After 12 official drafts, the IEEE finally approved the 684-page proposal from the 802.16 Task Group, designating the mobile WiMAX standard as 802.16e-2005.
The WiMAX Forum is set to begin trials and certification testing in early 2006, with certified products scheduled to hit the market later in the year and services expected to follow in early 2007.
The approval announcement brings to an end the work of the 802.16 Task Group, which considered more than 6,000 comments and 900 documents since convening in December 2002, after the original 802.16e specification was approved.
“We projected completion in about 18 months,” said Roger Marks, chairman of the Task Group. “Actual development took about twice that long. Though we all would have preferred to stick closer to schedule, the reality is that the working group changed dramatically during those years.”
Since the original 2002 meeting, the group grew from 82 to 310 participants, and the variety of applications the group had to consider mushroomed.
“I’m proud of the fact that we addressed all of the resulting needs, continuing to harmonize and build consensus to ensure a result with broad support and applicability,” said Marks.
However, Marks noted that, “The IEEE standards are not mandatory, and the IEEE logo is not by itself going to convince anyone to adopt our standards and put them to use.”
The industry seems eager to adopt the new standard, as pre-WiMAX products are already in use where pre-WiMAX networks are under construction or already up and running.
Indeed, Nortel Networks Ltd. announced last week that the Alberta Special Areas Board picked Nortel to build a fixed WiMAX network in Canada, bringing high-speed wireless broadband access to rural areas of Alberta, Nortel said.
Nortel explained that the network would be built according to the IEEE 802.16d-2004 standard for fixed WiMAX and said that the SAB is collaborating with new Canadian wireless service provider Netago Wireless to offer wireless broadband access throughout more than 8,000 square miles in southeastern Alberta. The company also noted that the WiMAX network will operate in the 3.5 GHz spectrum band and will be made available to about 80 percent of SAB residents by next summer.
“Basically we’re targeting rural customers,” said Terry Duchcherer, president and owner-partner of Netago Wireless. “These are second- and third-generation farmers-all they had access to was dial-up Internet service. There is no wired DSL available to them. Within the next 18 months, we expect to have signed up about 1,000 customers. We expect them to use the Internet to help run their farms. For instance, there are a lot of agricultural research groups that only publish their findings on the Internet.
“So far, participation has greatly exceeded our expectations.”
Under terms of the agreement with the SAB, Nortel will supply base stations, indoor and outdoor equipment and wireless backhaul equipment, as well as installation and professional services.
Nortel noted that the SAB is a rural municipal area covering about 5 million acres in southeastern Alberta and was set up for land use control in the 1930s. The SAB is responsible for the administration of the area as it relates to providing all municipal services as well as leasing public lands within the area.
“In Canada and in the United States, about 25 percent of the population cannot be served by high-speed Internet access because in many rural areas, there is very little infrastructure,” said Mark Whitton, vice president and general manager of WiMAX and Wireless Mesh and Nortel. “WiMAX works well in places where there is not a lot of infrastructure, and telcos who are interested in serving those rural, underserved markets are increasingly looking to WiMAX.”
Motorola Inc. seems poised to announce a WiMAX contract as well, having already launched its pre-WiMAX solution, MotoWi4.
“We’re betting heavily on WiMAX,” said Paul Sergeant, senior marketing manager at Motorola. “We reorganized our company to focus on WiMAX. We want to be the biggest, or one of the biggest players in this market.
“We think there is a large market opportunity. Changing the cost structure of mobile wireless changes the game, and changes the structure of wireless telecom,” Sergeant added.
