@WiMAX Forum Congress Americas ’09: WiMAX community remains confident in the face of rivals

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The WiMAX community showed its expected solid and confident front during the opening day of this week’s WiMAX Forum Congress Americas ’09 event in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Held in the shadow of immense cruise ships harbored in Port Everglades adjacent to the Broward County Convention Center, speakers and attendees did their best to show that the technology has the support and size to survive and prosper in the choppy waters of next-generation services.
(While the term “4G” was used by nearly all in attendance when referring to WiMAX and its rival sibling LTE, neither has officially been decreed a 4G solution as the arbiter in all things “G” related, the ITU, has yet to release official 4G specifications.)
The event kicked off with a keynote address by Charles Mathias, senior legal advisor to Federal Communications Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who reiterated a number of previous announcements by the commission highlighted by its acknowledgement that more spectrum was needed to support the move to 4G and that the spectrum should be aligned with the international community’s similar plans. Mathias also noted that backhaul was a “significant problem” for next-generation networks and that a possible solution could be found in the 700 MHz white spaces.
Following Mathias’ presentation, long-time WiMAX champion Barry West, now operating as president of International at Clearwire Corp., argued for why current 3G networks were incapable of handling the growing speed and capacity needs of consumers.
West noted that in the past most wireless consumers used on average around 30 megabytes of data per month. That has since grown to the current average of around 1 gigabyte per month, which pales in comparison to the expected 14 gigabytes per month in the near future.
“You need a wide channel, 5 gigahertz is not enough,” West explained in describing current 3G technologies that rely on either a grouping of channels or a single channel that typically tops out at 5 GHz of spectrum. “You need a wide channel and 4G to handle that tonnage.”
West’s keynote speech was followed by a panel session that included Teresa Kellett, director of 4G for Sprint Nextel Corp., and Chris Neisinger, executive director of networks at Verizon Wireless. (Neisinger, representing the carrier with the most aggressive plans to roll out LTE technology, was unceremoniously place in the middle of West and Kellett on stage.)
The panel quickly delved into the topic du jour of WiMAX vs. LTE, with West taking a somewhat passive approach that both technologies share a predominance of the same specifications, before taking the first swing in noting that the real battle will come down to the depth of the spectrum portfolio supporting the technology deployments. This obviously favored Clearwire’s average of approximately 120 megahertz of spectrum across the U.S. compared to the major backers of LTE, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, which each count around 20 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band both have said they plan to use to launch their networks.
Neisinger countered that while the amount of spectrum is key to 4G, coverage was also an important component, which was something the propagation characteristics of the 700 MHz band has in spades.
“The Amount of spectrum is important, but so is the frequency,” Neisinger said. “We went hard at the 700 MHz beachfront spectrum and think coverage will be key.”
West, and members of the audience, shot back that while the 700 MHz band did indeed have superior propagation characteristics, the OFDM-based technology used by both LTE and WiMAX did not deal well with interference that could come with trying to plan a network for densely populated areas using such a free-range spectrum band.
Neisinger conceded that point, noting that Verizon Wireless used its 1.9 GHz PCS spectrum for its legacy CDMA2000 1x EV-DO services. However, Neisinger did not bring up the point that Verizon Wireless still has an ample supply of AWS spectrum in the 1.7 GHz band that it acquired during the FCC’s Auction 66 a few years back.
“The plan is to use 700, grow in that band until we exhaust, then move to other bands from there,” Neisinger said.
Migration and support
As for driving consumers to migrate from their current 3G services, Sprint Nextel’s Kellett said the carrier was working on a market-by-market basis to transition usage to its 4G service that runs on Clearwire’s WiMAX network. As for Verizon Wireless, which is not expected to begin broad deployments of LTE until next year, Neisinger said people should not give up on the potential of 3G just yet as the carrier has not yet experienced any capacity problems on its current EV-DO network.
West also touched on backhaul concerns that would be later echoed by other speakers when referring to 4G networks, stating: “We are building out two networks, not one. You are building a backhaul network the likes of which the world has never seen before.”
Stimulus concerns
In a later session looking at the Broadband Stimulus Program’s potential impact on WiMAX deployments, Gregory Rhode, current president of Utopian Wireless and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Administrator for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said that incumbent telecom companies are “scared” of the plan as it will likely bring new entrants into their markets.
“It will be a challenging part of the first round,” Rhode said. “A big challenge for the administration to see which side they side with: incumbents or new entrants.”
Incumbents are scared of the stimulus plans as it will bring new entrants into their markets. Will be a challenging part for the first round. Big challenge for administration to see which side they side with. Incumbents or new entrants.