Portable Broadband Lines in the Sky

4G Weekly Digest November 18th, 2009 - Volume 5, Issue 13

Portable Broadband Lines in the Sky
By Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst and Partner
Contact the author at robert@maravedis-bwa.com

The Yankee Group has released a new report entitled “2009 Global WiMAX Forecast: Poised for Portable Broadband Success.” Fixed-nomadic “portable broadband” was the original vision for WiMAX. The early version of WiMAX gained little momentum and the need to adopt mobile capabilities has intervened:

1) “Portable broadband” has not developed momentum and has not been available in sufficient frequencies to deliver on the low cost and wide rural coverage it erroneously proposed. What would have changed if WiMAX had not pursued mobility? Would that magically have changed regulations to make cheap combination of spectra available, resulting in widespread adoption?

2) Neither the Yankee Group, the WiMAX Forum, IEEE or any other single SSO, company or analyst decides what regulators do by consensus. The ITU does have significant influence on regulators, but otherwise, the EU, US and other regulatory jurisdictions determine regulations for spectrum. It is then up to commercial momentum to develop, or up-front funding to acquire and make use of spectrum.
The fixed-nomadic version of WiMAX never developed enough momentum to change regulations to the extent that they favored WiMAX or accumulated the capital needed to pursue auctions or acquisition of spectrum.

The thinking that if WiMAX had pursued the Yankee Group's vision of portable broadband to the exclusion of mobility, the market would have developed to the extent needed to gain momentum, simply does not meet the test of time and logic.

The facts are that the ITU considered efforts within IEEE and the WiMAX Forum and saw merit in the MIMO-OFDMA technology approach, and adopted many of the broad concepts and blanket technology framework for use in IMT-Advanced.

Most regulators look to the ITU for long-term vision and to 3GPP, IEEE, ETSI and other SSOs and industry groups for guidance; in doing so, a common vision emerges.

Unfortunately, the commercial reality is that 3G was destined to become higher broadband to the point it could be used for fixed-nomadic as well as mobile applications, fitting the vision of IMT-Advanced and the general trend of regulators to accommodate multiple classes of use.

Where would the market be if WiMAX really was “portable broadband?” Which devices would be available that are not currently? What capital would have become available to fuel growth in availability of spectrum, deployments, and supply ecosystem development?

It is precisely the thinking that there are “lines in the sky” that led early WiMAX efforts down the road of “fractured applications thinking.” There are no lines in the sky. Mobile wireless was becoming broadband before, during, and after WiMAX had started to develop.

There is merit to wishful thinking during early stages of a long-term development. However, that has to be matched with deliberate strategic thinking that has a fair chance of succeeding. Just wishing it so does not magically create the billions of dollars of commerce of needed to fund acquisition of spectrum or promote further development.

Competition is neither static nor gracious: it is folly to think that WiMAX or any other development would remain ignored while it grew to cover a large segment of the population with portable broadband without inevitably causing a reaction from the mobile wireless camp as it evolved toward 4G broadband. It was always inevitable for the mobile industry to view this as competition. We cannot simply name a special class of adoption “Personal Broadband Everywhere” and then project that the market will swing into action, incumbent operators will ignore it as a competitive threat, device suppliers will come up with the coolest, market driving devices, and that users will line up at retail outlets and online to buy devices and sign up for the service.

The current outlook for industry trends is for 4G to encompass all scale and applications of devices. To determine that WiMAX would offer portable broadband as a distinct class of applications does not comply with ITU IMT-2000, IMT-Advanced, 3GPP HSPA, 3GPP LTE, WiMAX 802.16d, WiMAX 802.16e, WiMAX 802.16m.