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Learning From the Early Adopters When evaluating the prospects for BWA and WiMAX, much is written about the development of the device ecosystem, the spectrum availability and other important variables. However the experience accumulated by the early WiMAX operators is invaluable. These operators had to struggle for years to fix countless glitches in the equipment, learn to become cautious with equipment vendor claims, re-work their business models with real field data, and manage frustrated customers who lost signals because a tree grew in their line of sight. One of the key variables that operators such as Warid Cote D’Ivoire had to revisit was the outdoor vs. indoor CPE mix, which was much more heavily weighted toward the former than initially outlined in the business plan. The trade off is often between additional CAPEX and higher OPEX, and the choice is not always obvious. The experience learned is an opportunity that Clearwire wants to tap into. Indeed, its international arm is now selling advisory services to inexperienced operators who are eager to avoid the same pitfalls Clearwire experienced. On top of that, Clearwire’s operator customers can enjoy discounted equipment prices thanks to bulk purchases made by Clearwire and its affiliates – in particular in the 2.5GHz band – not such a good news for vendors however. There is simply no shortcut for moving from lab and field-testing to real large scale deployments regardless of how well built the standard is. It takes years for any technology to mature and gain the solidity required in large scale networks, and this will only get worse with the emergence of multimode, multi-frequency operating in multi vendor networks. Enjoy! For more information, contact the author at afellah@maravedis-bwa.com |
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