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At a trade show, major telecom operators said WiMax’s can’t compete in their world with DSL and cable: Costs will drop to the range they need to deploy, and they aren’t claiming that niche uses are unprofitable or pointless. This confirms what some WiMax vendors have been saying: that operators want the whole certification picture sorted out, volume production, and real-world trials of final silicon. And then they’ll sit on that for a while. The operators also cited limitations in licensed spectrum in the U.S. as a hindrance to deployment.
Posted by Glennf at 09:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
WiMax isn’t likely to overtake 3G: This seems to be the consensus these days, as it becomes clear that we’ve still got a few years before mobile WiMax and during those few years 3G will continue to progress. The interesting inflection point will come at some time in the future when all the networks morph into OFDM-based technologies.
Posted by nancyg at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On the heels of a big win in Finland, Flarion said it also won contracts for networks in Croatia and Malaysia: An operator will build a network in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. The Malaysia network will target rural areas. Last week Flarion also announced that it will supply a network for an operator in Virginia.
On the flip side, Nextel said it is finally officially ceasing to support users on its Flarion network in North Carolina. This is sad news for loyal users of the network.
Posted by nancyg at 04:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An Ovum analyst has an interesting look at the business case for WiMax: He suggests that a market needs fairly high density and little competition for WiMax to successfully serve as a DSL replacement. Other factors can make WiMax a potential competitor to DSL, but basically going head-to-head with DSL in many situations won’t work.
It seems to me that many broadband wireless operators must already believe this. In the U.S., some of the more well-known operators such as NextWeb and Towerstream are targeting business customers, which is a market with room for differentiation on price and services. Clearwire is targeting smaller markets without tons of competition.
One of his findings is surprising to me. He says that looking at Unwired in Australia and Clearwire in the U.S., operators are finding that customers aren’t willing to pay a premium for the luxury of portability. This surprises me, if only because personally I would. Also, it seemed that some historical wireless success stories, like Nextel’s Flarion network and Ricochet, were due to the fact that users loved the portability factor.
UPDATE: The Yankee Group’s Lindsay Schroth wrote to say that she too thinks that users will pay a premium for portability. The folks at Unwired Australia have told her that portability is an important element of their strategy and they credit it for some of their recent success.
Posted by nancyg at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TowerStream figures that the Supreme Court decision that cable companies don’t have to open their networks is good news for wireless broadband: This is obviously self-serving but it also has some truth to it. TowerStream figures that ISPs will look for alternatives to cable, such as wireless broadband, for delivering services. If the WiMax standard does ultimately lead to low-priced network equipment, startup ISPs could be in a position to build networks and grow them as they attract customers. But just like working with incumbents to share lines has a host of issues, so does building a wireless network, with the main issue being availability of spectrum.
Posted by nancyg at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cisco’s CTO says there’s no need for broadband wireless: He says that 98 percent of the population of the developed world is going to be highly wired. I’d have to argue with that, given the current state of wired broadband availability in some of the less populous areas of the United States. Or, to give a more specific example, Ireland is a developed country yet only 3 percent of the population here has broadband, and that’s largely because the incumbent telco has ancient plant and just doesn’t care to upgrade or comply with unbundling regulations. That makes a place like Ireland ideal for competitors to use technologies like WiMax to serve the population. Also, plenty of leaders in the WiMax segment are saying that some of the biggest potential for WiMax is in the developing world, where the wired infrastructure doesn’t exist and wireless offers a less expensive way to build networks. So while I have to agree that WiMax is over-hyped and won’t revolutionize the universe, I think that Cisco is underestimating and perhaps misunderstanding the opportunity. [Link via Wispcentric]
Posted by nancyg at 02:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A couple of days ago IPWireless announced a win in the Czech Republic and now it’s Flarion’s time in the sun: The winner of the 450 MHz license in Finland will use Flarion’s gear to build a nationwide network. The regulator requires the operator to lease the network to any interested service provider. A Flarion spokesman said that the network is expected to deliver the same data rates as any Flarion network, which is as much as 1.5 Mbps on the downlink and 300-500 Kbps on the uplink. Usually, the further down the spectrum you go, the harder it is to offer broadband, and 450 MHz is pretty low on the band.
The CDMA camp has also targeted the 450 MHz band and a couple of the applicants for this license would have used CDMA. There are probably a couple of reasons why those companies didn’t win. These days, most people in the wireless world agree that the future is OFDM so there could have been a perception that the CDMA gear would become obsolete sooner. Also, this is Europe where CDMA is generally reviled, so the choice could have had a bit of politics to it.
WiMax, or something like it, isn’t being optimized, as far as I know, for this low-band frequency, although it probably could be. Still, the more wins that the likes of IPWireless and Flarion get in Europe, the more mindshare they win, which makes them potential competitors to 802.16e.
Posted by nancyg at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
T-Mobile said it is launching a network in the Czech Republic using gear from IPWireless: Customers will be able to use combined EDGE/IPWireless PCMCIA cards for wireless data access. The network is expected to cover Prague by the end of the year, followed by the rest of the country. T-Mobile says that just two percent of the market has broadband access, so if the price is right this could make a good option. The companies say that an average user would get 512 Kbps downlink.
This is a coup for IPWireless for a couple of reasons. T-Mobile is an investor in IPWireless rival Flarion and has tried the Flarion technology in the Netherlands. In many countries (I’m not sure about the Czech Republic), operators are allowed to deploy IPWireless’ technology in the cellular frequencies but they aren’t allowed to deploy Flarion’s technology. But this is also significant because T-Mobile is a major European operator so it lends some legitimacy to IPWireless.
T-Mobile will be using the 1.9 GHz band in Prague but the oddball 872 MHz band outside of the city. Typically, the lower bands have further range but can carry less data.
In other European wireless data network news, Flarion is in a good position to win some business in Finland. Finland is about to distribute some licenses in the 450 MHz band. Flarion has developed equipment for the band and five of the seven spectrum bidders say they’d use Flarion’s gear. The other two say they’d opt for CDMA-based equipment. [link via Wispcentric]
Last year, Wireless Week ran an informative piece about the 450 MHz band in Europe, specifically looking at the potential for CDMA in the band. It’s good background reading for anyone not familiar with what’s happening in the 450 MHz band in Europe.
While many of these announcements involve unusual spectrum bands, generally, the more mobile broadband networks that get launched in the next couple of years, the more competition mobile WiMax will have when it becomes available.
Posted by nancyg at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Future cellular technologies are poised to steal some potential market share from WiMax: Many of the GSM cellular operators are moving toward deploying HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access) followed by HSUPA, (HS Upload PA) which increases uplink speeds. The initial launches of HSDPA are likely to support around 1 Mbps on the downlink per user, with speeds increasing with future upgrades. Because the cellular operators already have networks in place, they are well-positioned to introduce a ubiquitous or near-ubiquitous network, should they choose.
While the involvement of the traditional cellular vendors in the WiMax world is encouraging for WiMax, these vendors are often unclear about how WiMax and the future cellular technologies are likely to co-exist. “HSDPA is complimentary to WiMax,” said Simon Beresford-Wylie, senior vice president, EMEA for Nokia’s networks division, while speaking at Nokia’s annual journalists event earlier this week.
But it was difficult to see exactly how the two technologies might be complementary. Beresford-Wylie noted that HSDPA will likely offer more in terms of mobility while WiMax ought to offer faster throughputs. He suggested that cellular operators might use WiMax networks to supplement their networks in metropolitan areas. When pushed on the issue, he said that some cellular operators might use WiMax while some new operators might deploy it to compete with the cellular networks.
In some ways, some vendors seem stuck between trying to capitalize on a new market—WiMax—and offending their existing lucrative relationships with the cellular operators.
In other HSDPA news, Nokia said it can publicly describe six public HSDPA contracts and has fifteen others that it can’t discuss. Nokia also briefly described an announcement it made earlier this year about Internet-HSPA (no D or U in the middle)—a network upgrade that would support data only.
Nortel has also been aggressively pursing HSDPA. BB Mobile in Japan said it has conducted live field tests using Nortel HSDPA gear in the unusual 1.7 GHz band. They claim this is the first such example in Japan.
Posted by nancyg at 05:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
While earlier this week we covered Pacific Internet’s plan to build a WiMax network in Singapore, I didn’t really touch on the bigger picture: In May, Singapore distributed licenses, I believe in the 2.5 GHz band, to six companies. In addition to WiMax trials, operators in Singapore have also tested out networks from Arraycomm and IPWireless. Singapore could serve to be one of the earliest markets to get widespread broadband wireless that could compete with the cellular operators. If the operators choose a variety of technologies, Singapore could become a great experiment to watch how the technologies compare and compete when live in the marketplace. [Link via WISP Centric]
Posted by nancyg at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
eWeek did a really nice job looking at the negative side of WiMax: It’s worth a read. Kudos to the writer who, despite some mistakes, managed to get a slew of people on the record expressing their doubts about WiMax. That’s a tough accomplishment these days—most of the people in the industry who I talk to are largely WiMax cheerleaders.
Still, I’m not sure I’d characterize the attitude from vendors as “lukewarm commitment.” While it’s true that not all the members of the WiMax Forum have actually produced products, there is definitely a healthy ecosystem of vendors working on products.
This article shows that there is still plenty of confusion in the market about WiMax, primarily on two fronts. One is, I am constantly reading stories that say that WiMax is designed to either work on unlicensed or licensed bands. Here, the article initially notes that WiMax is designed for licensed spectrum, making it contingent on the telecom operators. But later the article mentions unlicensed bands. The fact is, WiMax can be built to work across a wide range of unlicensed and licensed frequencies. The Forum has initially identified three bands for official WiMax gear and those bands include both licensed and unlicensed.
Secondly, I think that the Forum really needs to work at defining where WiMax fits in the market among the cellular networks and other wireless technologies like Wi-Fi. It’s not clear that the Forum has a position on that and frankly I haven’t heard a satisfactory description of a future landscape that includes WiMax plus all the other broadband wireless technologies like 3G. Usually, I just find vendors pretty much avoiding my questions of how WiMax fits with 3G.
“Even though the WiMax Forum doesn’t really want to say that WiMax is a competitor to 3G, they all do overlap to some degree,” said Lindsay Schroth, an analyst with the Yankee Group. But 3G is a pretty powerful force in the worldwide market so the Forum is likely not terribly interested in pitting WiMax directly against 3G. But unless the Forum can define WiMax’s position in the market, everyone is going to approach it cautiously.
Posted by nancyg at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bob Metcalfe has become a big fan of the idea of WiMax: One of the main reasons he’s excited about it is because he thinks that WiMax will “light a fire under” ILECs, cable companies, and mobile operators. I hope that he’s right but unfortunately I suspect he’s not. Rather than seeing WiMax networks pop up to compete against those players, it’s likely that those companies will be the ones to build the biggest WiMax networks. In the U.S. at least, they are the companies in the position to build widescale WiMax networks because they control the spectrum and have the big brand names.
The Yankee Group’s Lindsay Schroth agrees that most likely the biggest and strongest WiMax operators will be a telco or a cable company. “People don’t want to hear this because it means staying with the duopoly, but it’s likely it will be them,” she said.
Posted by nancyg at 04:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I wrote a story recently for Wireless Week and heard some very interesting comments from a major European operator: The mobile operator, which asked not to be named, is conducting a trial of IPWireless gear in Europe. The operator is interested in IPWireless as a fixed broadband solution, not for its mobile capabilities. The operator is already working on 3G and doesn’t really see why it would introduce a separate network like IPWireless, especially since the demand for 3G services isn’t even clear. The market for fixed broadband is very clear though so it makes more sense to target that space.
Also, the spokesperson said that having a broadband fixed network could allow the operator to enable customers to completely do away with their landlines. A lot of customers keep their landline phones only because they are required to in order to get a decent DSL rate. Those customers could fully rely on their mobile phones for voice telephony and use the IPWireless network for broadband access.
The operator has also looked closely at WiMax and while it could be an option in the future, he noted that IPWireless is available today. What WiMax promises to deliver in 2007, IPWireless offers today, he said. The operator doesn’t want to wait until then. It could migrate to WiMax down the road if it becomes a much less expensive option, but the spokesperson doesn’t expect that it will. Or, the operator could begin offering access to the IPWireless network on a mobile basis, building a WiMax network to replace the fixed service.
His comments made me think that the vendors like IPWireless and Flarion might pose more of a threat to WiMax than the WiMax camp might perceive. This is a pretty significant European mobile operator I spoke with and if that’s how his company feels about WiMax, others might too. If the vendors like IPWireless and Flarion manage to attract enough customers, the price of their equipment will drop, just like the price of WiMax equipment will drop with volume. The operators may gamble on which equipment will drop faster.
Posted by nancyg at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CNN/Money takes a look at which companies might profit from WiMax: While some of the facts in this story are a bit shaky, it generally does a nice job of looking at the risks and the potential of WiMax. I’ll be interested to watch how the vendor community changes over the next couple of years. As the article notes, some of the big vendors are reselling gear from the likes of Alvarion and Airspan. But what this author misses is that some of the same bigger vendors that are reselling such gear have already announced that they’ll make their own versions to comply with the mobile WiMax standard. In February, Alcatel, which resells Alvarion products, said it would work with Intel on the development of mobile WiMax equipment. Siemens, which resells Alvarion gear, also recently introduced its own line of WiMax products. But companies including Ericsson and Nokia which haven’t done much in the WiMax space will surely want to sell WiMax equipment so they could be potential buyers for the likes of Alvarion, Airspan, or any of the other many WiMax vendors.
Posted by nancyg at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WiMax operators and telcos both fear that WiMax networks in already crowded markets threaten the profitability of both types of operators: They fear that competition for customers will increase their costs while the demand drives down end user prices, putting the squeeze on profits. That’s one more argument for why WiMax makes most sense in the U.S. in underserved markets.
The U.S. presents an unusual market for WiMax because of the broad availability of broadband and the spectrum situation there. Only a few lucky companies hold the ideal spectrum in which to deploy WiMax. The rest have to grapple with deciding to deploy using unlicensed frequencies. The large major telcos are unlikely to use the unlicensed bands for fear of unreliability.
Both BellSouth and Qwest have tested WiMax-like systems with BellSouth saying it may start offering a service next year.
Posted by nancyg at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
While mobility may be key to the potential for WiMax to succeed, the networks must also be ubiquitous, argues David Haskin at Mobile Pipeline: Having WiMax chips built into laptops, as Intel envisions, will be useless unless WiMax networks are fairly widespread. Ubiquity is one aspect where the mobile operators, who are busy upgrading to HSDPA, have an advantage. It’s far easier for them to upgrade their networks to HSDPA for coverage throughout their entire footprint. A similar amount of coverage will take many years for a WiMax provider to build, given that they haven’t started yet and the equipment isn’t available yet.
I suspect that the mobile operators don’t actually want to compete head to head with WiMax. They can make more money by loading their HSDPA networks with applications that end users access via their handsets. These applications, which might include video or music downloads, will earn more revenue per MB and per MHz than straight data access to a PC card in a laptop. For that reason, operators that serve major markets, will continue to price straight data access comparatively high to discourage customers from using HSDPA as a DSL replacement. In fringe markets without much landline broadband competition, the scenario may be different.
Posted by nancyg at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jeff Thompson, TowerStream’s founder, is right when he says that the competition to worry about is the RBOC: Thompson isn’t the only broadband wireless operator to make the distinction between competing against other potential wireless operators and the RBOCs. That distinction may get harder to make as time goes on and operators that use the unlicensed bands start interfering with each other. But that will be the time when it’s most important for the operators to band together. For a story I wrote for Wireless Week magazine, I talked to Graham Barnes, CEO of wireless ISP NextWeb, about a program he’s involved with that aims to help operators avoid interfering with each other. I quoted him in the story saying this: “The mindset I try to foster is that individual fixed wireless operators are not each other’s competition,” he says. “Our primary competition is the telcos, ILECs and CLECS. We have miniscule market shares compared to an SBC or local telco.” It would take a very very long time for a broadband wireless operator to build out a large enough network to seriously compete from a coverage perspective with the telcos. As such, the wireless operators would do well to essentially form a united front.
Posted by nancyg at 03:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
There was some discussion at the Wireless Communication Association conference about how WiMax and 3G might coexist: It’s pretty difficult to take many comments made on the subject at face value because many people have a vested stake in the issue. Here, a Seimens executive notes that WiMax and 3G should be complementary. He can’t exactly say anything different though, because he’s got 3G customers and hopes to also pursue WiMax business.
He said that he expects 3G operators to use WiMax to offload data from their UMTS systems. That’s a nice idea, but one that should take many years to work out. A seamless handoff would require devices that can handle the different frequencies and technologies.
On a side note, Sean Maloney, head of Intel’s Communications Group, makes a humorous comment. He cautions against over-hyping WiMax. With Intel leading the WiMax charge, perhaps he should take a bit of his own advice.
Posted by nancyg at 01:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
With 3G services launching across Europe, plenty of sources are discussing the potential affect that WiMax may have on 3G: 3G is an expensive service to roll out, which translates into higher prices for end users as operators look to pay off their investments. By contrast, WiMax offers a better return on investment, which means cost for end users might be less expensive so that WiMax could steal some market share that may otherwise have gone to 3G.
Consultancy TelecomView expects WiMax and other broadband wireless technologies to corner 40 percent of the broadband wireless market in 2009, with 3G taking the rest. Realistically, that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s 2005 and WiMax equipment doesn’t even exist yet, so it’s unlikely that in four years it will make up almost half of the market, given that 3G networks are already being rolled out. However, the business case for WiMax is a bit cleaner than that for 3G so it clearly has potential.
Posted by nancyg at 04:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stories about the confusion around WiMax and the potential for WiMax have been running for ages, but they keep coming: That’s testament to the fact that much of the controversy surrounding WiMax hasn’t been addressed. The confusion stems mainly from vendors that continue to either flat out refer to their product as WiMax, even though the certification process hasn’t yet started, or use the term “pre-WiMax,” which can be equally confusing in its implication that the product can easily be upgraded to WiMax.
Wi-LAN’s president and CEO doesn’t help clear things up in this article. He says that Wi-LAN guarantees that it will upgrade its products to be equal to or better than a “pure” WiMax network. Yes, but does that mean that the upgraded products will be certifiable? Because already there are plenty of products on the market that meet the parameters of WiMax but they aren’t yet technically WiMax.
The market for WiMax has also been increasingly put under the microscope, partly because more and more mobile operators around the globe are launching their 3G networks. There is still a debate about how the two networks might co-exist. Because the 3G networks are coming to market before true WiMax gear even exists, perhaps some in the WiMax camp are worried about how 3G might affect the potential WiMax market.
I suspect that another concern for the WiMax industry is that despite the amount of buzz that has surrounded WiMax for some time, no marquee operator has pledged to use it in a big way (certainly in part because the gear isn’t there yet). Some big names have joined the WiMax Forum and some big deployments of broadband wireless networks are in progress, but there’s no big market leader from the operator corner lending the movement credibility. That’s just what IDC claims in a recent report, noting that only a niche opportunity exists for WiMax through 2008, absent a major service provider’s firm commitment.
Posted by nancyg at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack