Gaining (and proving) ground in 2005

For an industry eager to test the potential of WiMAX broadband wireless technology, all eyes are on 2005, the year when the “pre-WiMAX” industry trades in its prefix for an official seal. Perhaps even before the ball drops on New Year's Eve, the first WiMAX chipsets (those adhering to the IEEE's 802.16-2004 standard, which was finalized in July) will hit the market, likely from Intel or Fujitsu. And by the middle of next year, the first WiMAX products will boast strict conformity to the 802.16-2004 standard, with certification to prove it.

The WiMAX Forum, which has been promoting WiMAX while guiding its evolution, will create a European-based technology lab that will become operational sometime in next year's second quarter and begin certifying the first WiMAX products as they appear. Toward the end of 2005 or early the following year, the WiMAX Forum lab will begin to certify products as interoperable, a characteristic that will become a must by the time later generations of WiMAX products gain the power of mobility.

The first products likely to appear will be WiMAX base stations and customer premises equipment (CPE) designed for outdoor installation — antenna-type products affixed to roofs, say, with wires leading to indoor modems. The next wave of products — in the second half of the year, will enable indoor installation, relieving service providers of the expense of truckroll installs.

“Probably even toward the end of '05, you'll start to see carriers trialing [WiMAX], but it will really pick up in '06,” said Phil Solis, senior analyst with ABI Research.

Ron Resnick, director of marketing for Intel's broadband wireless division and president/chairman of the WiMAX Forum, imagines service providers — possibly even major carriers such as Sprint or Nextel — deploying WiMAX where DSL and cable are not available, such as suburbs or the outskirts of cities. According to one vendor, interested American carriers are asking if the technology supports voice over IP.

“As opposed to a cellular system, where you have to build out the entire billion-dollar investment, you don't have to do that for a WiMAX installation,” Resnick said. “You can scale it. That's the good news. It doesn't have to be a national deployment. You can pick an area, particularly for fixed [wireless], cover a territory and start marketing it. That's what's happening.”

But where DSL or cable is available, WiMAX probably won't be able to compete, based on the price of the new technology. Whereas CPE for DSL or cable might cost less than $100, Solis imagines the first generation of WiMAX CPE to run a few hundred dollars each.

“Frankly, for the foreseeable future, some of the WiMAX solutions are not going to be cost-effective,” said Mark Johnson, CEO for Skypilot, a company that makes wireless broadband equipment that it markets as an earlier, less-expensive alternative to WiMAX.

A handful of vendors, including Alvarion, Redline Communications and WiLAN, have beat the standards process to market, putting out products they claim can be upgraded to conform to the standard.

“As with any technology, there's a risk that some of these early pre-WiMAX deployments may not actually certify,” Johnson said, “and the vendors are going to have to stand up if they've made promises financially — maybe do a swap-out for customers. Certainly, some of the big guys who have a lot of money at stake on a national front, whether it's Clearwire, Nextnet, Speakeasy — they've made some pretty strong commitments, aided by investment from Intel,” Johnson said. “If I'm a CLEC more worried about getting my brains beat out by cable guys, I may not make the same economic decision. I'm looking for solutions today. Our customers are not waiting for WiMAX.”

Though Skypilot's customers — mostly mid-tier American telcos and CLECs, with deployment by U.K. carrier Telabria — are using its technology for last-mile applications, one of the first popular applications for which WiMAX will be used by carriers is backhaul. But even Johnson, whose company's WiMAX alternative can be used in mesh architectures, can't predict when WiMAX meshes will emerge. To the extent that Motorola's recent acquisition of Mesh Networks could be a telegraphed hint in that direction, it's a hint Johnson has already taken. Though he thinks the industry will favor Wi-Fi over WiMAX for mesh applications in the near future, he also suspects Skypilot will have its own WiMAX mesh gear someday.

Johnson and Resnick agree that WiMAX and Wi-Fi will complement each other in the market.

“Wherever you connect a WiMAX modem for fixed or even future deployments, you can attach a Wi-Fi access point to it,” Resnick said.

The WiMAX mobility standard, 802.16e (no telling whether it will eventually be renamed after a calendar year, the way 802.16 Revision D became 802.16-2004), won't be finalized until at least Q1 2005, and laptop PCs won't have built-in WiMAX or pluggable PC/MCI cards until probably the middle of 2006, Resnick estimates. (Johnson thinks it's more likely mobility won't appear in products until 2008.) But with that power, WiMAX might finally be able to take on DSL and cable in a competitive arena.

“In the city, where [consumers] are already wired, the disruptor is mobility,” Resnick said.

For all the excitement over the first official WiMAX toys of 2005, next year will also serve as a prelude to an even more exciting wave of products whose emergence is not yet as clearly in view.

CUTTING EDGE

Ron Resnick

President and chairman, WiMAX Forum

“WiMAX can easily be over-hyped right now,” says Ron Resnick, director of marketing for Intel's broadband wireless division. The former U.S. Air Force pilot made that observation, ironically enough, in the scant days between keynoting the first-ever “WiMAXCon” convention in Los Angeles and kiting off to Hong Kong to keynote the 3G World Congress. Resnick may be leery of over-hyping WiMAX, but he's not about to under-hype it either.

As a shepherd of new wireless technologies at Intel, Resnick sits in the cockpit of one of the most powerful and influential forces driving the WiMAX industry today. And as president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum, the group formed to guide WiMAX's evolution and bolster support for — and investment in — WiMAX, Resnick's role is to harness that hype, to ignite it while maintaining enough control to keep the movement's nose up.

Next year, the WiMAX Forum will play a crucial role in the technology's maturation by grounding hype in reality with a European lab that will apply uniform standards and testing to certify the first WiMAX products around the middle of next year. Beyond that, the lab will certify interoperability of those products, which may occur toward the end of next year or in early 2006. Eventually, the lab will christen a new generation of mobile WiMAX equipment.

One of the Forum's chief priorities at the moment, Resnick says, is rallying service providers to the cause and giving them the confidence to invest in commercial trials next year. A quick glance at the ranks of the Forums members — who cannot join without making a commitment to the technology and which includes AT&T, SBC Communications, Qwest Communications, Covad Communications and Time Warner Telecom — suggests Resnick is successfully winning over service providers to WiMAX.

“I think we've done a reasonable job because a year ago, we had none, and now we have close to 50,” he said. “A reasonable job.” There, that's not too over-hyped.
— Ed Gubbins