What's Going On for WiMax?

What's Going On for WiMax?

I have been asked the same question in the last 2 weeks by over 200 investors, attorneys, analysts and plicy-makers because they trust my views are very different from the public publication or public release.

Yes, I am an academic people plus was a low level technical labor as Chief wireless architect of Infineon Technologies. I started broadband wireless access (BWA) technology since 1992 and owned couple of Wireless mobile ATM patents, and later started IEEE802.16 together with Roger, Jim, Brian, etc in march 1999.

Before we discuss on any issues of Wimax, let's sit down and calm down for a while - forget any political, marketing, and media hypos, and think it over carefully as a student, rather than as a businessman or salesman.

WiMax is not a new baby! WiMax is already at least 15 years'old teenage. We all know Teenage is a very critical time period in life, and we need enough education to help set his/her long-term development strategy.

WiMax is just a new name for IEEE802.16 standard, one of the standards for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technologies. In history, BWA included Wireless ATM (autonomous transfer mode), wireless mobile ATM, HyperAccess, LMDS, MMDS - some are IEEE, and some are non-IEEE standards.

IEEE802.16 came from an idea of Cable Modern (DOCSIS based) in later 1998, and 802.16.1 on LMDS and 802.16.3 on MMDS in early 1999 when we started the 802.16 standardization activities in Boulder, CO, the virgin home of WiMax. Later 802.16.1/3 changed to 802.16.a...

Before we discuss about the WiMax, we need to analyze why the previous Wireless Mobile ATM and LMDS/MMDS were totally dead. The first issue I believe is the COST and PRICE. Do you really can provide a low cost (I should not say cheap) solution to the users, and how cheap the service is?

Some people focus on the under-developed emerging markets such as China rural areas or India rural areas where the telephone line is expensive to install. But people still use the American logics to think about the cost in China. In US, the telephone line installation is expensive because the labor and construction are expensive. In US, if you want to install a 5-miles phone line to the rural area house, it may cost $1000 per line. But in China rural area such as Gansu, Jiangxi, Xi'an, etc, we only cost $20 per line to install a 5-miles phone line to the rural home because the labor and construction is extremely cheap, and we do not need a permission from the household to install a phone line in the property or set up an antenna on top of the building (in rural areas). If these areas can not afford to pay $20 per line to have phone line, do you think they can aford to buy the WiMax equipment?

But we do have huge markets for WiMax in China - the Governement markets and Community markets. China gov't controls almost 85% of the ICT industries and there are many opportunities for WiMax systems such as Traffic department, transportation, customs, business parks, oil plants, banks, ATM stations, schools, city halls, etc whci are all gov't markets. The issue is: How much cheap you can provide for WiMAX solution? As long as the cost is low, people will love it!

Personally, I believe Intel is very smart and will win in this race. Do you think Intel is a WiMax company? If you think so, you are stupid!

Intel is a IC company with endless innovations and inventions in key technology of IC. Intel will leap ahead, but not heading to WiMax! Intel is absolutely targetting open architecture, and have WiMax as a testing example!

Remebered the PABX race in early 90s, only one company made huge money - that was Mitel shipping the TDM swicth chip 24/7 to every corners of the world.

WIMAX is a very good technology, especially in fixed and nomadic WiMAX solutions. But for seamless Mobile WiMax, we still have lots of technical issues to be solved, and are very difficult to be solved. I always believe there is NO single wireless standard that can do everything both broadband and seamless mobile. We need different wireless standards to complement each other for the converged solutions.

For general mobile Wimax, the term "mobile" is very confusing and misleading. What do you mean by "mobile"? There are several definitions of "mobile":1. Portable, such as mobile computing.2. Moveable, such as mobile house.3. Free mobile (or called seamless mobile), such as mobile phone.

So in the current IEEE802.16e, the mobile WiMax is still limited to "portable" or very limited mobile.

Why I said seamless (free) mobile WImax is very difficult or even impossible? When the frequency goes high, the cell size gets very small, and the transmission is limited to line-of-sight. The frequent handovers between various base-stations become very difficult especially when the network capacity increases. There is no well accepted solution yet to support the free mobile handover control protocols in broadband wireless IP networks. The traditional GSM/TDMA and CDMA protocols do not support such high-frequent and dense handovers in such small cells with non-circuit-switch (NCS) connections.

But on the other side, mobile may just become one feature for the WiMax, just like camera feature in a mobile phone - it is available whenever you want to use it, but mostly you never use it unless it is too cheap or free cost.

I fully understand that people want to distinguish mobile WiMax with previous MMDS, etc, otherwise it may repeat the same lessions of MMDS except the cost and performance improve a lot.

Last, any new mobile standard needs a lucky place (Fengshui in Chinese) and lucky time to save it at the begining. GSM was saved by God (God Saved Mobile), CDMA was saved by Korea, and who is going to save mobile WiMax?

Anyway, WiMax is a very good technology, I believe.

To be continued .... as we are landing to the airport.

by Willie W. Lu
in Flight