WiMAX Cerification: Guy Kewney on Delays and QUALCOMM's F-OFDM
Guy's 2 articles refer to this article by Justin Springham for Unstrung and LightReading.
>> WiMax Waits on Testing
Justin Springham,
Unstrung
LightReading
August 18, 2005
lightreading.com
The first batch of WiMax equipment testing is now not scheduled to start until October, a move that could push back the availability of official product from late this year into 2006.
Last month the WiMAX Forum opened its test laboratory at Cetecom SA’s facility in Malaga, Spain. The lab aims to test kit based on the fixed-wireless 802.16-2004 specification. Products that pass both conformance and interoperability testing will be tagged “WiMax certified” and ready for commercial availability.
A number of vendors have been eager to tout their early involvement in the lab, but such developments focus on setting up the parameters that will define interoperability for each system profile, rather than any official testing launch. In fact, Unstrung understands that only Airspan Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: AIRN), Aperto Networks, Proxim Corp. (Nasdaq: PROX) and Redline Communications Inc. have so far sent kit to the lab, using silicon from Sequans Communications and Wavesat Wireless Inc.
“The initial procedure is to validate the test,” says Mo Shakouri, VP of marketing at the WiMax Forum and VP for business development at Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR). “There are multiple vendors working on a plugfest to validate the test. They are getting to know one another. It will take around three months to make sure everything is up and running. After that, they will do the formal certification.”
The WiMax Forum is believed to have outlined four "waves" of WiMax testing, the first of which is scheduled to begin in October and will likely focus on testing of time-division duplex (TDD), or unpaired spectrum, kit in the 3.5GHz band. The second wave is expected to include testing of frequency-division duplex (FDD), or paired spectrum, kit in the 3.5GHz band. Equipment for use in the 2.5GHz and 5.8GHz bands will follow at a later date. The final wave of 802.16-2004 testing is scheduled to be complete around May 2006.
The October start date casts a shadow over the possibility of commercial kit availability in 2005, a timeframe previously touted by the industry. Shakouri is confident this remains a realistic goal. “The end of the year has always been the target for the Forum. Not all of the spectrum bands or capability will be supported though. ... The good thing is that the momentum is there and vendors are getting started. We believe that when the actual certification starts we will get a lot more.”
The wait goes some way to explaining market booster Alvarion’s delay on submitting equipment. Earlier this month Unstrung revealed that the vendor was an absentee from initial arrivals at the lab and that the company is holding out for a few weeks before making a charge.
>> WiMAX: The Emperor's Clothes Get Another Wash ...
Guy Kewney
NewsWireless.Net
19 August 2005
newswireless.net
This week has seen more scepticism than ever about Wimax as a viable wireless carrier technology, following the news from the Forum that testing and certification "could be delayed till October."
The new Malaga test lab has been opened in Spain at Cetecom SA's laboratory - and testing has started, with encouraging pronouncements (last month) by Wimax Forum officials. But the claims that "vendors have started shipping equipment to the lab" from Mo Shakouri, VP of marketing for WiMAX forum have failed to impress observers.
Unstrung says that what is actually happening is that they are "validating the tests" rather than doing any testing of equipment. According to Unstrung, only Airspan Networks, Aperto Networks, Proxim, and Redline Communications have so far sent kit to the lab, using silicon from Sequans Communications and Wavesat Wireless Inc.
This pretty much fits with the FAQ on the WiMAX Forum web site, which shows that the current preoccupation of Forum members is to achieve compatibility with the IEEE specification of 802.16, and the ETSI spec for HiperMAN. But it exposes the failure to extend this convergence into mobility. Mobile WiMAX is 802.16e - and this is still "expected in July 2005" according to the Forum site.
The delay isn't the first, but it is starting to get to some observers. Stephen Wellman, [right] executive editor of Fierce Wireless is not the only one to lose patience: "While there are plenty of pre-certification Wimax deployments around the world," warned Wellman, "the fact is that this technology is still not ready and delays keep popping up at every corner."
Wellman reckons Wimax is entering dangerous territory. "It has been hyped past the point of belief and now it's time for the technology to deliver," he opined. "If the vendors making Wimax equipment, and the Wimax Forum as a whole, cannot get Wimax gear certified and into the market soon -- and make sure it lives up to the hype -- Wimax could be in for a rude awakening from the likes of the media and financial analysts."
The delay is official. August 8 saw the announcement by Wavesat, in a press release, that it was involved in "the final interoperability testing phase before the WiMAX certification takes place in October in Malaga Spain, at the Cetecom Labs."
The release continued: "Wavesat is helping the WiMAX Forum with interoperability testing at Cetecom where a handful of companies, including Wavesat, have shown extremely positive results in testing their WiMAX equipment."
Behind the scenes, however, mobile wireless attention is now going to be focused on Flash-OFDM - Flarion technology, now owned by Qualcomm. "Last week's announced purchase of Flarion by Qualcomm should be seriously noted by WiMAX players of all stripes," commented Timothy Sanders of WiMAX.com recently.
Sanders said: "Flarion is, relatively speaking, an early stage company. It has not garnered big wins in terms of customer base yet and casual perusal of this transaction would indicate that doesn't make sense. However, clearly Qualcomm feels serious competitive pressure from the WiMAX world. And Flarion has product in the field. Mobile WiMAX is not quite there yet."
Comment: The delay isn't astonishing. What it shows, however, is not that WiMAX is not going to happen. Rather, it reveals the erosion of the Intel-generated hype about mobile WiMAX, which is supposed to be installed in every end-user device from 2006, using the mobile WiMAX 802.16e standard.
As a metro broadband technology, WiMAX remains a sensible infrastructure solution. Using line-of-sight nodes on top of tall buildings, at 11 GHz and up, very high-rate broadband distribution can be sent into old commercial areas where gigabit ethernet has yet to reach, and where FiWi (fibre/wireless) will one day be established.
As a portable wireless technology for laptop computers and mobile phones, it is probable that WiMAX is now going to be nearly two years behind schedule. It is, really, time to ask if it will ever happen. <<
>> WiMax Must Take the Stage or Miss Its Cue
Guy Kewney
eWeek
August 20, 2005
eweek.com
Opinion: Once Wi-Fi was the only real threat to WiMax; now Qualcomm's Flash-OFDM is coming up fast.
The HIPERMAN standard, despite what it sounds like, isn't Intel talking about WiMax. The standard is defined by ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, not the IEEE. And much of the delay in getting things started at the new WiMax testing labs in Malaga, Spain, is actually a good thing.
That is to say: It's not caused by failure of the technology. Rather, it's about a serious attempt to reconcile the two standards-setting bodies in this area.
Some would say that it's succeeded. I'm no big booster of WiMax -- at least, not the snake-oil version of WiMax which Intel is offering the world.
I've gone on record several times, here¹ at my own news site, suggesting that for the mobile user, WiMax really doesn't offer anything you can't get from Wi-Fi, or Flash-OFDM or even WCDMA.
¹ newswireless.net
But skeptic though I'll happily admit to being, I'm going to call this one a win for the WiMax Forum; I think the 802.16 2004 spec, which provides a shared physical layer with the ETSI HIPERMAN standard, is an achievement which will now rapidly come into use.
The trouble is, the delay caused by harmonizing the two has left a lot of people wondering, are we actually looking at the Emperor's new clothes? Be sure: If there is a problem keeping the royal butt warm, the scandal will be adequately publicized by Qualcomm.
There are two issues in play here. One is the simple technical business of getting broadband into areas where it can't easily be connected via cables under the ground or over the road. For that, 802.16d and HIPERMAN technology looks, to me, like a great idea.
The implementation will involve relatively cheap bits of kit, stuck on the tops of tall buildings on or poles, talking to each other at frequencies of 11GHz and up. That means line of sight, and it means broad-spectrum chunks with very high data rates.
There's not the slightest reason to say this won't work. If the standard makes the kit genuinely low in cost, then it will be possible to run virtual cable into new developments, or new business areas in traditional or antique architectures, or even into temporary areas—like a big cruise liner parked in the docks—for a tiny fraction of the cost of laying real fiber in ducts. And the bandwidth will be adequate for serious business use.
But what about mobile WiMax?
If you happen to wander around the WiMax Forum's Web site and pry into their FAQ, you'll discover that the mobile version is 802.16e, and, "The 802.16e standard is being reviewed by IEEE and is expected to be approved in mid-2005."
We all know, in the high-tech business, that "Third Quarter" means Sep. 30, and so "mid-2005" probably doesn't reach its sell-by until then. But the date has slipped, and slipped and slipped; it's been less than a year since I had Intel executive vice presidents telling me that products would be shipping, not just specifications agreed, by this time.
And this time is the time of Qualcomm and Flarion. As Timothy Sanders of WiMax.com urged his readers to consider, WiMax was always going to be a threat to Qualcomm if it worked.
The problems of Wideband CDMA in providing high-speed, low-packet-latency data to the mobile user are still only partly exposed. Band-aid patches like HSPDA and IMS are just cosmetic; and if WiMax could have reached mobile users quickly, Qualcomm's intellectual property empire could have been in trouble.
The main threat it faced, however, was not WiMax; it was Flarion, with Flash-OFDM technology. I've used that; it works, and it works well.
I was streaming live high-res video in a taxi in The Hague more than a year ago on a Flarion-installed network, and there are increasing numbers of such trials, and now, installations, around Europe, the Far East, and even in North America.
And now, that threat is no longer a threat, because Qualcomm owns Flarion.
There are good reasons to say that Wi-Fi wasn't a solution to the problems that WiMax tries to solve. There are also good reasons to dispute that! But it remains a fact that Wi-Fi was really the only threat to WiMax which had public credibility.
With Qualcomm pushing Flash-OFDM, that ceases to be true. Suddenly, the WiMax Forum has to perform, or leave the stage. Has it got time to do the former? Or are we going to hear "the gong"? <<
About the Author: Contributing columnist Guy Kewney has been irritating the complacent in high tech since 1974. Previously with PC Mag UK and ZDNet UK, Guy helped found InfoWorld, Personal Computer World, MicroScope, PC Dealer, AFAICS Research and NewsWireless. More about Guy here:
newswireless.net <<
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- Eric - |
