* What IP mobile broadband options will you have first?
I was distressed to discover some of my buddies on Facebook recently exchanging banter that implied WiMAX was all washed up. Technology arguments aside, my first thought was: “Get a life! Facebook isn’t for talking shop!” But then I quickly turned into a butt-inski and joined the conversation.
Indeed, WiMAX has plenty of competition, but, then, so do all emerging broadband mobile WAN technologies kicking around. And WiMAX is actually fairly well deployed in other countries around the world, unlike its primary, still-on-paper competition, Long-Term Evolution (LTE).
I do hate to get hung up on semantics. But note that neither LTE nor mobile WiMAX are technically 4G technologies. 4G is a term that has been carelessly thrown around to indicate something “faster than the last wireless network.”
Be advised, though, that the International Telecommunications Union – Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R) has issued a request for a bona fide technology it can sanction as 4G. The two technology candidates to date for the official 4G standard are LTE-Advanced, a gleam in the eye of the 3GPP standards group, and a new IEEE flavor of mobile WiMAX dubbed 802.16m, expected to be ratified by late this year. (The current mobile version is 802.16e-2005).
In addition to being a packet- and OFDM-based IP network, the requirements for an official ITU-R 4G standard are support for 100Mbps aggregate mobile speeds and 1Gbps aggregate speeds in hot spot areas with limited mobility.
This is where a discussion about 4G turns academic, in terms of what these efforts will mean to you. In this economy, no 4G network is going to be built overnight or anytime soon. In the U.S., 3G-class mobile WiMAX service is already available in Baltimore and Portland, Ore., from Clearwire, which assumed Sprint/ Xohm’s WiMAX operation late last year. Not too useful for truly mobile folks yet, but you have to start somewhere.
Clearwire’s reported plan is to reach 80 million people in the U.S. where they live or work by the start of 2010 and potentially 140 million by late 2010. Meanwhile, the WiMAX Forum has launched a Global Roaming Program to help mobile WiMAX operators establish WiMAX roaming services.
By contrast, the 3G flavor of LTE will just be going into testing in 2009. So in terms of an IP-based, global broadband mobile service, 3G WiMAX is currently the closest thing going. But what role will it play down the road? We’ll look at that next time.
