* Tempers flare at wireless summit
Tempers flew at a recent meeting of the Israeli Wireless Special Interest Group (SIG), a Silicon Valley organization that convened to discuss the business potential of WiMAX (802.16-based technology) in the metro- and wide-area network.
Joanie had the honor of moderating the crowd (or attempting to!), which kicked off with a presentation by Amir Rosenzweig, president of Alvarion, a large maker of broadband wireless access equipment.
Rosenzweig covered the merits of 802.16-2004 technology, which was approved in June for fixed non-line-of-site broadband applications in licensed and unlicensed frequency bands below 11 GHz.
802.16-2004-compliant equipment is due to begin shipping late this year. Applications include last-mile broadband voice and data services and backhaul transport, particularly where DSL, cable and T-1 services are not abundant. WiMAX also holds potential for use in public safety networks.
A mobile WiMAX version, 802.16e, is expected to be approved in the second half of next year.
WiMAX can support about 75M bit/sec shared bandwidth over several miles. “It will revive the CLEC industry,” predicted Rosenzweig. He also asserted that “all cellular base stations [about a million of them] will have WiMAX support” and that Intel, a big WiMAX backer, will see that WiMAX chips are pervasive in laptops in 2007. (Intel folks in the room didn’t contradict him.)
He said he expects to see fixed last-mile access services available in late 2005 with sustained 3M bit/sec speeds for $39 a month.
The brouhaha began when the second presenter of the evening, wireless consultant Lloyd Nirenberg, who is also co-founder of IP Valuation, threw a little cold water on the rosy WiMAX projections. Nirenberg pointed out that already-commercialized technologies such as 3G and Wi-Fi (802.11) might at least eat into the WiMAX opportunity.
Wi-Fi and WiMAX, for example, have roughly equal capacity per node, and Wi-Fi is already installed, is scaling rapidly and prices are plummeting. Because WiMAX is not deployed yet, “it is unlikely WiMAX can meet Wi-Fi prices in five years,” Nirenberg asserted.
And the technology is simple enough for users to deploy themselves; in effect, building out network infrastructures themselves, particularly in rural areas, to fill coverage gaps as needed, he said.
Note, too, that dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular phones are already in production by Motorola and Nokia, helping enable the cellular carriers to plug the coverage holes in their 2.5/3G networks with Wi-Fi networks.
Needless to say, Nirenberg took it on the chin from the uninhibited and opinionated SIG attendees, who had basically come to experience a WiMAX love-fest. His point, though, was not that WiMAX would be unsuccessful – only that, as we have learned repeatedly, it often pays to temper our expectations with a dose of reality.
