What Nov 4th Means to the WiMAX World

To most consumers of news worldwide, November 4th 2008 will be forever remembered as the day Americans voted for their higher aspirations and set aside the politics of fear and division. On this day, Barack Obama was elected by a plurality of voters to become the 44th President of the US. People will recall where they were the moment the networks announced that Barack had beaten John McCain in the most important election in US History. But something else occurred on this day which missed the headlines of even the business press.

On that very same day, the Federal Communications Commission, the US Federal regulator of all things telecom and cable,  approved the merger between Sprint's WiMAX Division and Clearwire; thus clearing the way for the first major WiMAX entity to offer the new wireless broadband standard to the bandwidth hungry in the United States. This is a historic milestone since now the major sponsors of WiMAX have a clear route to establish it as an alternative to consumers from the weakening morass of traditional wireless offerings that do not scale and do not offer all in one products and pricing, the new holy grail in communications.

The newly created venture under Clearwire will be headed by Barry West, formerly the CTO of Sprint's short lived Xohm Division. The new venture counts with a formidable alliance of backers that have gone all in to establish WiMAX as a leading provider of wireless broadband within the borders of the US. 

The first beneficiaries will be Google and Intel who will have a local live test bed for their compelling set of advanced products. Google is looking to deploy its new Android operating system for wireless devices as it seeks to supplant Symbian as the preferred platform for mobile devices. Intel, WiMAX's patron,  will introduce a plethora of WiMAX ready devices from laptops to desktop USBs that will hit the market in 2009. Nokia, samsung and Motorola will spring forth a set of new products to take up the WiMAX space. Without compelling new devices, WiMAX will not take hold with American consumers.

The second group of beneficiaries will be the cable companies, Time Warner and Comcast,  whose marketing of VOIP services has been a wild success and now have their appetite whetted for cellular under the WiMAX brand. This now allows the cablecos to offer quadruple play adding wireless mobile broadband to the telephony, video and wired internet services they now offer to their customers. Even modest success here will upend the current boundaries and barriers to entry constructed by the traditional telcos. The WiMAX partnership hopes to tear down the walls as users opt for new ways to access the Internet through mobile devices with the same success as the iPhone has done for AT&T.

Verizon and AT&T will soon discover the limits of their CDMA based strategies and the error of promising migration to LTE  as a substitute to WiMAX in the coming years. Each successful encroachment by the WiMAX alliance is bound to cause consternation and hand wringing on the part of network designers who were too conservative in their thinking and too timid in their adoption of wireless broadband alternatives. While AT&T has increased its subscriber base on the back of the iPhone wave, these gains will be limited as the consumer appetite for faster than 3G speeds gains momentum worldwide.

Hopefully consumers will be offered access to high speed broadband and a set of integrated services that will reduce the huge bills for separate billing of their cellphone, cable and telephony services. Affordabilty... wow, what a concept!!!

Can WiMAX Succeed in the United States?

The recent announcement of a WiMAX entity merging Sprint's Xohm operations with Clearwire is the most promising development since the 5 billion dollar commitment made by Sprint in August 2006. Yet many industry pundits continue to question whether the New Clearwire WiMax offering will see the light of day considering the competitive terrain and the take no prisoners campaign underway by AT&T, Verizon and Qualcomm. 

The merger also forges an alliance of key players bringing capital and knowhow to the WiMAX terrain. Chief among them are Intel and Google. Intel, WiMAX's chief patron,  is ramping up production of WiMAX chips to embed in laptops to be released over the next 6 months. Google is providing capital as well as its Android smart phone software platform.  Motorola, Samsung and Nokia are being tapped to provide the key devices and smart phones for subscribers promising anytime, anywhere access to wireless broadband.

Yet the biggest hurdle facing the coalition is the distortion cloud that has been effectively placed over all things WiMAX by the rejection front led by AT&T, Verizon and Qualcomm. These three stand the most to gain by destroying the possibility of the new standard taking a foothold in the US. Already, AT&T has filed a protest with the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the Clearwire-Sprint merger particularly with respect to the 2.5 ghz spectrum holdings of the two companies. While it is unlikely that the FCC will turn back or deny the planned merger, AT&T hopes to delay and otherwise mire the rollout of WiMAX in the US in red tape. 

Why is AT&T looking to stop WiMAX ? Considering their propaganda that dismisses WiMAX as not ready for prime time, you would think they would not bother. Yet, it is abundantly clear that AT&T fears that WiMAX will prove to be successful and will provide consumers new choices with respect to wireless broadband access.  AT&T is resorting to using its army of highly paid lobbyists and lawyers to prevent any changes in the US landscape. At least, if enough grease and banana peels are thrown in the path of Clearwire, they hope to cause sufficient delays to allow the Qualcomm blessed Long Term Evolution (LTE) to catch up. 

LTE is about two years away and even when it is deployed offers little of the benefits of WiMAX. LTE does protect the territories of the wireless incumbents from competition. It also protects the billions of dollars invested in spectrum auctions and capital investments in traditional cellular infrastructure that the major cell phone operators wish to evolve into LTE. In contrast, WiMAX opens the field to new players causing companies in the cable and traditional landline companies to enter the space for delivering quadruple play services-HD video, voice, data and cell phone services all under one infrastructure. This is why both Time Warner and Comcast are part of the Clearwire coalition and why so much interest is growing worldwide for a WiMAX alternative to 3G/4G services particularly in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

To be effective, AT&T needs to stop the biggest most ambitious rollout of WiMAX services in the US. With a potential coverage area of nearly 100 million growing quickly to a 300 million coverage footprint in 3 years, WiMAX represents the most robust cost effective solution for delivering wireless broadband access to subscribers at levels unforeseen by the most optimistic of  network visionaries. 

iPhone's Success will Challenge WiMAX Devices

The release of the iPhone on July 11, 2008 poses a direct challenge to WiMAX device makers to offer a compelling set of features to compete with Apple's pioneering entry into mobile telephony. The iPhone is rapidly achieving the recognition of being the first true mobile internet device with navigational and access components that make it attractive to those who want a true web experience. In fact, Apple is calling the iPhone a new mobile platform analogous to its Macintosh and the PC. With its new centralized App Store, users have a convenient way to download applications directly adding amazing functionality that extends the uses of the iPhone. 

With a million devices sold in the first weekend, Apple broke its own record from the June 29, 2007 launch and set a new one for all electronic devices eclipsing sales of the XBOX and Nintendo. Competitive devices from Samsung and LG sold under agreements with Verizon and Sprint are tauted as iPhone Killers yet they fail to match the ease of use and elegance of the iPhone. Once again,  Apple has established its leadership in a most important area extending its reach in a manner that will define the smart phone experience for years to come.

The challenge to WiMAX device makers such as Motorola and Nokia is to provide users with an experience that shows off WiMAX's many strengths while delivering solid voice performance. It is crucial that these first devices bring excitement to the early adopters and thereby open up new subscribers for WiMAX services. WiMAX will be judged more by the performance of these first generation WiMAX mobile smart phones and tablets than by any other measure. 

The "anywhere, anytime proposition" must be delivered with compelling content which is what Apple has done so well through its iTunes Store and now its App Store for downloading iPhone applications directly without the need for a Mac or a PC. This feature alone promises to revolutionize the relationship between smart phones and the Internet as more and more equipment makers will opt to bypass the need for PCs/Macs to manage content. 

We are heading towards a Device centric world from the current PC centric universe. WiMAX will be the ecosystem for this new world precisely because of its native ip core and the interoperability it offers to dissimilar devices. With devices falling in price and becoming more affordable to a global consumer in places like India and China, users will want their smart phones to become more robust. They will want their devices to bring the promise of the Internet along with a set of featuress that have eluded traditional cellphones. 

"WiMAX Failed! "Cries Buzz Broadband CEO

In a recent wave of news on WiMAX, the general business media seized on a story of a little known network operator in Australia who loudly proclaimed the failure of WiMAX to live up to its expectations. The story became the centerpiece of coverage over the last two weeks leading up to the CTIA conference in Las Vegas which opens this week. The story based on the claims of the company's CEO, trashed WiMAX as an overhyped technology incapable of delivering VOIP and decent bandband to its users. He even claimed worst than satellite latency rates as well as a host of quality issues.

The fact that this story received so much play is a story unto itself. Consider that the success of Samsung's WiBRO flavored wireless broadband roll out in South Korea serving millions of users over the last 3 years has received low coverage . Or the hundreds of successful trials conducted worldwide by the WiMAX Forum have gone largely unnoticed by the world business press.

It seems that WiMAX is suffering a credibility gap as more and more media organizations begin to cover the standard. It seems that they are gravitating to the spin of its well financed enemies, Qualcomm and Verizon . The talking points are similar, repeated in story after story:
1. WiMAX is unproven and risky
2. WiMAX is too expensive versus other proven technologies
3 WiMAX can't deliver on its set of features

If WiMAX is to win the media wars, sponsors Intel, Motorola and Sprint need to do a better job of educating the public of its benefits and revenue growth potential. Additionally a new education campaign needs to be launched directed at end users . In short, the WiMAX industry needs to go on an all out offensive. Otherwise the anti-WiMAX chorus will become a shrill cry scaring off investors and operators alike. Sprint's recent vacillation as to its Xohm branded WiMAX rollout in the US and the recent split of Motorola do not help in this scenario.

Buzz Broadband's claims seem to lend force to these arguments which is why the mainstream business press jumped on the story. Yet when the dust settled the actual circumstances torpedoed Buzz's claims. The company made the mistakes that network operators make when they place quick profits over building a quality service. In an unusual rebuttal, Airspan's Chief Marketing Officer stated that Buzz purchased lower cost cellular units and did not handle the backhaul network needs adequately enough to meet the bandwidth requirements of the user population. What Buzz experienced was nothing more than the results of an poorly planned, underequipped network . The Gartner Group then took Buzz to task for failing to provide QOS support for its VOIP and scrapping the tenets of sound networking design.

While it is clear that Buzz blew it, the furor this story caused needs to be understood from a broader perspective. The fact is that the forces at work to destroy WiMAX have scored a big one here. They have placed into the popular vernacular an association between WiMAX and hype. WiMAX and failure. Qualcomm and Verizon are actively at work spinning stories that fan fears into the marketplace. Much like the failed campaign they led last year to stop WiMAX's 4G certification by the UN's International Telecommunications Union , the campaign is based on False Evidence that Appears Real (FEAR). Repeated enough times it becomes a mantra so that even those who know little about WiMAX can appear erudite by questioning WiMAX's efficacy.

These fears are leading to more and more investors getting cold feet on WiMAX investments and losing their appetite for mass scale network roll outs. We need to address these issues in a more comprehensive manner than in the tech talk approach which does not resonate with this all important group. Arguments for WiMAX must be buttressed on sound ROI and price performance rationales as well as specific examples about how WiMAX is being deployed today in places as far flung as downtown Seoul to the emerging urban centers in Africa and Latin America. It must be argued that WiMAX is the most cost effective solution for quadruple play converged networks that is the natural evolution for all networks today.

No other solution provides a path to the integrated networks of the future that can eliminate the barriers of network equipment products that do not work together , devices that cannot speak to each other and services that are not interoperable.

Most importantly, the argument must be made that WiMAX is expanding the market for broadband services in a manner that is doing more to bridge the Digital Divide not only between poor and rich countries but within the domestic markets of the developed regions suffering from rural and urban gaps in broadband availability such as North America and Europe. The estimated market for broadband services will reach over 2.4 billion subscribers by 2009 according to Info World stats as the number of cell users opt for smart phones and multiple media devices now being produced by Samsung, Apple, Palm and Archos.

This is why WiMAX is the promise for the rest of us. Precisely because it is the most solid well conceived wireless broadband technology standard with unparalleled quality; the result of tens of thousands of engineers working together to devise a solution to the intractable problems and inefficiencies in today's anarchic cellular systems.

Several entities can play a big role in this campaign particularly the WiMAX Forum. The organization needs to emerge from its certifier role to become chief educator helping companies who endeavor to implement WiMAX to gain knowledge and valuable experience from those who have done it already. It is sad day when with modern accessible tools such as the Internet a network operator makes the classic mistakes of early day ip network rollouts from the 80's and 90's. And it must become chief promoter, molding an image of the standard that can penetate the Qualcomm distortion field in the minds of investors and strategic network planners alike.

The Motorola Split: WiMAX at the Crossroads

News reports today indicate that Carl Icahn's hardball tactics have finally succeeded where others have failed: the split of Motorola into a cellphone manufacturer and a cable/wireless equipment networking company. The immediate question that comes to mind is the future of the WiMAX leadership that Motorola has developed and whether this new split will diminish the technical resources of the companies to the point of severely hampering the development of WiMAX handsets and much needed infrastructure of which Motorola is building for Sprint.

The situation is further compounded by WiMAX's most important champion, Sprint, redirecting its energy to stop the defection of millions of its customers to AT & T and Verizon placing the 6 Billion dollar 2008 rollout in question. Dan Hesse, Sprint's new CEO, is charging forth with a plan to allay investor fears concerning the state of the company by placing its future on a mediocre technology and further dependence on CDMA and EVDO from Qualcomm.

Can WiMAX overcome these obstacles and become a viable alternative in the US? Will the promise of ubiquitous connectivity die largely at the hands of shortsighted investors who do not realize that CDMA/EVDO's days are numbered as the world moves rapidly to adopt wireless broadband solutions that offer interoperability at a major cost reduction?

This blog will explore these and other questions as increasingly WiMAX enters a critical crossroad that will determine its adoption in the US. While the world advances innovative solutions to bring internet, voice and TV services to the more than 80% of the people who remain disconnected , US companies suffer from an insularism that will prove devastating.

The next 4 years will be pivotal to WiMAX's success as new global communications platform.

Welcome to WiMAX Wave

Welcome to WiMAX Wave, a new blog intended to initiate a discussion on the current state of the WiMAX standard (IEEE 802.16 family). WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperabilty for Microwave Access which was a specification for wireless broadband technologies adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 2001 as a single standard. WiMAX became the foundation for a set of guidelines drawn to resolve the problems of inadequate compatibility and interoperability among devices within the growing industry for the delivery of wireless internet broadband services to the home. It is our intention that this site draw thought provoking commentary on the issues regarding the adoption and use of WiMAX as the most promising broadband wireless standard in the world.

Much of the coverage of WiMAX has focused on its technical superiority to other competitive offerings as if WiMAX were a product offered by a specific set of vendors. Thus the issue of whether or not Sprint and Clearwire, two US based carriers will roll out their services has dominated the columns and stories in the technical press. It would appear that WiMAX's fate is bound up with carrier adoption in the US market. Yet, WiMAX is a global standard which signifies that the key to its success will be its adoption among a large and diverse group of device and chip vendors as well as carriers in order to create the global ecosystems that users will use to access new services.

It is more important to gauge the rise of this adoption by the number and diversity of countries, device makers and network operators. Compelling and exciting alternatives are rapidly taking the place over cell and wired bound delivery systems that have proven inadequate, slow and unreliable. The older wireless approaches have come up short posing real limits to the quality and quantity of differentiated services/products available to consumers around the world.

This blog will argue that the promise of this standard has more to do with the success in penetrating those makers of cellphones, portable media players and entertainment devices which will lead to a massification and rapid adoption of WiMAX on a world scale. By placing WiMAX enabled devices in the hands of users with services that are geared to showcase WiMAX's many benefits, the pace of change will be powered by those who first grasp and then deliver true high speed broadband services particularly in High Definition video and video enhanced social networking products many of which do not exist as of yet.

A central premise of this blog is that the products and services for a truly Anytime AnyWhere world have yet to be invented. This poses a new challenge and an equally daunting task to shift the world's brain trust towards rethinking what wireless broadband access will do for the new types of services. We need to break down the barriers artificially created by corporate business models which have become technically absoleted yet still dominate how people receive, use and transfer information.

The telephone companies, cable operators and cell phone service providers are all fighting to maintain their control over their subscribers and seek ways to defend and encroach upon the territories of each other. Technological developments in which these companies have invested are driven more by the need to create walls and stake territory than to expand user choice and transform how people interact with technology.

It is our goal to engage all users as well as the global WiMAX community in a meaningful dialogue on this subject. We wish to encourage new ways of visualizing WiMAX so as to impact the direction in which new products are built; new services are delivered to people all over the world who truly yearn for something different, something truly revolutionary.