When Sprint and Clearwire parted ways, a dark cloud passed over mobile WiMAX.
But that news should not overshadow what was a landmark year for the technology.
By Sean Jackson
�n January 2007, mobile WiMAX’s high
profi le American champion Sprint Nextel
announced that Finnish giant Nokia would
be a “key infrastructure and consumer electronic
device provider” for its WiMAX mobility
network. Sprint was expected to invest up to
$800m during 2007 and between $1.5bn and
$2bn in 2008 on its nationwide US WiMAX
network. Nokia joined Intel, Samsung and
Motorola in creating the network, which at
the time was expected to be live sometime
late 2007.
Following the announcement, Olli-Pekka
Kallasvuo, president and CEO, Nokia said:
“WiMAX is an ideal technology for open internet
models in all major global markets. With
Sprint’s leadership, the next generation network
will offer innovative mobile broadband
services, connecting people with content and
technology in new and exciting ways.”
By the time the GSM World Congress had
rolled into Barcelona in February the industry
was engulfed in WiMAX launches, releases, announcements
and unveilings of every possible
type. The biggest news of all, though, came from
comments made by Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin.
Making a keynote address at the GSM
show (now expanded and rebranded) Sarin
called on the industry as a whole to work
faster on its plans for Long Term Evolution
A roller coaster
ride for 802.16e
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(LTE) highlighting the faster than anticipated
adoption of WiMAX on the world stage. “The
GSMA needs to infl uence the ecosystem. LTE
is still at the standards stage, while WiMAX
is a commercial reality,” said Sarin.
GSM Association chairman Craig Ehrlich
countered: “I would take issue that WiMAX is
the elephant in the front room. You could have
said that about CDMA—which is great technology—but
now you could argue that it has become
niche. As an organisation we have no position on
it. We accept that some of our member operators
will adopt it. But we’re gearing up on our own
mobile broadband evolution path.”
The industry didn’t have to wait too long for
the world’s largest mobile operator by revenue
to further signal its interest in mobile WiMAX.
In September Vodafone joined the WiMAX
Forum. Steve Pusey, global chief technology
offi cer, Vodafone, said: “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.”
Ovum analyst John Delaney noted that the
move seemed perfectly natural. “In Vodafone’s
case, the move is especially logical because of
its increasing presence in emerging markets.
The prospects for WiMAX to play an important
role in the future development of mobile
are better in those parts of the world where
large numbers of people do not yet have access
to telecoms or the internet,” he said.
“On the other hand, the telecoms model will
predominate for the foreseeable future in more
mature markets. Vodafone clearly needs to be
involved in the development of both types of
model, since its business encompasses both
types of market,” Delaney said.
The debate over where—not whether—
WiMAX will be most successful rages on. US
management and technology consultant Diamond
suggested in March that mobile WiMAX
would factor heavily in US service providers’
data-network-deployment strategies, since
it holds a critical time-to-market advantage
of about a year before technologies such as
1xEV-DO Rev. C and HSPA+, become available
with “substantially improved” data rates.
Staying in mature markets, in July Macropolitan-led
UK-based collaboration Urban
Wimax, announced a partnership with
Canadian kit fi rm Nortel to build and trial a
user-ready mobile WiMAX service ahead of
the UK’s spectrum auction in early 2008. Sasha
Williamson, CEO of Urban Wimax, said: “The
potential for 4G using WiMAX connectivity
is enormous. If the UK is to remain competitive
in the digital economy it must improve
broadband connectivity, both in terms >>
WiMAX FEATURE
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