On this page, we bring you some of the interesting discussions with our comments  as they sweep across the WiMAX world. These include the network performances,growth projections, investment levels etc.

 

New Regulations permitting Internet telephony in India: A revolutionary opportunity for  WiMAX in India

 Aug 18,2008

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India ( TRAI), chose the occasion of the Independence day in India to let the Internet Service Providers ( ISPs) loose of the severe restrictions which permitted any form of internet telephony. ( See Amitabh Kumar: "Indian Telecoms: Critical Deviations in the Post WTO Era") The new regulations now allow ISPs to not only provide internet telephony but also connect to telephony switches in India and overseas in order to provide end to end telephony services. ( See  TRAI recommendations relating to Internet Telephony).

            This changes , in its entirety the business model which the WIMAX operators had been going ahead with in the country. With only data revenues to count on the WiMAX, which is ideally suited for  deployment primarily  in rural areas, was essentially a non-viable proposition. Despite this serious handicap, high investments have been going in this sector just because any form of wireleless broadband can not be had in the vast hinterlands of the country for love or money.

            The business case for WiMAX operators just got stronger with telephony calls being permitted, which can form an important source of revenues in rural areas and also give the new wireless ISPs access to Universal Service Obligation funds.

 

The recommendations of the TRAI are quite unusual in as much as they signify a complete reversal of its stand wherein it had been holding forth strongly to the view that only the Universal Access Service licensees and Cellular mobile operators, which were otherwise entitled to provide the telephony services were the only ones which could also provide VoIP and Internet telephony services. However these licensees enjoying much higher ARPUs from standard telephony were not inclined to push Internet telephony even though they were enjoying corresponding benefits from overseas Internet telephony operators.

 

What this means now is that operators can lay an overlay WiMAX network and make their business plans centered around VoIP and telephony amongst other services. Coming just prior to the WiMAX spectrum announcement policy ( 3G spectrum is already announced), the new recommendations convey the serious intent of the TRAI in promoting broadband in the country, presently beset with one of the lowest per capita usage in the World.

 

WiMAX operators, on the other hand  need to quickly revise their business plans

 

7 Aug 2008
The announcement by the Govt. of India of the auction of 3G spectrum auction coupled with the announcement of policy for mobile virtual network operators marks the beginning of a new era in the fastest growing telecom market in the world.

The 3G spectrum auction policy has been talked about for the last 3 years and has now finally been announced. This policy ( http://www.dot.gov.in/2008/aug%202008/spectrum_2.pdf) envisages a multistage bidding process for spectrum blocks of 5x2 MHz as paired bands in the 1.9/2.1 GHz bands. A total of 5 to 10 such slots are slated to be auctioned. Spectrum will also be auctioned in the 1900 MHz band for EVDO services providing an upgrade path for the CDMA operators.
The bidding is open to all investors irrespective of whether they hold the 2G licenses or not. This is expected to bring in additional operators who missed the action earlier

However the change of greater significance will be ushered in by the Mobile Virtual Network Operator policy, whereby innovative service provides can buy the resources such as infrastructure or airtime and provide their own offerings of mobile multimedia.
This relieves the mobile operators to meet the network and user growth requirements while it permits a number of new operators to try their own business models for mobile multimedia, Mobile TV, streaming of video and audio and other services based on mobile multimedia such as music stores.

WiMAX and LTE

June 2008

One of the most common issues of discussion one finds today in either WiMAX or 3G fora are the technology growth path, will it be LTE or Mobile WiMAX? In fact this question has also led to a considerable debate amongst the regulators in different countries as it has a bearing on the way future resources such as spectrum need to be allocated.
It must be said at the outset that the LTE is the path most carriers ( 3G and CDMA) are planning to follow for the present, at least till they can see something better in Mobile WiMAX. All the carriers have been following the 3GPP ( and 3GPP2) upgrade paths, which now at HSUPA and EV-DO will take them to LTE and UMB.

Because the mobile community is very large and 3GPP is their own body for evolution, it is not surprising that almost all carriers have announced the upgrade paths as LTE. This is proving to be a hurdle for the uptake of Mobile WiMAX by many networks as they see heir upgrade paths as those specified as 3GPP.

But the fact is that LTE is still not yet fully defined, let alone tried as per frozen standards. This leaves many areas which could face delays as technology moves from Labs to trials and on to commercial use. Mobile WiMAX is right now fathered mostly by Intel and a few others, but its path is differnt and it has many advantages, particulary in the technology and availability of spectrum. This makes possible high bandwidth open applications, more than what can be said of even HSPA. A large ecosystem has also been built around Mobile WiMAX after over 300 trials. The ecosystem includes the chipsets, CPEs, plug in devices as well as Wave 2 compliant base stations, test apparatus and implementation aids.

Is is possible to harmonize 3GPP and mobile WiMAX or LTE and Mobile WiMAX? Potentially it has become easier now after the WRC has adopted OFDMA-TDD as one of the approved interfaces for IMT. This makes it possible for 3G ( and evolved systems including LTE) to coexist in different parts of the network as the higher architectural layers can follow the 3GPP.

The question is why would 3G operators use mobile WiMAX, if at all? I would say that there are many reasons for this. One, the Mobile WiMAX technology is now available including the wave 2 devices. So if the operators really want to grow on data, they can use the more easily available spectrum for Mobile WiMAX than that available for 3G or LTE. It also allows a second path to the internet, the first being via their own GNA techniques. Secondly WiMAX features are much more powerful for multimedia transmission ( such as support for MBS and service flows). Hence there is a good case for dual mode devices.

There are of course still many issues which the WiMAX forum needs to hasten to make Mobile WiMAX viable. They are seen as too slow in certifications and defining the higher layers of WiMAX. The technology also has some proving to do in so far as more advanced implementations such as those involving SFNs and micro-diversity handover are concerned.Potentially latency is higher in Mobile WiMAX particularly when it is operated as an SFN for MBS type operations. The synchronization is by means of IEEE 1588 precision timing protocol with the GPS source, which makes it +- 10 microseconds as compared to 2-3 microseconds for LTE and EVDO/HSPA, which are also based on the use of a GPS source. This means that multidiversity operation of Mobile WiMAX stations is more complex and can be subject to loss of synchronism or collision in transmissions. But it is compensated by its more advanced features of classes of service and support of service flows. We should soon have more data on this when more implementations are on the ground for MBS, though as yet they seem to be very few. This is also because of the WiMAX forum not being able to quickly move ahead on the network architectures.3GPP and LTE definitely score on this account as the architectures are fully defined up to the application level. This is the main reason why WiMAX applications are flagging and most operators who take up implementations based on WiMAX are in a quandry on how to integrate it and develop applications over it. Many of the MBS implementations are coming out as proprietary and not all operators are implementing them in the same way.

Proponents of LTE claim that it has an edge so far as latency is concerned, but this is based on the technology guidance, no one has seen it yet. But as the LTE standards move ahead, there is a good case for better harmonization of standards with WiMAX, which in any event is one of the permitted air interfaces in the network. We will need to also see how the Flash OFDM and OFDMA-TDD technologies can coexist and what implications arise from a commercial viewpoint as well.

There is however a much stronger case for Mobile WiMAX today. No wireless technology has been tested so widely as mobile WiMAX has, nor can any technology claim to deliver high quality multimedia with assured QoS to hundreds of thousands of devices as Mobile WiMAX can. The close to a million WiFi hot spots are a testimony to the fact that Wireless does provide value depite what mobile networks can offer and this remains the key reason why Mobile WiMAX will be used extensively in the near future.

 

Mobile WiMAX and 3G are entirely in different classes and one can not compare one for the other. The 3G technologies were perceived in the mid 90’s and had forecast very limited rates in each cell area. No one at that time had even vaguely estimated the predominance of video in content and messages as it turned out to be the case by 2003, when the first 3G networks were being implemented. This led to a scramble to develop patchwork technologies such as HSDPA to rack up the data rates. However, with all recognition to this technology, which actually works, it again does not compare with Mobile WiMAX.
Mobile WiMAX is a technology in a different class by itself. It is suited for specific services such as video streaming,VoIP and others by providing classes of traffic and QoS parameters. It is designed for Non-line of sight dense urban wireless environment, where high data rates can not be sustained without the OFDMA, which is an integral part of the WiMAX technology. It is truly a next generation technology and is an extension of the Internet to mobile devices without any restrictions.
No one is giving a go by to mobile WiMAX, not at least the operators who are providing data services today and are planning for a WiMAX ecosystem of constant connectivity in the near future. The GSM and 3G operators are today beasts of burden. They need to go on providing connections and support services to various customers. With growth in countries in India and China averaging 8-10 million users a month, they have few other options but to organically go on expanding, subdividing cells like bacteria to just serve all the users. Again, no one, even when 3G was being planned had thought of such a high number of customers nor such customer density. Had they known this scenario in advance, they would not have planned such narrow spectrum bands as they did.
Mobile WiMAX is taking shape, driven by operators who are building the high speed wireless applications for today and the future. No one is expecting mobile WiMAX to step in the shoes of what GSM or 3G is doing today and start doing it from tomorrow. WiMAX would be crippled with such a high voice traffic just as 3G networks are with even a hint of video traffic. As the mobile WiMAX ecosystem falls in place this year with wave 2 certified devices, it will be the new network of choice for multimedia applications and a range of new devices needing constant connectivity, social networking and vide heavy services. It is designed to succeed where 3G fails.
But both are different creatures and the operators who provide these services cater to entirely different audiences. Mobile WiMAX is emerging as a very strong and successful technology, but it does not need to challenge 3G for such status.

 

WRC 2007 decisions may adversely influence frequency allocations for Mobile WiMAX in India

There was general cheer in the WiMAX camp when the OFDMA-TDD was accepted as one of the approved air interfaces under the IMT-Advanced. Mobile WiMAX thus became one of the technologies using which 3G mobile services could be provided. It was considered an important development also because of the impact in Europe which had sharply divided bands for IMT-Advanced and WiMAX making it difficult for WiMAX operators access to the 2.5-2.69 GHz and 2.3-2.4 GHz bands.

However in India the decisions by the WRC and the ITU seem to be having just the opposite effect. With the ever powerful mobile operators lobby, which has already wrested a range of decisions in its favor, including barring any foreign companies from bidding for 3G spectrum, it has now embarked on a new ruse.
This is to wrest the allocation of the Mobile WiMAX spectrum in the 2.3-2.4 and 2.5-2.69 GHz bands in its favour citing the WRC decisions of commanality of air interfaces. The mobile operators are contending that as the WRC has accepted WiMAX-TDD as a part of IMT advanced, it is an enabling factor for the DoT to allocate to them the mobile WiMAX spectrum in these bands, which they would be able to use for their 3 G services. If WiMAX goes into the background owing to it, so be it.

The Consultation paper on the allocation of these spectrum bands closed on May 23, 2008. Without waiting for the recommendations of the regulator, the DoT has started calling a meeting of mobile operators who are keen to grab the booty. The recommendations of the regulator, when issued can always be filed. Of course with all the respect and the dignity they deserve.

 

Mobile Content Central: Being a 4th Generation Broadcaster

“Mobile TV is just one of many services that new mobile broadcast technologies enable.”
The above theme which emerged from the views expressed by Kamil Grajski, FLO Forum president at NAB 2008 is in fact something the broadcasting industry is increasing recognizing as the multimedia transmissions to mobile devices move to the forefront.
The FLO forum president recognized the fact that when IP data is pushed to a mobile device ( A Phone or internet tablet for example) the users expect to see more than a “ Mobile TV” or listen to a “ Streaming Radio”. In fact they expect more of a portal which gives them everything: news, TV, social networking sites feeds and more. The key lies in allowing each individual to be able to personalize content and see what they wish to see!
This is also the core idea of the book “ Mobile Broadcasting with WiMAX” which brings out the characteristics of a 4th Generation Broadcaster and explains the technologies and network architectures which help to achieve it.

Featured at NAB 2008, April 11-18, Las Vegas!

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