying mobile WiMAX not to exploit full mobility, but because 802.16e is more spectrally efficient than 802.16d. Please give your comments.
Dr. Shakouri: The overall direction of the market is going to 16e, or mobile WiMAX, and 16e is an enhancement to 16d. It supports fixed, portable and mobile applications. The value proposition is MIMO, meaning more bits per Hz, and therefore more efficiency.

Murphy: I don't know if spectrum efficiency is really a key item as much as mobility. Obviously, mobility serves both fixed users and mobile users, so it has the benefits of both worlds; and I think that's maybe the bigger driver.

Tucker: IEEE 802.16e offers more capacity per sector basis. For operators looking to go and address the consumer market, 16e is absolutely the base that they should be trying to roll out, especially if they are looking to have a mobile consumer base. But for operators who are not necessarily looking for full mobility, but they are looking to roll out a service that can be fixed and somewhat nomadic, then 16d is still the way to go because its capacity, although not as great as 16e, is more than enough. You can get no more than 20Mb of bandwidth on a per sector basis, but that's more than enough. The capacity and spectral efficiency is higher for 16e, but it's targeted at a different market.

What will be the considerable challenges that will face WiMAX in the next 18 months?
Murphy: We have to face the fact that WiMAX is a new technology, so it is going to have some growing phase. Not everything is going to work perfectly on day one. So one challenge is to perhaps not hype the customer base too much, and let it mature properly. The other one is if WiMAX is issued initially as just a broadband pipe. Practically speaking, that means there will be some kind of pricing wars.
So I think the WiMAX operators, especially the green-field ones, will have to look very quickly at what kinds of interesting services they can provide to capture subscribers rather than just focus on price wars.
And then of course, it's a big investment to start working on large WiMAX deployments so operators have to see first what business models will work and what services will work.

Dr. Shakouri: I think the biggest challenge for WiMAX now is getting lower cost—the business case of an operator. We need to get certification completed for 2.5GHz, and we need to be able to get low-cost CPEs; because at the end of the day, the business case of an operator is fundamental to the success in the long term. So it's really in the hand of the industry; there's no technology problem—it's proven. The biggest challenge for us now is to execute and get lower cost CPE devices, lower cost products, and do multivendor products. This is the challenge for the industry in the next 18 months.

Tucker: The challenge is to execute on the plan, which is, 18 months from now, we will have mobile broadband. There will be some delays, but we can get around that. WiMAX is challenged to show the operator community that the things that we planned to do in terms of interoperability and certification, we are actually going to do. To show that we can roll out a network that's heterogenous, consisting of many vendors, and I won't say plug-and-play because 18 months will be a steep hill to climb for that, but at least networks that can easily be deployed and interoperate with each other on different interfaces that are defined.
There are so many competing thoughts on what to do first and which profiles make more sense than the others, and we are sort of getting on each others' way. But here is the plan, let's go and do it. And executing that plan is the challenge.


Aperto Networks

Nokia Siemens Networks

WiMAX Forum