Whither WiMAX?

There are strongly divided opinions about WiMAX.

Its supporters have a vision of a world where many devices are wireless mobile enabled, so that for example a camera can take a picture and have it automatically and immediately uploaded to the photographer’s own picture archive on a server somewhere, gaming devices can use mobility and geography as part of the game, a phone can make a freed VoIP call, or the expected new generation of digital notebooks as well as laptops can access videos, books, online newspapers, and social networking sites seamlessly. Access to the web anywhere on any device at high end broadband speeds.

On the other hand, observers point to the approaching ‘Long Term Evolution’ (LTE) standard for transforming 3G mobile networks (UMTS) into 4G networks based on IP. These will offer speeds in excess of current WiMAX technology, but less than next generation WiMAX (and both are in excess of speeds likely to be achievable over current fixed wire local loops). They say that there is no business case to build a WiMAX network when the mobile companies can deliver the same through the current mobile networks enhanced to 4G.

So should the title to this article be “Wither WiMAX?”

The position in the UK is not promising. At present, Ofcom has only licensed two operators to provide fixed point services based on the 802.16d standard. This has limited capacity and does not enable mobility (802.16e is ready for deployment and enables mobility including cell handoff). Therefore at present WiMAX can compete with fixed broadband services but not mobile – yet mobile is the raison d’être of WiMAX. Meanwhile the WiFi hotspot operators and GSM/3G operators are signing up mobile broadband customers as fast as they can, which is mopping up all the pent up demand that would otherwise be potential WiMAX customers.

If this particular cork were removed, how would WiMAX operators respond? They are broadly ready to deploy 802.16e technology but face significant problems in getting a return on investment.

Firstly, it will be a major undertaking, and investment, to build out a network of base stations to support wide area coverage. Mobility is not an easy sell unless coverage extends to at least the main areas a mobile user may go to – this means at least metropolitan cover in the area you live and work, and probably most of the main metropolitan areas in the country to be a convincing proposition. The big issue in base station building is in acquiring sites appropriately located for WiMAX frequency and wave propagation characteristics, which are much more significantly affected by topography and are less able to penetrate buildings than are GSM frequencies. The mobile phone companies on the other hand already have all their base station sites, and therefore cost of deployment is much less and the speed of deployment much greater – even though LTE is behind WiMAX in terms of development, it may be able to overtake WiMAX on deployment.

Secondly, the WiMAX-enabled user devices are not by and large on the market yet. Smart phones and PDAs on the market today are WiFi and GPRS/UMTS enabled but not WiMAX. The latest laptops are starting to be deployed with WiMAX as well as WiFi built in, but the rest of us will need to buy a dongle transceiver.

Thirdly, the technology is still on the leading edge, and despite deployments elsewhere in the world – most notably by Sprint in the USA – is not yet routine in terms of deployment, network management, or coverage prediction.

And finally, can the services offered by differentiated – and priced – competitively with both WiFi and GPRS/UMTS? On the one hand, it may compete for speed, especially uplink (WiMAX is a symmetrical service, unlike wired broadband, so uplink is very fast compared with normal domestic broadband), so this might suit those needing capacity to upload large files on the road, such as photos or videos, or even some fixed location users for similar reasons; but this advantage is offset by the very limited coverage until a lot of network building has taken place, which will take years not months.

It seems to me that WiMAX has its greatest potential where mobile (especially mobile data) is less well developed, particularly in developing countries, and where fixed broadband is not universally available; but with regret I have to conclude that the odds against WiMAX succeeding in the UK are long.

Tweet