Vendors look ahead to WiMax 2.0

With the first round of mobile WiMax networks deployed — and long-term evolution networks hot on their heels — 4G operators and equipment vendors are looking ahead to the next evolutionary step in WiMax technology ladder. It goes by many names, WiMax-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m among them, but the WiMax community has settled on the much simpler "WiMax 2" moniker and today announced plans for a new interoperability initiative between its members intended to accelerate the development of the new ultra-high-speed mobile broadband technology.

Though the term 4G has been appropriated for current WiMax and LTE deployments, WiMax 2 will be one of the first "true" 4G technologies, as defined by the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU’s) IMT-Advanced standards. Building off the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) and multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) smart antenna technologies that form the foundation of WiMax, WiMax 2 will expand capacity to 300 Mb/s peak rates utilizing channel stacking techniques, greater frequency re-use and ever more complex arrays of antennas. Many of the same technologies will go into the next-generation of the LTE standard, LTE-Advanced.

The body in charge of defining the WiMax 2 air interface, the Institute Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), has been working on the 802.16m standard since 2006, shortly after in finalized 802.16e, which became mobile WiMax. It’s expected to conclude its work in the second half of this year, but WiMax vendors aren’t waiting around for a final document to prepare their next round of equipment. Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Initiative and network vendors Samsung, Alavrion (NASDAQ: ALVR), Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and ZTE joined chipset vendors Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Sequans Communications, Beceem Communications, GCT Semiconductor and XRONet to create the WiMax 2 Collaboration Initiative, which will work closely with the WiMax Forum and WiMax operators to accelerate the development of the next generation of WiMax products.

The group plans to collaborate on interoperability testing, performance benchmarking and application development before the WiMax Forum gets its certification program off the ground, potentially narrowing the gap between a finalized standard and the first commercial deployments. While the IEEE ratified the 802.16e standard in late 2005, it took a more than two years for the Forum to certify the first mobile WiMax products. Even with official WiMax products in the market, it wasn’t until 2009 that the first large-scale deployments of WiMax took off, cutting down considerably on the time to market many believed WiMax would have over LTE.

In the U.S., Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) has deployed in 28 markets and has plans to cover 120 million pops by year end. But Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) has pledged to have LTE rolled out in 25-30 major markets in the same timeframe, covering almost as many people.