Reality Check: WiMAX is 4G. Period.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
There has been a lot of discussion in the media lately regarding which technologies are, and are not, “4G.” As you can see from the title of this piece, the WiMAX Forum has its own opinion on the matter, and this is an excellent place to put a stake in the ground.
WiMAX technology is 4G
The WiMAX Forum has always considered WiMAX to be a 4G technology. We say that WiMAX is 4G because it is an OFDMA-based, all-IP, data-centric technology. Another obvious reason is that WiMAX is a superior technology by any metric to 3G, so some sort of differentiation in nomenclature is called for. This is the path that all true mobile broadband technologies are taking. The generational switch from 3G to 4G technology is the migration from voice-centric and circuit-switched to data-centric and all-IP architectures. WiMAX 2 will be a further enhancement of the 4G WiMAX technology that also happens to meet the International Telecommunications Unuion’s requirements for IMT-Advanced. In much the same way, HSPA+ is a further evolution of the 3G technology HSPA.
Because of this fundamental shift in technology structure, WiMAX must logically be defined as a different generation beyond 3G. At one point we even considered calling it “1G Mobile Internet,” but we decided that might get confusing. Ironically, the industry was unable to avoid confusion on terminology despite our best efforts.
On Oct. 21, the ITU put out a press release that brought the status of WiMAX, and indeed of all currently deployed technologies, as a 4G technology into question. This generated quite a bit of press – and was really an unexpected move. The ITU traditionally has steered clear of defining 4G, and for good reason. For IMT-Advanced, the relevant ITU-R technical body specifically recommended against using the term “4G” in ITU-R documentation. Following the Oct. 21, announcement, several organizations (including the WiMAX Forum, IEEE, Sprint Nextel Corp., and the U.S. State Department) communicated with the ITU on the difficulty and potential market confusion caused by the announcement. Following this correspondence, on Dec. 6, the ITU issued another press release in which it clarified its messaging regarding 4G:
Following a detailed evaluation against stringent technical and operational criteria, ITU has determined that “LTE-Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” should be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced. As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G”, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMAX, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed. The detailed specifications of the IMT-Advanced technologies will be provided in a new ITU-R Recommendation expected in early 2012.
In this release, ITU recognized “4G” as a marketing term, rather than a term used to define a particular standard. It also clearly marked “4G” as separate from the ITU standards nomenclatures, which are associated with detailed technical specifications, thus washing their hands of the matter entirely.
OK – so the ITU is out, but questions remain and confusion might also remain. Even before the ITU’s October announcement, a few people in the industry attempted to peg WiMAX as “3.5G,” or “3.9G,” or some other nonsense like that. To back this up they usually quoted two things: speed, and WiMAX’s status within IMT-2000 or “3G.”
Let’s be clear, the WiMAX Forum worked to make WiMAX an IMT-2000 technology for a very specific reason: access to spectrum. You can’t have a successful wireless technology without access to spectrum, and IMT-2000 status ensured that our technology didn’t get left out of government considerations for spectrum use. IMT-2000, which undoubtedly introduced 3G technologies in 1999, has continued to grow well beyond 3G. The addition of WiMAX OFDMA in 2007 introduced new technology that was far more sophisticated that anything envisioned during the CDMA discussions in the 1990s.
With regards to speed – here is a case in which WiMAX operators are getting dinged for truthful advertising. Take Sprint Nextel’s WiMAX service as an example. Sprint Nextel advertises average downlink speeds of 3 to 5 megabits per second in a live network. That is in an actual network – you know, one with people using it. And you know what? That is what people get. Advertising for some HSPA+ networks (voice-centric, “data-optimized” architecture) instead quotes peak speeds of 21 Mbps. That is what you will get on a network by yourself (like maybe if you and your network lived on the Moon). If we’re talking peak speeds, WiMAX Release 1 will give you 40 Mbps. We can wait to see if the first HSPA+ phones in the United States actually pull down those peak speeds of 21 Mbps. But it’s probably not going to work out that way. Ask a Sprint Nextel WiMAX user today if they is getting 3 to 5 Mbps average down on their Evo? No problem.
So to recap: WiMAX technology is 4G. Why? OFDMA and an all-IP data-centric architecture. This is the next generation. WiMAX 2? It is still 4G, and will be much more powerful. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. recently showed a WiMAX 2 demo system and pulled down 330 Mbps with 100+ Mbps uplink, streaming 16 different HD videos simultaneously. That’s what you can do when your technology is built for data.
Ok – so maybe you don’t like what I have to say because I work for WiMAX Forum and am “biased.” That’s fair. Want a second opinion? Check out Phil Solis at ABI Research. He wrote an opinion piece on this as well recently, and I couldn’t agree more with his logic.
Finally, I will leave you with one last bit of food for thought. Apparently the confusion on 3G/4G isn’t just among us industry insiders. A recent Yankee Group survey showed that consumers have no real handle on what 3G even means, let alone 4G. According to the survey of more than 1,200 consumers, 57% said they either have never heard of 3G, or don’t understand the term. I’ll just leave that bit of data for the carriers to ponder.