by Max Bloom
August 11, 2009
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WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) actually refers to two currently deployed IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) standards: fixed WiMAX (802.16d) and the newer mobile WiMAX (802.16e). Originally conceived as a wide-area alternative to Wi-Fi, WiMAX coverage is often measured in miles, not feet. (Proponents refer to WiMAX as “Wi-Fi on steroids” and its coverage area as “über hotspots.”) “WiMAX is the only mobile network out there capable of handling streaming media today,” says Barry Davis, Clearwire’s executive director of product planning. “With WiMAX, you get the same performance on the road as you do at home.”
Figure 1. "WiMAX is the only mobile network out there capable of handling streaming media today," says Barry Davis, Clearwire's executive director of product planning. "With WiMAX, you get the same performance on the road as you do at home."
Still in its infancy as a wireless standard, WiMAX has already been used to solve a variety of video-data-transport dilemmas where wired lines are impractical, satellite or microwave trucks are too costly, and currently available cellular networks provide insufficient bandwidth:
• During the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, local ABC affiliate KGMH used WiMAX to feed live video at 1Mbps from the daily press briefing, freeing up the station’s microwave truck and avoiding entanglement in an already stressed telco infrastructure.
• TourTechSupport, an IT support services company based in Raleigh, N.C., used WiMAX for an April 2008 live webcast at the New York red-carpet premiere of the feature film, Made of Honor. “WiMAX is the fastest and easiest way that we’re aware of to get good, reliable bandwidth [in urban settings],” says TourTechSupport founder and CEO Allen Cook.
• Intel, Clearwire, and Livecast partnered in January with Portland’s MAX Light Rail system for a pilot project in which GPS-enabled cameras mounted on commuter trains enabled live website monitoring of track status and train locations.
Figure 2. "WiMAX is the fastest and easiest way that we're aware of to get good, reliable bandwidth [in urban settings]," says TourTechSupport founder and CEO Allen Cook.
Figure 3. "WiMAX is a much more aggressive, open-minded modality than the traditional walled garden of the mobile world," says William Mutual, CEO of LiveCast Media, Inc.
While fixed WiMAX has filled a niche in the broadband delivery space, it is the new mobile WiMAX that is attracting attention and investment dollars in the U.S. The development of the mobile WiMAX standard has coincided with Intel’s increasing commitment to mobile computing in general. With the advent of its low-power Centrino Atom platform, Intel has helped spawn a new breed of mobile devices, including UMPCs (UltraMobile PCs), MIDs (mobile internet devices), and netbooks. Intel expects that 2009 will be the first year in which more MIDs will be sold than desktop PCs, and more than a third of Intel-powered UMPCs coming out this year will include dual WiMAX/Wi-Fi-enabled chipsets.
In addition to spurring the proliferation of WiMAX-ready devices, Intel also made a $1.6 billion investment in Clearwire and its city-by-city rollout of the first nationwide WiMAX network. After extensive negotiations last fall, Clearwire merged with Sprint’s Baltimore WiMAX network (which debuted in September 2008 under the XOHM brand) and added its own WiMAX network in Portland, Ore., in January 2009. The company, now 51% owned by Sprint, has announced plans to be up in Las Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas/Fort Worth before the end of 2009 and promises coverage in 80 markets serving a potential subscriber base of 120 million by the end of 2010. In addition to its funding from Intel, Clearwire received another $1.6 billion from Time-Warner, Comcast, Bright House Networks, and Google.
WiMAX vs. LTE
Although these and other heavyweight backers have placed their bets on WiMAX, significant obstacles lie ahead in the road to WiMAX ubiquity. Most significantly, AT&T and Verizon (in partnership with Vodaphone) have backed LTE (Long Term Evolution, the next step on the GSM/UMTS/HSPA evolution path) as the wireless broadband standard of the near future. While WiMAX emerged from the computing world as the next iteration of Ethernet and Wi-Fi, LTE is being developed by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and represents the telecom industry’s best shot at dominating the market for 4G. (WiMAX and LTE are actually pre-4G technologies. For the purposes of this article, we will call them 4G, with the understanding that 4G, as defined by the IEEE and ITU [International Telecommunication Union], refers to the later generation WiMAX 802.16m and LTE-Advanced, respectively.) In some sense, the competition between WiMAX and LTE for 4G supremacy represents a battle between the computing and telecom worlds for control of the wireless broadband future.
