CTIA: Mobile WiMAX in Muskegon?

LAS VEGAS--As CTIA's Wireless 2006 trade show was winding down here, Samsung Telecommunications America turned a few of the remaining heads with an announcement that it will work with regional service provider Arialink in Michigan to deploy what it claimed could be the first commercial Mobile WiMAX network in North America.

There are a few qualifications to that statement: For starters, there currently are no certified Mobile WiMAX products, and that process probably will not begin until at least late this year, but Samsung said it will provide 802.16e-based WiMAX-ready products, as well as installation, training and product support, to Arialink. The service provider in turn plans to commercially launch the 802.16e-based service in Muskegon County, Mich., in early 2007.

Like officials from several other vendors of such equipment that were at Wireless 2006 this week, Jim Parker, senior manager of wireless systems sales and marketing at Samsung, answered in the affirmative when asked if the company is planning to submit its gear to the WiMAX Forum-Certified program for Mobile WiMAX as soon as that effort begins. So Muskegon may indeed get certified Mobile WiMAX in early 2007, and could be the first or among the first markets in North America to earn that distinction.

Another qualifier is that the services that Arialink will roll out in the Muskegon area will be more like a fixed wireless broadband alternative delivered through a PC card, with mobility and other device access a later eventuality. Arialink will be serving customers in rural and suburban areas as part of the Digital Divide Investment Program backed by the Michigan state government.

Otherwise, Samsung arguably could have a slight leg up on the Mobile WiMAX competition, because it is continuing to support the WiBro rollouts of Korea Telecom and SK Telecom in South Korea during the first half of this year. WiBro is deeply aligned with Mobile WiMAX, and many system vendors at the show said they believe that a 2.3 GHz WiBro profile will be the first Mobile WiMAX profile subject to the planned certification process.

The Korea rollouts also are giving Samsung valuable experience, Parker said. "KT has 100 base stations deployed already, and they will have 1000 by the end of the year," he said.

Several vendors, including Motorola, NEC, SOMA Networks and Alvarion, announced their 802.16e pre-Mobile WiMAX platforms at this week's show, and most agreed that a 2.5 GHz profile, applicable in the U.S., Japan and several other key markets, will be the very next profile subject to certification after 2.3 GHz.

Motorola's MotoWi4 is currently targeted at 3.5 GHz, and is an evolution from the vendor's fixed access Canopy portfolio, but a Mobile WiMAX system will tackle basic connectivity applications in a more robust way, the company said. But, Motorola will target other frequencies as well. "The 2.5 GHz frequency will be even better for mobility than 3.5 GHz," said Dan Coombes, senior vice president and chief technology officer for wireless broadband networks at Motorola. "It's generally better the lower you go."

Coombes also said that early Mobile WiMAX deployments will exhibit some profoundly different thinking than traditional cellular architectures about how to deploy mobile networks. "In Korea, the radius on WiBro cells is only about half a mile," he said. "Those networks are beging designed for capacity more than coverage, which is not the way we have ever thought about cellular systems."