WiMAX proponents are enthusiastic about the standard’s ability to enable metropolitan-wide wireless services as soon as 2006.
But does the world really need another wireless technology, or are the developers of WiMAX just creating tomorrow’s obsolete technology today?
Not according to Peter Firstbrook, program director at the Meta Group . “Be careful comparing WiMAX to cellular and Wi-Fi . It is not really going after those markets,” Firstbrook told NewsFactor. “Just like we have multiple mediums in the wired world, we will have multiple mediums in the wireless world. Each technology is optimally designed for a market niche.”
Firstbrook views last-mile wireless as the sweet spot appeal for WiMAX. “WiMAX will compete with broadband and cable to the home,” he said. “Currently, inexpensive wireless to the home is an unserved market, making last-mile access one of the most expensive and constrained parts of the Internet.”
Leading the Charge
In the WiMAX world, a number of industry and individual initiatives exist that seek to capitalize on the need for metro-wide, fast wireless services that Firstbrook envisions.
Intel is leading the charge, investing heavily in the technology in hopes that it can do for WiMAX what it did for Wi-Fi with its Centrino chips .
“Increasingly, consumers are using portable devices to access data on the go, and many city and regional entities are responding by developing city-wide broadband wireless ‘metro zones,’ Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel’s Broadband Wireless Group, told NewsFactor.
“However, more users mean more demand for bandwidth. WiMAX is an excellent solution, since it offers the cost-effectiveness of Wi-Fi while delivering the superior bandwidth and reliability of carrier-grade networks.”
Intel is a founding member of the not-for-profit WiMAX Forum. The Forum is industry-led, nonprofit corporation formed to promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products. Its companies support the industry-wide acceptance of the IEEE 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN wireless LAN standards, which may be enacted by spring 2005.
Product Plans
The WiMAX Forum has more than 170 members and is signing up new suppliers all the time. One of the most recent corporate recruits is Colubris Networks, based in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Pierre Trudeau, founder and CTO of Colubris, told NewsFactor that WiMAX should be viewed not as a competitor to Wi-Fi, but as a complement to it for metro area deployment.
Colubris is currently best-known for Wireless LAN access devices, controllers, and network management solutions, but is preparing to broaden its product and services offerings to WiMAX.
“We’re focusing on WiMAX as a fixed wireless complement or as an alternative to fixed broadband cable,” Trudeau said. He added that Colubris hopes to introduce “a number” of WiMAX solutions by October of next year.
Gathering Momentum
In recent weeks, the WiMAX Forum has picked up several new high-profile members whose buy-in shows both the viability and the commercial potential of WiMAX, the Forum believes. These new members include Lucent Technologies, LG Electronics, Deutsche Telecom, SBC and Time Warner Telecom.
“The nearly unanimous support for WiMAX technology among integrators and the continued interest from service providers is testament to the potential for WiMAX to deliver on the global challenge of providing broadband on a ubiquitous scale,” Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum, says in a statement.
“WiMAX-certified solutions will appear on the market about mid-2005. These are fixed-wireless solutions based on IEEE 802.16-2004,” ABI Research analyst Phil Solis told NewsFactor. “These solutions will be appropriate as alternative last mile solutions that compete with T1s and other telecommunications services.”
And on the consumer side, “WiMAX will bring broadband to places where it is not economically feasible to build out cable or DSL infrastructure,” Solis added.
