WIMAX Standards Will Gain from OFDM Shootout, Panelist Says
The WiMAX industry will benefit from having the Intel camp and the Qualcomm camp “fight it out” in the standards organizations, a panelist said in a session called “WiMAX on the Way” at the C3 Expo Tues. in N.Y. When you look, Intel doesn’t really own many of the patents, said Rupert Baines, PicoChip marketing vp. Qualcomm on its own and Flarion, which it acquired, have many patents affecting WiMAX, as do Samsung and Nortel and Nokia, which TI is backing, he said.
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The future of wireless communications is based on OFDM technology and its various flavors, panelist Edgar Masri, COO, Redline Communications and Baines agreed. Baines, calling himself a strong backer of WiMAX standards, said while fixed WiMAX is economically viable now in areas without copper or where copper costs too much to deploy, it more importantly is a step toward 4G mobile technologies. The technology will provide high speed flexibility with an IP infrastructure, he said.
Some “70% of the world’s population doesn’t have easy access to copper” Masri added, noting the rapid development of the market for fixed WiMAX. WiMAX won’t compete head on with ADSL in speed, he said. Rather, most companies in this market are trying to sell the technology by stressing WiMAX’s unique features, such as its ability to get around line of sight restrictions, he said. Many installations are using WiMAX as a backhaul technology for Wi-Fi, both panelists said, especially where copper is too costly. They cited downtown Tokyo, where officials plan to cover the entire city with Wi-Fi access and use WiMAX as the backhaul, they said.
Neither panelist sees the U.S. as a developing market for WiMAX except when smaller carriers want to provide basic Internet connectivity, perhaps in rural areas. Yet outside the U.S., many so called “Tier One” carriers are interested in the technology. Asia is a prime market, Baines said, but “deployments in Asia take longer” because localities tend to do much more analysis and planning. Deployment in Africa, on the other hand, is much more opportunistic and moves faster than in Asia, he said.
The U.S. WiMAX market could take off with the auction of spectrum in the 2.5-2.6 GHz band. “Sprint owns a big chunk of this,” Baines said: “They are very cleverly dining with everyone and flirting with everyone.” Sprint has invested in TD-CDMA, and has been seen in discussions with Qualcomm. Nextel did a huge trial of Flarion’s OFDM technology, which Qualcomm acquired last year. - Esther Surden