Desperately awaiting the wireless revolution!

The buzz for the past month in the wireless mobile marketplace was focused on the iPhone from Apple. It was only after its first day of product release that the first glaring weakness became evident – the AT&T EDGE network. Even though AT&T beefed up capacity and bandwidth, its network still limped in at hundreds of kilobits/second, emasculating a device capable of handling tens of megabits/second connection speed.

With the release of this single product, Apple is bringing to an end the voice-dominated cellular industry. As with wireline connectivity, bandwidth demand, first for data and now video, has relegated voice to a low bit rate “go along for the ride” IP application.

The cellular industry has been too long avoiding the inevitable and expensive upgrade of its infrastructure plant to meet customer demands for greater and greater bandwidth.

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The buzz for the past month in the wireless mobile marketplace was focused on the iPhone from Apple. It was only after its first day of product release that the first glaring weakness became evident – the AT&T EDGE network. Even though AT&T beefed up capacity and bandwidth, its network still limped in at hundreds of kilobits/second, emasculating a device capable of handling tens of megabits/second connection speed.

With the release of this single product, Apple is bringing to an end the voice-dominated cellular industry. As with wireline connectivity, bandwidth demand, first for data and now video, has relegated voice to a low bit rate “go along for the ride” IP application.

The cellular industry has been too long avoiding the inevitable and expensive upgrade of its infrastructure plant to meet customer demands for greater and greater bandwidth.

IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi hot spots were an oft-discussed alternative that still has promise, but linking those hot spots into a seamless network to offer true mobility is still an industry “Holy Grail.” Wi-Fi still has huge potential, but due to power consumption (battery drain) and limited geographical coverage Wi-Fi will never become a ubiquitous mobility solution.

IEEE 802.16e WiMAX is a favorite of mine since it is data-centric vs. voice-centric, was created with full understanding of the design problems of Wi-Fi, maximizes battery life, has the backing of Intel and is being supported by almost all of the classic cellular infrastructure vendors.

In 2008, we will see customer CPE (i.e., handsets, laptops, PDAs, etc.) support begin to develop, stimulating carrier deployment. Carriers such as Sprint are “betting the farm” on multimegabit WiMAX.

Lurking in the nether reaches of wireless technology is a radical concept that creates a mesh network of shared personal cellular hot spots called femtocells. The femtocell concept is to have end users install in their office or home a small femto-node, similar in concept to a Wi-Fi access point that is in effect a personal cellular site. The femto-node has a cellular antenna to boost the cellular provider signal, an IP router, Internet connectivity and a mesh connection to other local femto-nodes. Sonus Networks in conjunction with the Softbank Group will trial this concept in Japan in the fall.

Coming in late 2007 or early 2008 is HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) and HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), which allow uplink and downlink data bandwidth almost equivalent to wired broadband networks -- peak rate of up to 5.76Mbps.

The higher-uplink bandwidth coupled with quality of service (QoS) and reduced latency almost double cell capacity, resulting in lower cost per bit and higher profitability for the carrier. This is the near-term technology that may relieve the EDGE quality of the experience (QoE) pain for AT&T iPhone users.

Over the horizon in late 2009 or 2010 is the next-generation, high-performance, mobile broadband network called 3GPP Release 8 Long Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE). LTE/SAE network systems are targeted to support mobile broadband peak data rates, exceeding 100 Mbps. AT&T has publicly stated that LTE/SAE is its long-term strategic direction.