WCA: Forum says IEEE change delayed certification

SAN JOSE, CALIF.--The WiMAX Forum said at the WCA International Symposium & Business Expo here that the IEEE delivered a corrigendum adjustment to the 802.16-2004 standard to the WiMAX Forum in November that caused the group to make changes in its certification testing program that ultmately delayed the certification process.

As a result, the WiMAX Forum may not announce its initial wave of WiMAX Forum-certified products this week, as many WCA attendees have anticipated. "We know that no less than three vendors have completed the certification process, and we believe that a certification announcement is imminent," said Jeff Orr, director of marketing at the WiMAX Forum. "We don't have an announcement in hand yet. To paraphrase someone else, there is no wine before its time."

The forum already has missed its often-stated goal of completing the certification process before the end of 2005. But Orr said the forum didn't have much of a choice if it wanted to conducted a certification program that would lead to the most "robust" WiMAX Forum-certified products possible.

"It's unfortunate that the changes had to be made when they did, but we had to do it to make sure the WiMAX Forum-certified mark actually meant something," he added. "We believe that if the changes had not been necessary, we would have met our goal of announcing certified products in 2005."

The IEEE corrigendum--the latest of five such agendum--sent the forum's Certification Working Group into action to amend the certification process, and the forum worked with its partner, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, to make the necessary testing changes at Cetecom, the Malaga, Spain, labatory where the testing program is being carried out.

Orr said that the IEEE's "fairly broad" adjustments, having to do with periodic ranging and other technical issues, were not necessarily corrections to the existing standard, but also areas where the agency "saw the need to remove ambiguity in the standard." The adjustments also required that the forum do regression testing on many of the aspects of certification that had already been completed between the launch of certification testing last July and the November delivery of the latest corrigendum. Many forum officials actively involved in the testing process worked hard through late December and early January "with the exception of Christmas Day and New Year's Day" to get the work done, Orr said.

It's obvious that attendees of the WCA event and a co-located conference, the Global Carrier Investment Forum (GCIF), have been expecting a certification update to come this week. Kevin Suitor, vice president of business development at vendor Redline Communications, said in a GCIF session yesterday, "This is a milestone week for certification," he said. "But it's a long process. The [WiMAX Forum] has come a long way since 2003. WiMAX will not be a 'done-tomorrow' kind of thing. It will happen throughout the industry over the next 10 to 15 years."

Orr acknowledged that the WCA event would be a convenient and timely stage from which to announce certified products. He said the WiMAX Forum will talk more about the certification adjustments and provide a detailed update on the program during a two-hour session scheduled here tomorrow afternoon.