A fury of activity involving this mobile broadband wireless technology is fueling runaway hype, but many details are missing.
A FAQ on mobile WiMAX.
What types of vendors are involved?
Where is service available?
What are some of the other drawbacks?
What other options exist for high-speed mobile wireless?
What is mobile WiMAX?
It is the IEEE’s 802.16e standard, approved in late 2005. Extending the 802.16d fixed WiMAX standard, 16e adds features to support wireless connectivity with moving clients. Laptops, tablets and PDAs fitted with mobile WiMAX cards and chipsets will be able to create and keep a multimegabit link to a 16e base station while in motion – on board a train or in a car, for example. Bidirectional speeds are expected to be in 2M to -4Mbps, over a range of 3 to 4 miles. That compares with 10 to 15 miles and somewhat higher throughput for fixed WiMAX with a good line of site to the base station. Mobile WiMAX has the bandwidth to deliver video services, as well as data and voice.
What types of vendors are involved?
Vendors include baseband silicon makers, chipset vendors, component manufacturers, along with base station and customer premises equipment makers, and carriers. Intel, for example, plans to incorporate a mobile WiMAX chipset into its Centrino wireless package, which today supports only connections. The WiMAX addition is expected in 2007. Intel also pitched in $600 million this summer to fund WiMAX start-up Clearwire, which raised an additional $300 million from other sources, mainly Motorola, which has its own line of customer premises equipment and base station products. Clearwire, founded by Craig McCaw of McCaw Cellular, is upgrading its expanding U.S. network to support mobile WiMAX. Sprint Nextel in August became the first U.S. cellular provider to announce plans to deploy a nationwide mobile WiMAX net in the licensed 2.5GHz frequency band. The carrier says it will begin offering mobile WiMAX services next year.
Where is service available?
Nowhere, yet. Limited deployments of WiMAX have been for the fixed version of WiMAX and real-world data showing mobile WiMAX statistics is not readily available. Sprint, for example, won’t release details of field tests conducted over the past 12 months with its partners Intel, Motorola and Samsung.
What are some of the other drawbacks?
Technical and pricing issues. The standard is undergoing extensive reworking, through the IEEE’s routine corrigendum process. That work is focused on compatibility and interoperability. Also at issue is how .16e’s mobility requirements will affect how much data is transferable over the wireless connection. Initially, the IEEE estimated that mobile WiMAX would deliver 15% to 20% less bandwidth than fixed WiMAX. but the IEEE says early tests shows 30% to 35% less bandwidth available Also lacking is information on equipment availability and services costs, as well as security (although some security features are part of the WiMAX standard).
What other options exist for high-speed mobile wireless?
Wi-Fi within a campus remains a popular choice. But the most direct competitor is ever-improving cellular nets such as Code Division Multiple Access EV-DO Revision A. Sprint will start offering Rev A services in 2007, with an average download rate of 450K to 800Kbps, and an average uplink range of 300K to 400Kbps. While those rates are a far cry from megabit WiMAX services, they may be plenty for existing enterprise mobility requirements which focus on e-mail, attachments or access to limited subsets of inventory and customer data.
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