Discussion on:

Sanity check: Will WiMAX be a 3G killer, or is it vise versa?

Here's my opinion:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=556

What?s your opinion of the WiMAX vs. 3G battle? What are the most important features you would like see in these next generation wireless networks? How will all of this affect your choice of ISPs and mobile carriers in the future?

Interesting to see the battle being played out between the two wireless classes. Both use tried and proven radio technology or should I say established RF principals.

Their is a new emerging wireless technology, that is being commercialised now, so a potential third player may in time be in the equation. There is little doubt it's cost performance potentially far exceeds the incumbent technologies, whether it will succeed commercially or not is all together another question. See www.xgtechnology.com.

xG Flash Signal uses breakthrough single cycle modulation to deliver longer range and lower power RF communications.

Both longer range and lower power? I wonder how they got past the inverse square...

I'm afraid anyone reading their website with any engineering knowledge will recognise this immediately as just "marketing speak" - its about as reliable as the average astrology column in the local rag.

It *may* just be a clever cover to keep the punters guessing and to avoid anyone getting a clue as to what they are up to. But as looks like just another perpetual motion machine type story, I wouldn't count any chickens just yet....

From patended, propriotary technology to potentioal player in a marked with 3G and WiMax - not likely. But I wouldn't be suprised if it was a contender in the marked where Iridium a.o. seems to be way too expensive.
Very remote sensing !, online sensing with low-rate video capabilities in a cellular grid of say 100Km/60milles. Perfect for wildlife and similar research and surveillance/protection - Africa, Greenland, Alaska, Arctica. Seamamals research in coustal areas (upto 100Km). Perfect I hope they can deliver as they talk.
But beating, or even runner up, to 3G or WiMax - not unless they cancel the pantent.

This XG website reads like some new age stuff. It's not marketing speak, it's babble. As for "single cycle modulation", to me that simply means a data rate equal to the carrier frequency. I bet the sidebands look great.

Wi-Max has the potential to become an alternative to 3G (rather than kill 3G) as it is much better suited for carrying voice over a longer distance compared to other wireless IP technologies. The unlicensed spectrum advantage Wi-Fi enjoyed in almost all countries would make it tough for Wi-Max.

Availability of services with some cool devices by some daring new OEMs like Apple (in the phone space) for developed countries and some affordable devices by the conventional phone OEMs like Samsung, LG etc... who are obviously benefiting from low/No royalties compared to their CDMA for the emerging/developing countries can make it easier for Wi-Max.

Cellular service providers would be the last category (exceptions may be there by some targeted sops by the silicon/equipmemt vendors - read intel/motorola) to committ to this given their 3G exposure and tight relationships with big cellular telecom OEMS. I hope the Googles and Yahoos get into providing this service as it is anyway aligned with their interests in internet space.

In not so many years we will be able to grow organic chips and circuits directly attached to our nervous system. Neurological research will unlock the 90% part of the brain still untapped and one of the functions we will be able to use will be telepathy. So we will be able to stay connected all the time at 0 cost, as each and every one of us will act as a relay antenna. Unlimited broadband too. Then one kid at CalTech or MIT will think it's fun to release a virus into that network but the code will be faulty and our minds will be all wiped out. And the cocroaches will inherit the Earth :o)

I guess you watch lots of sci-fi movies

Of course I read a lot of SciFi. And I was just goofing around. But, except for the telepathy bit, why not? We are definitely going that way. Check this one http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12037941/

And the cocroaches will inherit the Earth...

We're spending our cockroach?s inheritance?

Argentina is on the Bottom of the World, so as a result all the blood in SaintGeorge's brain has run to his head. The resulting Hyperoxygenation and hypertonia has caused him to think Really Big Thoughts, not to mention occaisional bleeding from the ears. This has allowed the cockroaches, which have lived in Argentina long enough to adapt, to already take over large parts of the Southern Hemisphere, as they are more rational than the people. SaintGeorge is really only reporting what he is experiencing.

The speed of release, cost of equipment and number of carriers will be the three most important factors in both. Most consumers want low cost, high availability, and easy billing. If either WiMAX or 3G can offer these with great marketing, they will have the advantage. Some people will even drop DSL or Cable to stay more mobile. Only time will tell.

This is an interesting discussion and it is my opinion that WiMAX will eventually win out. Since IP is permeating almost everything we do today, it makes the most sense to deliver services on an IP-based network. 3G and the other cellular technologies simply inject too much overhead into the equation for it to be an efficient use of bandwidth. As we transition from separate voice, data and (possibly) video networks to common transport layer protocols, efficiency will be the only way to make it profitable for the providers. Device functionality is converging and to support it a seamless, transparent, and highly integrated system must be in place. I don?t see that system being 3G. The existing cellular carriers (US-based) are horrible at customer service and I don?t think that large enterprise and government organizations would be willing to trust them to deliver on the promise of converged V/V/D. This is the opportunity for WiMAX ? build a better mousetrap and deliver the service and support that the existing one lacks.

I think you might be right and even in a shorter time than most expected.
Why put that much work into IPv6-mobility if 3G can't use it directly.

WiMax is the future, and it isn't available yet because of barriers imposed by cellular operators

If WiMax supports SIP based services ....which is soon going to be the hottest applications in mobile domain,then LTE could face a steeper challenge.

Long time though .....since WiMax is yet to be tested.

Who ever makes the most significant effort to minnimize cost to the consumer will win this battle. In todays economy everything keeps costing us more and consumers are constantly waffling because of it. If you doubt this look at the people that regularly go from DSL to cable and back again as well as those that go from cable television to satelite television and back. As a consumer I am tired of being financially raped because Paul Alan or someone like him isn't making a 20 to 30 percent return on his money.

Cost is the key to the success of future communications systems. But the cost improvements have to be orders of magnitude, not just 20 or 30 percent. Only technolgy will solve that problem and MAS technology has that capability. See my post.

Currently (subject to DRASTIC Change) Tele2 are offering Mobile Broadband* for $15 a month, with unlimited traffic, or $10 for evenings and weekend. I don't for a second believe their 'unlimited' claims, but I can't even find the smallprint.

This service offers up to 384 Kbit/s, and with Turbo3G, 3,6 Mbit/s in the major cities (7.2mbit in some cases). They plan to extend Turbo3g to 75% of the country by christmas.

Tele2 are known for small hidden charges, the bill costs $2, there are signup charges, and a worrying 'Data traffic Misc.' rate of $1 per MB. No idea what that means. I'd expect the monthly cost to be nearly double the quoted amounts.

Competitors Telia offer the exact same schemes and pricing, with the alarming TINY text: 'Telia reserve the right to limit speed to 30kbit/s if use goes over 5GB/m?nad'. Bah, most people download that during a weekend.

I didn't even find the Tele2 smallprint.


Since I'd have to sign up for 12 months, the poor reception and connection problems I've noticed, and given that these rates and charges change literally every week, there's no way in hell I'd consider using these services just yet.

Thank you. That's a very different picture than I got from people on the telecom industry, so I appreciate your perspective.

Your skepticism about all the issues is correct. I never understood the "up to" claims. Thre upper limit is NEVER achieved in the real world so why even discuss it. The bills are ALWAYS higher, there is ALWAYS a limit. ut new technology is driving costs down and new applications are making the bandwidth useful. That's the real value of WiMAX: competition to drive operators into the new technologies.

Sweden has always been aheat of the curve in wireless. The offerings you mention are very attractive relative to other countries.

3' a 3G provider in DK (and in Sweden to I think) offers so called "flat-rate" 3.0Mbps/384Kbps free traffic at $110 a month.
You can get 1.5M/384K at $65/month and 512K/384K at $43/month and then there's the "cheap" on - $5.50/month incl. 10MB and $0.70/MB over 10MB. BUT stay inside the border of DK - there's roaming tariffs upto $20/MB in EU and it does not work outside EU.
User claim varying quality service stability, speed and coverage.
As an alternative to homebased internet wired or wireless - not at all, these are from 8M/1M to 25M/4M (up/dwn)(depended on ISP) for less than $110 unlimmited. And they deliver at least 80%, 80% of the time.

the biggest problem being that you can use 3g broadband at home in australia, but that data costs are significantly cheaper than on your mobile from the same network. until data rates are prices so it is useable to the consumer for all devices, not just stationary, then it is really pointless, how fast you can run data across a network.
imagine runing VoIP over a WiMAX network at the same pricing structure as 3G ($0.02 per KB)

I already hate my mobile company for charging me $70 a month and limiting my usage, and love my broadband ISP for providing "unlimited" usage for $20. Let companies like Vonage release unlimited use device that use the technology and kiss the old cellular companies goodbye. Of course they're trying to keep up by enhancing their technology. It's a fight for the survival of their "Gravy Train"!

it may be old news but mobile phones designed themselves useless with the SIM card ... wireless designed itself accessible at the gate and therefore useful in every jurisdiction ... my laptop can be used in usa or canada ... i simply have to drive up to a wireless accessible port (parking lot) ... the so called mobile phone is rendered useless once a user moves from place a to place b where that carrier has no access to charge for use ...
apple was smart (extrapolated from the stories of easy hack to make phone canadian) apple made the phone ready for all N/A markets with out much effort... like blackberry ... but therein lies the rub my friends ... as the writer of the wimax story pointed out ... what we really want is accessibility at a price relative to home use price... and the one who provides that access will be the winner ...
and if cell companies think it will take wimax to long to put together infrastructure they have to give their head a shake cause there is no permit required to place a modem ... unlike a cell tower ... a wireless modem can be anywhere and do its job very well ...
hmmm the anti cell tower movement must be very happy ...
Laston Lastof

HSDPA is deployed in 60 countries with over 150 carriers. We don't need another CDMA. We don't need American's walking around foreign countries bleating "I can't understand why my WiMax doesn't work in this 3rd world country!". Come on America it's time you joined this planet and participated in what is going on...

I think that WiMAX will, as much as WiFi or even more, be the tool to bring broadband internet to rural areas and third world so in that regard I think that it has more chance of succeeding outside developed countries especially if hardware prices are/get low enough. Many WISPs in countries like mine allready use older gen WiMAX equipment as backhauls for their WiFi internet access networks.

While the prices of internet access offered by mobile operators might not be acceptable in developed countries, they are certainly affordable. With developing countries this is certainly not the case, here there are a lot of SMEs opting for wifi over AVAILABLE DSL because of lower prices despite lower reliability, not to mention home users.

Allow me to add the following to this excellent article:

The WiMAX standard is, in fact, a family of standards. Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) is what all the fuss is about. There is a substantial amount of flexibitlity in the Mobile WiMAX standard, especially around the issue of smart antenna technology. It is this technology, which includes MIMO, beam-forming and other forms of antenna processing (collectively referred to as MAS - multi-antenna signal processing) that ultimately determine the real cost advantage of WiMAX over existing technology. Early versions of WiMAX are actally MORE costly than cellular technology. With advancing technology, Mobile WiMAX can be much lower in cost than present systems. The success of WiMAX depends upon the ability of the industry to adopt these technologies sooner rather than later.

because someone actualy has patended the Multi-path technology/protocol that is the base of 802.16e - or am I confusing another mobile std. in here ?.

Everything is patented in every air-interface, not only WiMAX. The patent arguments and settlements will go on for years but WiMAX is no different than the otyher standards. It will take time to work out the details - but then everything takes longer than expected.

Having been on the "bleeding edge" of new technology for decades; I would and am going to look at Sprint for this service. I currently have five AT&T cell phones, One AT&T Business line, High Speed cable and a VOIP service. I have not had good experience with cell phone data and the cost is high. With new products coming out with WiMAX already on board it will be a "NO BRAINER" for me to give Sprint a new customer.

Optus in Australia has recieved a grant from thr government, and put in their own money as well, to the tune of approximately $1.8 Billion AUD to provide a rural Wimax network to 98% of the population. This is to be done in conjunction with an ADSL2 rollout to rural cities and towns. At the same time, they are rolling out a 3G mobile network, based on 2100 umts in the cities, proposing 900 UMTS for rural areas, effectively overlaying the WiMax network.
This will mean that Optus will be in the position of being able to judge the difference between the 2 technologies. both have however the same problem - delivering a big enough pipe to the base station to carry the traffic.

You've got to be kidding Womble. Optus has been in Australia 15 years and in its own national advertising supplies broadband in "selected areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane." Suddenly the government is going to give them $1.8B of public money and they are excited about the rural areas. Telstra Next G coverage is already providing coverage on oil rigs 150 Km from the coast, across Bass Strait and at Marble Bar, the hottest place in Oz. As for the challenge of carrying the traffic - its called optical fibre and Telstra already has 900,000 Km in the ground.

Robert
There is no denial of the nextG presence. What this post is about is relevant to the topic of WiMax deployment, as compared to 3G deployment. Telstra has put it's marbles onto the NextG network as it's wireless product. Optus and Elders are playing the WiMax card, leveraging off it's existing site presence, and pushing to duplicate the Telstra wireless presence both with 3G and and with WiMax.
You cannot deny that it is to the benefit for all customers if there is a choice of providers - it is just extremly expensive to provide.
The government is providing $900M, and we are providing the rest. Without such assistance, there is no company that would do be able to bring competition up to telstra, as there is not the return on the investment to meet shareholder requirements.
And yes, telstra has a massive existing infrastucture whice eases their ability to deploy sites - of course they have had 100 years of work to put that infrastructure in place. Optus hasn't done too bad for 15 years of work.

...who have to guess right in deciding how to invest their infrastructure monies, this is really of no concern to anyone.

It's not like we consumers have to spend gobs of dough on the gadgetry ourselves, only to find out that we "guess wrong" and have a high-dollar paperweight on our hands.

The gadgets are cheap, the next thing to throw-away, and whoever "wins" will get our custom; whoever loses will be relegated to an answer to a trivia contest question.

There's no such thing as an "Irridium"-style goof on the consumer side any more.

From Singapore. One of our Terminals is about 8km away from land. Since WIMAX in Singapore has a maximum ofshore coverage of 2Km, we would have to install additional equipment at our island to be able to pickup the signal. On top of that, WIMAX is affected by radio interference (Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia Military) and there is no way out from that because is it called "National Security". The only solution available for us is WCDMA (or 3g, 3.5g) and its HSPA and HUPA standards. With little less than 3 bars (5 being the maximum) we get a reliable connection and both upload and download speeds are great. Latency is only 99-180. Way better than our current ultra highly expensive satellite links at 64kbps with a latency of 532 ms.

So in Singapore Offshore Islands, 3G rocks!

tried a 802.11g link with directional antennas in both ends. Stable links are running over 9-10Km's at close to theoretical limmit for 802.11g. Test has been conducted at 25+ Km at fair speed.
Short range WiMAX in DK is 5 Km. A danish WiMAX ISP (partnering with Fujishu) is claiming 30 Km - they are not On-Air yet !?.

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion. In the past we tried 802.11b and it was great but the problem we had was radio interferences caused by the military and goverment agencies. unfortunately we only had a 72% reliability and because we had to install equipment at a building we do not own, the cost was too high for a 72% reliable link.

We spent around SGD 14k on it. The last thing we want to do is to try that again.

Kind regards,

I really like these all or nothing discussions about telecommunication technologies - about as much as having a root canal!!!

Why can't we recognize that each technology has advantages and accept that there is a space for each to provide service?

All wireless technologies present one common problem - they are finite. Which is to say that they have bandwidth and throughput limitations that requires the use of overlapping systems to achieve the end objective.

Cellular is essentially a voice processing system and we have to make protocol conversions in order to facilitate IP transmissions. WiMAX and Wi-Fi are IP data systems, and we have to make a protocol conversion to support voice.

Therefore, let's overlap the systems to provide what we all want - faster service and greater throughput.

Oh... sorry... I forgot... these systems are all supposed to be used for music and video downloads so teens (and pre-teens) can eat into the retirement funds of their parents!!!!!

is such a beatiful thing

In any new technology battle vs existing technology the extent of the current deployments need to be considered. Cellular SPs have made huge investments in networks from which they'll not switch to new technology that requires a complete new deployment, so easily. So Wi-Max would most certainly be deployed by the ISPs to battle with the incumbent 3G cellular SPs. There'll be a period when services based on Wi-max and that based on 3G will battle it out. The battle will be won by the technology that offers services meeting needs, the marketing positioning of these services and the price at which they are offered (obviously mass volume is needed to swing the decision in one technology's favour).

as a glogal network is evolving to Integrated Digital Service (IDS) network. A consumer want's cheap, reliable and easy to operate solution. One should have in mind that 3GPP LTE is similar technology to WiMAX and requirest investments to (provider can't switch from 3G to LTE easily). And I always hear that 3G is expensive and limited technology. And what I do hear about WiMAX: It's cheap and only lack of some mobility (at this time). Both technologies are positioned as pre-4G (there is no clear definition for 4G at this time actualy). The battle between two camps (3G and WiMAX) will be interesting.

Three points on why WiMAX will falls short of the panacea currently surrounding its launch:

1) If you look at the current licencees of spectrum for WiMAX, they are all in the 2GHz+ range. As with today's cellular networks, the inbuilding penetration of this spectrum is deficient to that of the mobile operators at 800-900 MHz. Even the operators using 1900 MHz in some markets pay a penalty, e.g. Sprint and T-Mobile when it comes to in-building penetration. Most mobile data applications, especially those of the high-bandwidth variety occur indoors. Thus, what will be the advantage of WiMAX over wifi in building? And, 700 MHz is being made available how will that play a role?

2) Building a new greenfield network is expensive and takes tremendous time and other resources. Although companies like Sprint already have facilities and cell sites distributed throughout, it will still be a long build process. My opinion is it will take 5 years not 2 and cost more than what Sprint currently forecasts.

3) Device availability and cost will also play a major role. Devices are likely to take longer to arrive than anticipated. In addition, current devices that offer wireless VOIP on wifi are inferior in call quality and handling than mobile phones. Significant improvements must be made. And, have we figured out how all the E-911 mandates will be dictated upon WiMAX operators. GPS is not always reliable in-building.

As far as I know the only reason why wifi has crappy transmission/reception is because 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz are apparently close to modes at which water molecules resonate meaning that most of transmitting energy is wasted heating water vapors in the air. A signal that weakened is sure to have trouble penetrating walls. OTOH WiMAX licensed bands apparently haven't got problems of that kind -- that is why 2.4 and 5.8 are unlicensed anyway, they were/are considered useless for commercial-grade wireless services.

I agree with you to a point but it still begs the question of why T-Mobile and Sprint have lousy in-building penetration at 1900 MHz and Verizon and AT&T have much better penetration in their 850MHz markets.

In australia, my role is to besign and build in building coverage systems, varying from $5k for a home to $5million for a tunnel system
Usually, the problem is to do with coated window surfaces having metal elements in it, which reflect substantial amounts of the extenal signal, and the fact that high rise buildings tend to be above the focus of the coverage design, which is at street level. This means that though the signal strength might be sufficient, there are too many different signals of similar strength for your phone to perch on any particular signal.
If you have a corporate plane for your telecommunication services, you may wish to talk to the sales rep about improving your coverage - note that it is not cheap to do so

Hmm, other things you have not looked at are the new areas of development. You discussion focused on the developed world alone. It is obvious that the developing world is going to be wiped out by the IP based networks, cheap and easy to deploy. And if anything, the developing world is also a huge market on itself. So who is likely to be the winner in that case?