Free article: Broadband wireless technologies will compete with 3G

A number of commercially-available mobile broadband wireless technologies, from companies such as Flarion, ArrayComm and IPWireless, claim substantial performance and cost advantages over 3G. These are to be joined by emerging standards including IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) and IEEE 802.20 (MobileFi).

Several of these systems employ variants of Orthogonal Frequency Domain Multiplexing (OFDM), which is touted as having significant benefits over previous wireless technologies, including W-CDMA. IPWireless uses an enhanced implementation of the W-CDMA TDD standard, which can operate in the unpaired spectrum owned by most W-CDMA operators.

The rapid growth in DSL and cable availability in developed markets is limiting the opportunities to compete with fixed broadband services and may yield wafer-thin margins. Hence the breakthrough opportunity is to extract significant price premiums for mobility and to offer a more profitable service mix. This forces broadband wireless technologies to compete in the same space as 3G.

The battle is now on between the vendors of these technologies, to secure the global economies of scale needed to be a serious alternative to mainstream 3G standards. Success will demand extensive deployment by mobile operators, who are generally accepted to be the key customer targets. They have valuable assets such as base station sites, large existing customer bases and strong marketing capabilities that will be crucial to achieving commercial success. They could decide to deploy alternative technologies alongside, or instead of, 3G as a means of offering differentiated services and driving new revenues.

While mobile operators represent a tantalising opportunity, vendors of emerging technologies still have much to do to persuade them to invest, compared with the options they have for 3G standard enhancements such as HSDPA:

Performance and cost benefits are still to be proven in real network implementations with the necessary levels of coverage, quality of service and loading. Mobile operators will be keen to understand the performance of these technologies when deployed at existing cellular base station sites  

A profitable service mix is not yet established. Early trials generally show a poor return compared to mainstream mobile operator voice and messaging services. Either services look expensive for customers, which will mean adoption will remain low or they are pitched as direct competition with fixed broadband services, which then delivers only around one percent of the revenue per Mbyte of traditional cellular services  

Compelling business cases justifying deployment need to be demonstrated to mobile operators, considering base station integration, radio network re-engineering, subsidies for new terminal equipment, marketing, etc.  

Support by mainstream cellular infrastructure vendors. The systems are not currently supported by the major infrastructure and handsets vendors such as Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens, which makes it more difficult (and expensive) to upgrade existing networks. Furthermore, the small number of suppliers of each technology reduces the scope for competition and economies of scale and presents increased risk for mobile operators. Standards-based systems may mitigate these problems to some extent.  

Availability of spectrum is limited and fragmented between markets. With the exception of W-CDMA TDD, these systems do not have predefined spectrum allocations in the same way as W-CDMA. A fragmented approach worldwide will compromise the potential for economies of scale and interworking. Mobile operators may need to acquire new spectrum or seek relaxation of the rules surrounding their existing spectrum allocations – something they don’t need to do with HSDPA  

Despite these uncertainties, mobile operators may be keen to evaluate new service opportunities presented by these technologies, possibly in conjunction with W-CDMA and HSDPA. For example, Nextel (USA), T-Mobile (The Netherlands) and Vodafone (Japan) have all trialled BWA technology, from Flarion. Trials and early commercial launches of these technologies will provide valuable insight into their true capabilities and the nature of the commercial propositions they enable.

Beyond mobile operators, the wildcards in the future of alternative broadband wireless technologies will be the various other types of player that are not currently active in the mobility market. Fixed operators, ISPs, WLAN hotspot providers and major consumer and business-to-business brands could deploy the technologies to offer a mix of voice and data services in direct competition with mobile operators. However, they will need a strong business case and wireless Voice over IP will be critical to boosting revenues and profitability. In the absence of mass deployment by mobile operators and the resulting equipment price reductions from economies of scale, some or all of these new technologies may be relegated to become niche last mile access solutions.

Time may not be on the side of proprietary technologies, potentially leaving forthcoming IEEE 802.16 and 802.20 standards to resolve the outstanding issues. IEEE 802.16, in particular, benefits from strong backing by the WiMAX Forum and Intel. However, much about the standard, particularly its mobile variant IEEE 802.16e, is still undefined. Figure 1 shows some of the dimensions included in the IEEE 802.16 standard, highlighting the danger that a lack of focus could become a problem. The WiMAX Forum needs to move from building awareness to clarifying the capability and role of the technology.

IEEE 802.20 has suffered a number of setbacks during its short life, including delays caused by political problems within the group. Recently, IEEE 802.16 has requested changes to the scope of IEEE 802.16e, which will drop the requirement for backward compatibility with legacy fixed wireless systems. This additional freedom will enable significant improvements to IEEE 802.16e and may cast doubt on the need for a separate standard.

Figure 1 The many dimensions of IEEE 802.16