Maxed out on WiMAX
Part 1: WiMAX - Why Not?

Thanks to Ken DiPietro for his contribution to this story

According to Jupiter Research, as of Q3 2004, there were an estimated 81.1 million residential Internet subscribers in the United States.  The breakdown of this is as follows:

Cable Companies: 19%
Telephone Companies: 12%
Independent Operators: 69%

Independent operators currently utilize the Cable or Telephone Companies to access the majority of their customers, mostly dial-up, in the United States. With the increasing demand for broadband, a key business and technological issue facing independent operators today revolves around providing competitively priced broadband access services.

Unfortunately, the independent operator doesn't own either the copper or cable plant (otherwise, why would we be reading this paper?).  The options for the independent operator look fairly bleak due to the fact that the system owners are direct competitors.  Copper (with the support of the 1996 Telecom Act), once thought to be the best solution for last-mile broadband, has, with the recent UNE-P review refusal of the Supreme Court (last month's Technology Brief), all but disappeared as a viable alternative.  Cable initiatives, once filled with "promises," have never materialized into anything concrete to date.  Terrestrial fixed wireless, after the spectacular billion-dollar failures of both Sprint Broadband Direct and venture-backed organizations like Winstar & Teligent, doesn't seem very promising.

Now, WiMAX is being presented as "the great wireless hope" for independent operators trying to solve the last-mile broadband access problem.  The WiMAX forum is working to facilitate the deployment of broadband wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.16 standard by helping to ensure the compatibility and inter-operability of broadband wireless access equipment.  WiMAX is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL.  In a typical cell radius deployment of up to 6 miles (with a maximum range as far as 30 miles), WiMAX systems can be expected to deliver up to 40 Mbps (maximum of 70 Mbps) per channel, enough bandwidth to simultaneously support hundreds of businesses with T1 speed connectivity and thousands of residences with DSL speed connectivity with competitive pricing.  WiMAX hopes to solve the CPE cost equation by forging a common standard so that vendors across the board can leverage common standards-based manufacturing.  In addition, unlike first generation fixed broadband wireless access technologies, WiMAX addresses the classic terrestrial wireless Line-of-Sight issue with Non Line-of-Sight (NLoS) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology.

Proponents of WiMAX, backed by an impressive marketing campaign from Intel and citing AT&T's $10+ billion annual access charges, have built WiMAX into the "magic pill" for solving the independent operator's last-mile dilemma.  The volume of news coverage, newsgroup discussion and exposure generated by the promise and potential impact of this standard has grown exponentially.

WiMAX Update: November 2004

A couple weeks ago, I saw a banner advertising the WiMAX World conference.  As with any other conference the difficult part is deciding whether or not to spend the money and time to attend.  After reading through the web site I was somewhat skeptical as it appeared to be a small group of vendors but on the good side there was an excellent lineup of speakers.  One thing that I have learned over the years is that trying to place expectations as to what I will get out of a show in advance is a complete waste of energy.  I do know that having an inquisitive and outgoing attitude along with the willingness to network and drink coffee with as many people as possible will generally open up many opportunities for both new business contacts and new solutions to investigate.  After that, everything is up for grabs.

After arriving on Wednesday morning we went straight into a session being delivered by Gordon Antonello (Chairman-WiMAX Forum Technology Working Group) who did an exemplary job of detailing out what the WiMAX Forum is trying to do, what the timetable looks like as of early November 2004 and what we can expect in the next year or so.

Originally, November 2004 was supposed to be the month where the first round of certification for WiMAX certified equipment began. This has now been pushed back for three to six months and we have been told that even this date would most likely not produce any certified equipment. While a number of reasons were given for this (including the growing list of 900+ certification tests), the bottom line is that the certification process is turning out to be more difficult than originally anticipated.

A few manufacturers will be releasing “Pre-WiMAX compliant” equipment sometime in the first quarter of 2005 (some have already released 802.16a “compliant” equipment). The associated bad news (as one would expect) is that there probably will not be any such equipment available for use within the US as manufacturers seem more interested in the international 3.5 GHz bands. Skylight research estimates that the US today represents less than 20% of the world-wide Broadband Wireless Access infrastructure market.

I can also tell you that I did receive quite a rude awakening during the question and answer period following Gordon’s presentation. While many of us (in the field) are sick to death of all the WiMAX publicity, there is still an enormous amount of misinformation about WiMAX. Case in point: one gentleman asked, “What output power will the WiMAX Forum set for these devices?” I thought Gordon showed an enormous amount of grace by answering this question patiently and explaining that the WiMAX Forum had no control over this issue as that each country where the equipment would be sold to sets the output power for that country.

One more session that absolutely floored me was delivered by Dr. Mohammad Shakouri (Chair-WiMAX Forum Marketing Group). Even though the room was too small and the air conditioning didn’t work this one session was something that nobody walked out on. Dr. Shakouri brought the topic of WiMAX to life with a mixture of charm and humor I have rarely experience before. His knowledge of the industry, the WiMAX standard and his ability to translate complex terms into easy-to-understand language made for a session that flew just by.

Among the many important things Dr. Shakouri presented the one that struck me the most was, “WiMAX will make you money.” For any independent operator who intends to stay in business, these five words should be VERY IMPORTANT to you. As an afterthought, perhaps due to my cynical nature, but coming from the Chair of the WiMAX Marketing Group, I cannot help but wonder who the “you” refers to…is “you” the independent operator? Or perhaps, you refers to the WiMAX equipment vendor, consultant, analyst and manufacturer?

After the presentation was complete, Dr. Shakouri opened the floor up to questions. I asked Dr. Shakouri how the WiMAX Forum was viewing all the hype and ensuing misinformation that now seemed to be coming from everywhere. He responded that originally the WiMAX Forum Marketing Group (which he chairs) thought this publicity was a good thing and that it would probably eventually die. Their view has changed as they are now beginning to realize that this overabundance of media attention coupled with the misinformation being distributed needs to be reigned in. If not, the fear is that WiMAX will be looked upon as a standard that did not live up to the promise. After all, how could WiMAX, that promises to cover up to 30 miles delivering 70 Mbps NLoS, NOT?

One of the last questions to be asked was from a gentleman seated near the front. He had been very patient, raising his hand and waiting to be called on. When it was finally his turn, he asked, “What output power will the WiMAX forum set?” to which he quickly added, “I asked this question at an earlier session and never received a reply.”

Next month, the CWLab Technology Brief will analyze and discuss the WiMAX standard and the vision of WiMAX.