For plenty the debate is over, they’ve already committed to WiMAX or HSPA leading to LTE. But that never stops the larger, ongoing discussion.
Wireless carriers and others are ramping up plans to upgrade or deploy entirely new networks to meet the ever-insatiable thirst for richer media. They have to make choices, of which there are plenty, that will take them well into the next decade.
“The constant demand for data is going to continue to grow and that’s going to be an important asset,” said Jerold Givens, general manager of the wireless infrastructure group at Texas Instruments Inc.
Texas Instruments has its hands in WiMAX, HSPA and LTE-by calculated choice in fact. “From a semiconductor standpoint, I’d just as soon deploy everything on top of everything else,” Givens said. “Our solutions are used in both technologies.”
HSPA promises speeds up to 28 megabits per second, WiMAX promises up to 72 Mbps and LTE stands to reach 150 Mbps, said Martin Liunberg, director of government and industry relations at L.M. Ericsson.
Because it presumes most carriers will take the path from HSPA to LTE, Ericsson has decided not to build any WiMAX equipment, Liunberg said. “We think that we can make more out of doing those other technologies,” he said.
“We have a belief that they will be big,” Liunberg said. “We have speeds that are efficient.” Ericsson said it demonstrated LTE technology reaching speeds of 144 Mbps at CTIA Wireless 2007 this past spring.
Living up to the hype
The promised data rates are incredible in theory, yet Phil Marshall of Yankee Group tactfully reminded each of the panelists that 3G never lived up to its hype. So why trust the same messengers this go around?
Liunberg offered a glimpse of the already thriving 3G offerings in Sweden as proof that these technologies can indeed deliver, albeit at lower data rates than originally advertised. There are currently four carriers in business there, each with fully deployed all-you-can eat HSPA and open access, he said. “It’s a pure Internet connection. I think that’s the most convincing argument.”
More for purposes of reality, rather than debate, WiMAX should mostly be compared to HSPA. Both technologies are available and in the process of wide-scale deployment. LTE doesn’t have any deployments on the horizon until 2009 or 2010.
“HSPA does have a definite lead in experience,” Givens said. “I think for WiMAX we’re still in an early phase.”
One of the early and greatest things about WiMAX is that “it’s already promoting thoughts and innovation in how devices are being designed for OFDM,” he added.
Value and costs
“What you really see is the WiMAX value proposition,” said Mo Shakouri, a board member on WiMAX Forum and VP of corporate strategy at Alvarion, a mobile WiMAX provider.
“Operators have to make money out of this thing, that’s what WiMAX Forum wants to deliver,” he said “We want to be able to deliver services that we care about on the new Internet model.”
WiMAX is free from the legacy telecommunications networks in wireline and cellular, Shakouri said. It is unchained from the telecom sector due in large part to the fact it derived from the Internet, he said.
“The amount of broadband . that exists today is extremely low,” Shakouri said. “Many places in the world do not have it.”
Furthermore, speeds eventually will match that of LTE once future enhancements are made to IEEE 802.16e specifications, under which WiMAX runs, he said.
Samir Khazaka, senior director of technical marketing at Qualcomm, discussed the costs of deploying these competing technologies, concluding that whichever is determined the most spectrally efficient will likely rise to the top.
“It is not always a unicast network that is going to bear all the services in this spectrum,” he said. “To my knowledge WiMAX does not support cellular multicast.”
Khazaka added that there are still multiple methods for operators to otherwise provide multicasting. There is a cellular-based flavor of multicasting available via HSPA called Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service or MBMS.
But going beyond that, Khazaka envisions a range of services being delivered simultaneously by a variety of networks best positioned to deliver each of those services.
Even still, carriers with existing networks concerned mostly with costs will find the most economical technology available in HSPA and EV-DO, he said.
