Vodafone joins WiMAX

Vodafone Joins WiMAX; but HSPA to Dominate

Posted by samc on August 9th, 2007

Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile carrier, has signed up to be a principal member of the WiMAX Forum, the organization dedicated to the promotion of WiMAX interoperability and adoption. There are now 482 members in the WiMAX Forum.

Vodafone’s announcement comes only a day after announcing it was going to hold on to its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, which may (or may not) be coincidental.

“Our membership of the WiMAX Forum will complement our existing memberships of other key industry bodies such as the GSMA, 3GPP and the Next Generation Mobile Network initiative,” said Steve Pusey, Global Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone. “Vodafone remains technology neutral as far as our future network options are concerned, and joining the WiMAX Forum is a logical step as we seek to evaluate the full capabilities and potential of this technology.”

“Vodafone is hedging its bets,” said Sara Harris, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics Ltd. “No one really knows yet what LTE will be, unlike WiMax, which is here and real. Vodafone clearly doesn’t want to be left behind.”

At the beginning of 2007, Vodafone had 200 million customers in 27 markets across 5 continents. The U.K. company may choose to offer WiMax in developing markets such as India and LTE in more developed markets, according to PC World. Vodafone participated in a recent LTE test, and deployed its first WiMax network in Malta this June.

The ITU’s Working Party 8F reached a significant milestone this May when it forwarded for approval a new IMT-2000 standard based on a subset of WiMAX, “OFDMA TDD WMAN” (IP-OFDMA). It positions WiMAX for participation in the ITU’s process to define 4G wireless by 2009. LTE may be a couple of years off, while “4G” could be five years or more.

According to analyst firm Juniper Research, some 70 percent of mobile-broadband subscribers will use HSPA by 2012 with total mobile-broadband subscribers numbering 1.2 billion by then. That’s equivalent to nearly one in three mobile subscribers worldwide, reports C/Net.

HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) delivers mobile-broadband speeds in excess of 500 kilobits per second and up to several megabits per second for GSM carriers. There are currently about 5 million HSPA subscribers worldwide, according to UMTS Forum, a 3G advocate.

Howard Wilcox, an analyst at Juniper Research and the author of a report called Mobile Broadband Markets: WiMax, EV-DO, HSPA & Beyond, 2007-2012, said takeoff of the mobile-broadband technology will depend on the success of HSPA-enabled hardware.

Last year, Juniper Research forecast Mobile WiMAX subs would have an initial adoption of 1.7m by 2007, with total subscribers expected to reach 21.3m by 2012.

The WiMAX Forum, unsurprisingly, says WiMAX is cheaper and faster than EVDO or HSPA (pdf). Mobile WiMAX, using Time Division Duplex, is more spectrally efficient for asymmetric data applications — like internet access — although 1-to-1 up/down allocation is a snap. One could argue the FCC auctions are “rigged” to favor cellular’s Frequency Division Duplex, which require a pair of dedicated frequencies. FDD also makes MIMO and beamforming more complex and expensive.

3G Today and the CDMA Development Group promote CDMA evolution (i.e. EVDO rather than HSDPA). While CdmaOne (IS-95) and CDMA2000 utilize 2 x 1.25 MHz radio channels, future Qualcomm-backed CDMA evolution includes 1xEV-DO Rev. B and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), which will enable operators to aggregate up to 15, 1.25 MHz channels in 20 MHz of spectrum.

GSM coalitions like 3GPP and 3G Americas have their own spin on 4G evolution (pdf). They plan to move from HSDPA to LTE (in 2-3 years), then on to “4G” (in 5 years).

WiMAX already uses OFDM technology and techniques favored by LTE and 4G. The evolving 802.16m standard will bring 100Mbps-1Gbps speed. Why wait, the WiMAX Forum argues, get WiMAX now and be upwardly compatible.

Cellular operators are more concerned about backward compatibility, of course.

Senza-Fili Consulting (above), projects 54 million WiMAX subscribers by 2012, with growth driven by emerging markets. By 2012, a third of them will also use WiMAX as a fixed-access technology. That contrasts with 5 million HSPA subscribers today, worldwide, and some 70% of the projected 1.2 billion broadband subs in 2012. Juniper Research forecasts substantial growth in WiMAX after 2012.

Here’s a technical comparison between WiMAX, HSPA, EVDO and WiFi from WiMax.com. The range of EVDO and HSPA (at 1.9 GHZ) and Mobile WiMAX (at 2.5 GHZ) is said to be similar (1-3 miles), with the speed advantage to Mobile WiMAX (2-3 times faster). That translates into more subscribers per base station and lower costs for commodity (IEEE) gear.

But cellular range (at 800 MHz) is better than Mobile WiMAX (at 2.5 GHz). That’s advantageous for Verizon (EVDO Rev A) and AT&T (HSPA). But first they have to get voice service off the band and switch it to Data Only. The tricky bit. And prevent any nasty competition at 700 MHz.

source : dailywireless.org