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It's more than a little surprising that WiMAX reigns among the hot-button topics here at Supercomm 2005 given how badly the technology stumbled out of the gate as the calendar year began.

Think back to January, when a series of postponements that plagued the WiMAX Forum industry association's certification testing program throughout the previous year culminated in the delay of its 802.16-2004 fixed WiMAX standard plugfest to July 2005. Many critics and advocates of rival technologies wrote off WiMAX then and there, citing this latest momentum-killer as conclusive proof that WiMAX will never amount to more than a backhaul solution best suited for delivering broadband access to under-served locales.

But then WiMAX — essentially an 802.16-based broadband wireless metropolitan-area network access standard that promises to deliver voice and data services across expanses of up to 30 miles, sans the expense of cable or the distance limitations of DSL — regained its footing. In April, the WiMAX Forum promised the commercial availability of 802.16-2004-certified products by year's end. Just days later, Intel — which has invested significant capital and marketing muscle into WiMAX over the past two years — officially entered the race when it began shipping its first pre-WiMAX product, the PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface chipset.

“This is a big deal for us,” said Ron Peck, director of marketing for Intel's WiMax Group. “We think [WiMAX] is the way to get to the next billion broadband users.”

It's also a big deal for a fast-growing WiMAX vendor community given real credence by Intel's entry into the space — no longer can service providers ignore the technology's economics and potential (see charts).

“[Intel's involvement] helps legitimize the WiMAX industry,” said Alan Menezes, vice president of marketing for broadband wireless access systems provider Aperto Networks, one of several companies that immediately announced implementation of the 5116 chip into its own PacketWave CPE line of products. “They've created additional momentum, and drawn the attention of carriers that may not have been paying attention to this market as a different way of access. If you don't own cable or copper, the only way to get broadband access to your customers is through broadband wireless.”

Despite the growing number of vendors developing gear for 802.16-2004 networks, most observers and pundits agree that fixed WiMAX access is only the tip of the iceberg — that the 802.16e mobile WiMAX specification is where the true opportunity exists.

“We see the biggest potential in portable, nomadic WiMAX service — it offers some unique services and significant value to a large number of users,” said John Hoadley, vice president of advanced technology, wireless networks at Nortel Networks, which announced at CTIA Wireless 2005 its intention to partner with electronics bigwig LG to jointly develop and market WiMAX products based on the 802.16e standard. “802.16e is a much broader play than 802.16-2004 — it tries to make wireless broadband easy to use and that much more cost-effective.”

Mobile WiMAX not only enables multi-Mb/s network access for users on the go — because it also facilitates real-time applications such as voice over IP — it poses a genuine threat to 3G networks (although advocates are quick to point out the two technologies are more complementary than competitive). Momentum is already snowballing: In April the WiMAX Forum committed to ratifying the 802.16e standard by the end of 2005, outlining a provisional schedule for testing and certification in 2006 with commercial products scheduled to hit the market the following year.

Tangible proof of mobile WiMAX's potential lies in the WiMAX Forum roster, which now features dozens of wireless operators and equipment manufacturers; in addition, Sprint and Samsung belong to the group's board of directors. Even more noteworthy, all of Korea's operators now claim WiMAX Forum membership, and it is expected that products based on WiBRO, the Korean government's broadband wireless standard, will receive WiMAX Forum certification as well.

In announcing its PRO/Wireless 5116 chipset, Intel discussed its own vision for mobile WiMAX and said that, assuming the standard is finalized according to current projections, it expects to begin shipping 802.16e-compliant chips in late 2006 and build them into notebook PCs in 2007. “As we tell carriers it is our intent to build [802.16e chips] into notebooks, we have an expectation to build this market substantially,” Peck said.

Most, if not all, broadband wireless vendors are designing their products with an eye on the evolution to mobility.

“We all have the view that [products] need to scale for current WiMAX but also address mobile WiMAX, and we're building it in a modular sense so you can plug in new modules and address it that way,” said Menezes. “Mobile WiMAX will be very different from fixed WiMAX, not only in terms of what technology's being applied but also the number of cells — you need more cells and more dense cells so you can penetrate walls. There will be differences in the deployment models of fixed WiMAX and mobile WiMAX, and of course the applications will be different as well.”

The differences are so significant that they are creating a kind of partisan divide within the WiMAX community. One side argues that, in light of the anticipated 2-year wait for mobile WiMAX to achieve volume — not to mention the complexity of the evolution required to reach that level of critical mass — the sector must first guarantee the efficiency of the 802.16-2004 standard to drive sales and develop provider and consumer confidence in the WiMAX platform. The other side argues for making the leap to 802.16e as quickly as possible by deploying pre-standard networks that, theoretically, would serve to make the transition from fixed to mobile service that much smoother.

Falling squarely in the latter camp are the many wireline service providers champing at the bit to launch broadband services in new markets. Mobile WiMAX also can't arrive soon enough for MSOs angling to expand their existing triple-play bundles with the addition of wireless services.

“The MSOs created the triple play, and every other segment is trying to respond to that and then some,” said Mike Seymour, vice president for Alcatel's Mobile Radio Division, which at February's 3GSM World Congress announced it would collaborate with Intel to develop mobile WiMAX solutions. “The next thing for all of them is, ‘What do I add on top?’ WiMAX has the attention of all market segments, at the highest level of every company.”

Demand is so great that a handful of vendors are already deploying pre-standardized mobile WiMAX networks, a potentially dicey proposition should the final 802.16e specification resemble something dramatically different from what these manufacturers and operators are currently installing.

Regardless of what specifications ultimately define both 802.16-2004 and 802.16e, however, a growing faction agrees that WiMAX is no longer a matter of “if” but “when.” And standard or no standard, for a growing number of service providers that time is now.

“Certainly people aren't waiting for WiMAX,” Menezes said. “They're deploying business services as well as consumer services today.”

	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3
Geographical area	Major city/metropolitan area		Small rurally located
Market segment	Residential	Residential, small to medium-sized businesses and Wi-Fi backhaul	Residential and small to medium-sized business and Wi-Fi backhaul
Size	125 km2		16 km2
Population	~1,000,000		~25,000
Residential density	6000 Households/square-km in urban center, 1500 Households/square-km in suburban area, 500 Households/square-km in exurban area		600 HH/km2
Total households	~390,000		~9600
Total small to medium-sized businesses (in all cases)	n/a	~24,000	n/a
Adoption rate	4 years		3 years
Frequency band	Licensed 3.5 GHz band		Unlicensed 5.8 GHz
Channel bandwidth	3.5 MHz, FDD		10 MHz, TDD
Assumed spectrum	28 MHz (2 × 14 MHz)		60 MHz
Source: WiMAX Forum

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