Special Report

By Greg Chiasson, PRTM Management Consultants

Overcoming the backhaul bottleneck is a key challenge in successfully deploying WiMAX, LTE, and other next-generation communication systems. Backhaul is a critical element of 4G business models, affecting capital investment, operational expense, time to market, and the customer experience.

While backhaul-related technical and deployment issues abound, making the business model work in the face of backhaul costs is even more daunting. Even today, backhaul is one of the largest operational expenses a carrier faces, comprising up to 40 percent of recurring network expenses. 4G systems, which demand substantially greater backhaul capacity, have the potential to significantly magnify these cost challenges.

A consortium of a half dozen WiMAX technology patent holders have announced the formation of a patent pool, called the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) that aims to help its members obtain access to patent licenses from their owners at a predictable cost. OPA's six founding members are Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Sprint. OPA's mission statement is to advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model that will stimulate a larger WiMAX industry through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications worldwide.

OPA plans to aggregate the essential patent rights that are required to implement the WiMAX standard in an effort to provide a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for features required to develop WiMAX products. OPA takes issue with current licensing practices which "bundle" all features--both necessary and unnecessary into royalty charges, which raises royalties. OPA also aims to account for cross-licensing between members within the pool.

While OPA was founded by only six companies in the WiMAX ecosystem, it expects to add six to nine more companies that will ensure that the organization has covered all the essential WiMAX patents. The Alliance plans to issue a call for these patents and a third party reviewer, which it calls a "patent referee" will evaluate the submissions and determine how essential they are to the WiMAX standard.

While the OPA initially will focus its efforts on the WiMAX standard, it may work with other industry groups in the future, which may indicate why the group chose not to include WiMAX as part of its name.

"Intel's vision in driving the formation of the Open Patent Alliance is to bring the openness of the Internet and computing industries to the wireless industry and WiMAX" said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president, Intel Capital and general manager, Intel WiMAX program office. "By facilitating an open intellectual property rights model, we expect the alliance to in turn create a more competitive, innovative and broader WiMAX industry that ultimately benefits the consumer with more choice for WiMAX technology and services."

Sequans Communications one of a few who will showcase newly certified Mobile WiMAX products at WiMAX World EMEA 2008 to be held at the ICM, May 19- 21, 2008 Munich, Germany:
http://europe.wimaxworld.com/

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Many operators worldwide have begun planning or are already deploying the first networks using Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e). As they do, the specific requirements of wireless broadband networks become better defined and to some extent challenge the view that competition among operators with separate network infrastructure is necessary to ensure good performance and affordable services for the subscribers.

Mobile WiMAX systems are based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard [1]. This standard actually defines three different physical layers, but from those, the WiMAX Forum has only adopted the orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) mode for portable and mobile services. Compared to the other physical layers included in the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard, which are all based on time-division multiple access (TDMA), OFDMA leads to a significant cell range extension, it enhances the medium-access control (MAC) efficiency, and it eases the deployment of networks with a frequency reuse factor of 1, thus eliminating the need for frequency planning. These are very valuable features for future broadband wireless systems.

Most communications services are currently tied to one contract and one device. For instance, a GSM mobile subscriber has a pre- or post-paid account that is typically associated with a SIM card and it is the SIM card that, when inserted into a particular device, designates that device as being live on the account. The subscriber can use a different phone by moving the SIM card, but only one phone can be used for communication at any one time. Even bundled services respect this rule: they offer a discount on the overall bill, but mostly treat devices and services as independent products.

The most advanced WiMAX technology in terms of IOT, field trials and commercial implementation is based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard for fixed applications where a choice of chipset, base station and CPE are available from a rapidly evolving industry. This ecosystem has not yet reached the maturity needed to meet the CPE cost target that will impact the demand inflection point, but the quick progress the industry is making leads us to believe that 2007 will be a crucial year for fixed WiMAX equipment.

In February of 2007 Yankee Group Analyst Declan Lonergan wrote a provocative piece entitled: "Time to Get Real About Mobile WiMAX in Europe." Declan's aim was to cut through the hype surrounding mobile WiMAX, and discuss the actual role Yankee Group believes it will take in shaping wireless broadband service in Western Europe. WiMAX Trends has obtained a summary of this report, and asked several members of the wireless broadband community to respond with their own reports - to be published here on WiMAX Trends.

To many people, WiMAX conjures up the image of a business user with an open laptop or a PDA sitting comfortably at a table in a downtown cafe. But that's the future. In the initial adoption phase, most subscribers will have a desktop modem or PCMCIA card that provides a data and voice connection to their home or business. While the ultimate WiMAX goal is to become the technology that brings wireless broadband to the mass market, the devices required to deliver truly mobile WiMAX are not yet here, nor do the radio access and core networks have all the required functionality.