Confusion keeps WiMAX up in the air

Confusion over the WiMAX Forum's testing process has created rampant speculation on whether the current version of WiMAX — based on the 802.16-2004 standard — will emerge on time, if at all. The situation has led several vendors to start generating their own milestones. Airspan and Wavesat have claimed to be leading in the forum's testing process, even though actual testing of individual gear hasn't yet begun. Airspan went so far as to declare that its equipment was already WiMAX-compliant — a declaration some vendors made several months ago before the forum firmly discouraged such claims. The resulting media and analyst attention continues to be a public relations nightmare for the WiMAX Forum, and forum leaders are now trying to get their membership back on message.

The source of most of the confusion has been the actual testing process, said Mo Shakouri, the forum's vice president of marketing and representative of forum member Alvarion. Details about different test phases have made it appear that testing is being pushed back further and further, leading to speculation that the forum is missing deadlines, and equipment won't be ready until 2006, Shakouri said.However, he claimed testing is going according to internal schedules the forum set earlier this year (after testing was delayed from an original January start date).

“People are getting confused about the internal activity of the WiMAX Forum,” Shakouri said. “The important question to ask is, ‘When do I get WiMAX Forum-certified equipment?’ We expect that in November or December, the first sets of commercial equipment will be in the market.”

Shakouri, however, conceded that the forum could have dealt better with the controversy and misconceptions as they arose. He said the forum is now preparing a detailed Q&A for its Web site and addressing confusion among members and the media in hopes of clarifying the process once and for all.

“I think as the WiMAX Forum, we learned our lesson. We didn't think that communicating the details of the testing process was important,” he said. “This is a big beast. We're learning how to manage it.”

The forum's testing process is a multi-tiered system, involving releases, waves and phases. Each release is an evolution of the WiMAX standard, the first release testing the basics of 802.16-2004. Within each release, the forum tests individual vendors' gear in specific waves. As enough vendors submit equipment in a particular product profile to meet the three-vendor requirement for interoperability trials, the forum launches a new wave. Within each wave, there are three phases: validation of the tests, compliance testing of the equipment and interoperability testing between vendors' equipment. Once all three steps are successfully completed, a base station or customer premises equipment (CPE) receives certification.

The current wave in the forum's labs at Malaga, Spain, just concluded validation testing, and the forum and the submitting vendors are now preparing for Phase 2, which will begin later this month. The first wave is testing two product profiles in the 3.5 GHz bands, meaning the first certified equipment will be targeted at international markets — not the U.S., where 3.5 GHz isn't available. The first U.S. frequency entering the process will be 5.8 GHz, the unlicensed frequencies used by wireless ISPs. Wave 2 of testing, which is likely to include 5.8 GHz equipment, could occur as soon as January, depending on when Wave 1 concludes and how quickly vendors get their 5.8 GHz gear to the labs.

Gordon Antonello, forum technical committee chair and Wi-LAN representative, said the complex testing schedule isn't meant to be exclusionary but rather allow equipment to reach the market as quickly as possible. By testing equipment in waves, the forum can start a round of testing as soon as three vendors fitting a particular equipment profile have their kits ready. Since gear in the 3.5 GHz bands are most in demand worldwide, this band was the subject of most vendor developments and also the forum's certification priority, Antonello said. Meanwhile testing in bands where there hasn't been much activity, such as the U.S.2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands, is being pushed off until there is both enough equipment being produced by vendors, and there is demand from carriers to justify trials, Antonello said.

“The cost of these tests is not cheap,” he said. “We have to start with the equipment that will have the broadest impact.”

Specifically, the cost is $15,000 for each kit submitted. Vendors must pay that cost over and over again as the forum issues more sophisticated releases as new standards emerge. Shakouri said the forum is expected to vote on release 1.1 of the WiMAX standard early next year and schedule the first wave of testing in that release in the second quarter. The new release will include testing for new features and applications beyond the basic requirements of the initial release such as quality of service and voice over IP (VoIP).

Though no final set of features for release 1.1 have been determined, Shakouri said that VoIP is a top candidate, considering that WiMAX service initially is being targeted at businesses. “I personally believe that VoIP is such an important element it will be included in [release] 1.1,” he said.

The fact that there will be numerous releases and numerous waves of testing within those releases may be prompting some vendors to wait to the last possible moment to fine-tune their equipment or wait for a release that will certify them in VoIP or other advanced applications.

“Fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money to put up if you're not quite ready to go through testing,” said Lindsay Schroth, broadband wireless analyst for the Yankee Group. “Interoperability is going to be a much bigger challenge than people are making it out to be. They're not sure what some of the issues with interoperability are going to be until they go through the first tests.”

The forum won't release the number of vendors that have submitted equipment for the first round of testing, saying they will only release the names of manufacturers that get certified. But forum members did reveal that there will be enough vendor equipment in both profiles being tested in Wave 1 to perform interoperability tests. That would mean at least three base station/CPE sets in each profile. Schroth said she got vague numbers from forum members, saying the number of kits now in the labs is anywhere from three to six. But, that could just be the gear brought in to validate the tests, not the full list of kits destined for actual testing. Even Shakouri's own Alvarion isn't participating in the initial validation phase, choosing instead to jump in at compliance testing scheduled for the end of this month.

“Alvarion's position is that we don't want to be in the lab until serious preparation for testing starts,” said Carlton O'Neal, Alvarion vice president of marketing.

As recently as April, the forum characterized validation as separate from the rest of the process, but Antonello said last week that a validation phase is required for every testing wave. Regardless of the number of vendors in the first wave, it's critical for the forum to hit its fourth-quarter target or risk a major credibility crisis, Schroth said.

“With all of the confusing and contradictory statements being made — it's done a lot of harm to the credibility of the forum,” Schroth said. “The forum says it realizes this, but at the same time, those statements haven't stopped coming out.”