WCA spotlights ongoing platform debate

The WCA 2006 event held this week in Washington, D.C. provided a stage for much sparring over which technology platform ultimately will win out with large network operators. Whether that was the intention of the host, the Wireless Communications Association International, is unclear: The conference, with its sprawling range of content, seemed uncertain of its own focus at times and left some attendees feeling that the association was attempting to appeal to too broad a swath of the wireless world.

For those following the progression of WiMAX, the event offered a taste of how the developing mobile version of that platform will stack up against future versions of 3G mobile systems, known as Long Term Evolution or LTE in 3GPP standards parlance. At a lunchtime keynote by Robert Finch, the vice president of Spectrum Development for Sprint Nextel (who stood in for the scheduled speaker, Sprint Nextel Chief Technology Officer Barry West), some attendees seemed to be waiting for an announcement of technology decision one way or the other.

Instead, Finch outlined the carrier’s current CDMA EV-DO mobile data efforts, discussed its ongoing F-OFDM and TD-CDMA trials, and said “Obviously we’re looking at WiMAX as well” (though it wasn’t exactly clear why that was obvious, since he provided no details). To those in the audience who expected Sprint Nextel to take a side, and for that decision to be monumental to the future of one technology camp or the other, Finch said “We do expect to make our technology decision this summer. Stay tuned.”

More debate ensued on a panel discussion later at WCA, when Ed Knapp, senior vice president of marketing for F-OFDM developer Qualcomm Flarion Technologies, debated WiMAX Forum president Ron Resnick about the ultimate position of WiMAX and 3G technologies in next generation networks. Resnick maintained that “Operators are trying to come up with a common solution, so that where ever users go they don’t have a complex mix of solutions at various price points.” Knapp, meanwhile, took a somewhat different slant and said he thinks WiMAX “gets too much credit as a mobile technology.”

“Yeah, WiMAX will be deployed, and operators will experiment with it and learn that it takes many years to get a technology to work well,” Knapp said. “And the market will be comprised of a number of different technologies—but while the vision may be ultimately to get to one, it’s probably not going to happen.”

Clearly, how various technologies evolve and advance ultimately will play out in standards activity and especially in decisions and deployments made by network operators, though events like WCA do help frame the issues to a certain extent. IP Wireless CTO Roger Quayle perhaps best summed up the tone of an event like WCA when he said “There’s a tremendous amount of religion in this industry.”