WiMax Networking News

Official Sprint/Clearwire Details Out

The press release ships: The new $14.5b (estimated) joint venture between Clearwire and Sprint will be called Clearwire. That's another ego win on top of the financial win for one Mister Craig McCaw. Clearwire "2" will be headed by current CEO Ben Wolff, and the president will be Sprint's very smart CTO and mobile broadband chief Barry West. They'll headquarter in Kirkland, Wash., with R&D in Herndon, Virg. Sprint will own 51 percent, Clearwire 27 percent, and the new investors 22 percent. Their new announced plan is to pass 120 to 140m people by 2010, which is fairly modest, but Sprint will be retaining its current 3G business. Clearwire, Sprint, and all the cable investors announced 3G and 4G sales deals that will allow all partners to resell all 3G and 4G services. That was apparently an earlier missing piece for cable operators, who didn't want to invest in a service that wouldn't be rolled out across their entire territories for some time.]]>

Sprint, Clearwire in Imminent $12b Deal

Finally: The Wall Street Journal reports that a joint venture is almost ready to announce that will combine Clearwire with Sprint's wireless broadband division in a $12b company that will receive an infusion of $3.2b from outside firms, including Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Google. The deal could be announced tomorrow. The cable involvement is clear: Cable providers may have a path to a 50 Mbps broadband vision (a standard that's rolling out now), but they need mobile partners for data and voice, and Sprint has been that partner for the four big MSO (multiple system operators). This deal would validate the WiMax approach, and ensure that a national network would be built with enough spectrum in each market to provide the greatest possible bandwidth. It would be yet another win for Craig McCaw, of course, the man who essentially dictates through his ability to be smart ahead of the market what wireless voice and broadband will look like tomorrow, always tomorrow.]]>

Sprint WiMax Head Says His Tech Here, Now, Works

Sprint's Xohm division head Barry West tells the Wireless Communications Association that WiMax is real: He points out that critics that are adopting LTE (Long Term Evolution) are signing on to a standard that won't be deployed for some time (2 to 4 years, depending on the firm and what you believe). ]]>

Mobile WiMax Profile for Korean Frequencies First for Certification

The WiMax Forum certifies first mobile WiMax products: However, they're all for the 2.3 GHz profile, used in South Korea, not the 2.5 GHz profile which will be used by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire in the US, nor the 3.5 GHz profile used in Europe and beyond. Eight devices were certified. Certification for devices using 2.5 GHz is coming later this year.]]>

Sprint Xohm Network Delayed; Backhaul the Issue

Sprint pushes back its WiMax network launch: The production version of the network, currently in trials, won't launch until the summer at earliest in their first markets. Unstrung is saying that backhaul to WiMax base station sites is the issue, not the underlying technology. Which I have to say makes sense, given that a fair amount of the technology is actively in production. ]]>

Nokia Offers N810 Tablet with WiMax

Nokia demoed its N810 tablet with embedded WiMax: The latest version of their N800-series tablets will ship when Sprint Nextel's Xohm service launches later this quarter. The current similar tablet runs $440, IDG News Service notes, but pricing for this model hasn't been set. Nokia provided an interesting detail: they expect 2 to 4 Mbps of average speed from Xohm, with 10 Mbps peaks. Those numbers haven't been talked about much pre-launch.

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Motorola Splits Handsets into Separate Firm

Motorola bows to shareholder pressure, splits firm: The company will divide into two pieces in what Motorola hopes will be tax free to shareholders. One company will take the handset operations, which have languished; the other, enterprise, modem, and set-top boxes. This puts WiMax in the "good" company, the one that has a lot of potential to grow into a new international market, as well as continuing their sales of Canopy and fixed WiMax gear. The handset business would also encompass WiMax embedded into phones, but it's likely a smaller part of Motorola's WiMax portfolio.]]>

Sprint, Clearwire May Form Venture with Comcast, Time Warner

Odd pairing of firms might bring WiMax to fruition: The Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening that Comcast and Time Warner might fund a joint venture of Sprint Nextel and Clearwire that would roll out a national WiMax network. The Journal says the two telcos have been trying to raise $3b in recent months towards the deployment. Intel, Google, and a smaller cable operator would also contribute; Comcast and Intel would each invest $1b in the current proposal. The cable firms would gain both ownership and wholesale access for resale. The article notes that cable firms have had a muddled strategy for wireless investment and service, even as they've spent money ($2b on licenses in 2006, with nothing deployed) and pursued partnerships. What the Journal doesn't note specifically is that wireless can often be used as an adjunct to obtain and supplement customers in areas where you can't provide them primary service. Cable operators would prefer to use their existing plant to serve customers, but with WiMax, it's possible they could still bring data, voice, and some video to markets within their territories but outside or at the limit of their plants.]]>

Australian WiMax Operator Trashes WiMax Performance

First WiMax operator in Australia, Buzz Broadband, says tech vastly underdelivered: I'm too far away from the action to know how much of this is a) accurate and b) accurately reported (no offense). At WiMax conference in Bangkok last week, CEO Garth Freeman apparently slammed distance, throughput, latency, and reliability. A year ago, he extolled his early deployment of Airspan equipment. Another Airspan customer in Australia cited in the article, finds great performance at distance. It may be that this fellow is generalizing from a specific case; his firm is now moving to "wireless DOCSIS" (cable-style access over 3.5 GHz) and TD-CDMA (over 1.9 GHz).]]>

Intel Expects Third of Ultramobile PCs to Have Wi-Fi, WiMax

Intel's Atom Centrino platform will push out a lot of ultramobile PCs (UMPCs) with WiMax side by side with Wi-Fi: A third of the UMPCs will sport Wi-Fi and WiMax, while half will pair Wi-Fi with HSPA, the GSM 3G standard. It's unclear what the sales of this new generations of devices will be; UMPCs haven't lit up as a category so far. These new UMPCs use a chip designed specifically for the needs of this smarter-than-a-smartphone device; they're due out later this year.]]>

Tata's Indian Launch of WiMax Services Slated

Indian firm Tata plans 115 cities covered by WiMax by 2009: The firm has 10 cities covered with Wi-Fi and 5,000 consumer and business customers. The company is awfully ambitious. They've reportedly invested $100m so far, with $500m planned over four years. They are looking for 50m subscribers, perhaps a reasonable number in a country with a highly inconsistent wired infrastructure and over 1b inhabitants. So far, only 3.2m households subscribe to broadband; business numbers weren't noted. I have seen a lot of ambitious announcements over the years, and very very few of them turn into deployments of any real scale, or any deployment at all. The money committed so far is serious, however, and Tata could leverage their network into a real boost for the entire country, where cell phones are ubiquitous because they leverage services that aren't available with fixed computers. ]]>

WiMax Adds 700 MHz Profile

Key addition by WiMax will make it possible for 700 MHz licenseholders to deploy WiMax: There's been some debate over what kind of radio technology could be deployed in 700 MHz; Alan Andrews wrote up his analysis, and found that few specs that are deployed or in the process work for the amount of spectrum involved. That's changed as of yesterday, with the WiMax Forum announcing a plan to create a roadmap--yes, that's not precisely the same as having a roadmap--for a 700 MHz WiMax profile.

Having a profile means that manufacturers can work to a common spec, chipmakers can develop around a single set of ideas, and devices can be certified as compliant, which allows operators to purchase gear without having to engage in their own extensive and expensive testing. (They'll still test, but this lowers the bar considerably, as they can examine networks that are already built if they arrive late to the party.)

I imagine this will take a couple years to reach full fruition, which is the timeline for real deployment in 700 MHz in the U.S., too.

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Sprint, Clearwire Joint Venture under Discussion

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint Nextel might bring in Google, Intel, Best Buy for Clearwire joint venture: Such a deal would make new Sprint CEO Dan Hesse's job easier, reducing capital requirements through outside investors, reducing its demands on his time, and reducing the firm's exposure.

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WiMax Launch in Wisconsin First in Nation with Voice, Data

Madison, Wisc., gets one of first full-scale, full-on WiMax deployments: TDS Telecom (1.2m voice lines, 171K DSL lines), a sister company with US Cellular (6m customers, 26 states), rolls out licensed mobile WiMax, albeit in a fixed configuration. The service covers 55,000 households and 10,000 businesses in Madison with service at up to 6 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. The combination of voice and data makes this a first in the U.S., although there are other early WiMax data networks deployed.

Residential service is $50/mo. for 2 Mbps symmetrical with phone service, $55 for 4 Mbps, and $60 for 6 Mbps. Dropping phone service cuts $5 per month, and there's a $10/mo. bundle discount for the first three months. Business service starts at $129/mo. based on contract length. The WiMax receiver will have a two-hour continuously charged battery backup to preserve voice and data during brief power outages. No mention is made of setup costs or minimum residential service term commitments in the pricing document.

They have seven towers deployed, although the precise number in use is a little confusing: a map shows five running, two still in progress, while the press release mentions six towers at one point and seven at another. Each tower has a two-mile radius of coverage, they say, while their licensed are will allow them a total 35 mile radius around Madison. They're using Alvarion 802.16e 4Motion equipment, but in a fixed not mobile configuration at launch; the hardware is upgradable later to seamless handoffs.

The company's press release says that service installation requires a visit from a technician. This is typically the case with all new broadband. When I had DSL installed by then-US West in 1997, it meant a truckroll. Just a couple years later, self-install was the name of the game. The rule in telcos--that I read in a DSL textbook, of all places--is that services have to move to 95 percent self-install, 5 percent truckroll, at worst to become profitable and correctly priced offerings.

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Sprint Launches Xohm Mobile WiMax Service Next Week

Network World is reporting that businesses will be able to buy the unmarketed service in three cities starting on Tuesday, 15-Jan.: The three cities are Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Offerings will be for businesses only. Pricing isn't noted. Full-scale commercial deployment comes later in 2008.

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