ORR Technology, LLC

DigitalBridge Communications first with WiMAX Forum Certified gear in U.S.

DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a wireless ISP in the United States, has launched the first commercial Mobile WiMAX network using WiMAX Forum Certified 802.16e equipment in the U.S. with service in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The new mobile capability enhances its BridgeMAXX fixed high-speed wireless Internet service.

The service uses Alvarion’s BreezeMAX 2.5 GHz base station, which recently received the WiMAX Forum Certified mark for equipment based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard for mobile broadband. The certification assures network operators that infrastructure and devices carrying the logo are interoperable with each other and enabling equipment purchase from multiple vendors. The Wyoming network will offer Alvarion’s CPE modems and 4Motion peripherals, which have yet to be certified. DBC is Alvarion’s largest U.S. customer.

More about the DigitalBridge launch of WiMAX services in Jackson Hole can be found at WiMax.com

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South Korea prepares for WiBro Wave 2

First and fastest is not enough for broadband-savvy South Korea. The country’s WiBro service, based on 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX, is preparing for a boost in performance later this year that is expected to keep the service at the leading edge of mobile broadband. WiBro services first launched in mid-2006 as three operators sought to translate the experience of home and office broadband services to anytime and anywhere (called 4G). The networks are considered the first case study for the mobile WiMAX movement.

Two years after the first commercial services were launched, it’s still debated if WiBro is a success or not. Hanaro Telecom, one of the original license holders, surrendered its spectrum allocation leaving Korea Telecom (KT) and SK Telecom as the lone providers. SK Telecom focused initial network coverage in subsets of the metropolitan Seoul market, such as college campuses. This resulted in an uptake of only 2,000 subscribers. KT has had a more ambitious plan of blanketing Seoul in WiBro then expanding along the motorways and mass transit routes. Subscribers for WiBro today have surpassed 200,000 users, which pale in comparison to Korea’s mobile phone users or wired broadband customer base. Industry executives point out that WiBro is experiencing a faster rate of adoption in Korea than the cellular W-CDMA protocol did on its two-year anniversary.

More about the WiBro service and WiMAX Forum certification profiles can be found at WiMax.com

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US cable companies to offer WiMAX femtocells

The largest form of residential broadband internet access in the United States occur using cable modems followed by DSL services and wireless. Cable operators are synonymous with bundled offers of Internet, home phone, and television services. Mobility is the perceived gap in their portfolio. The recent announcement by Sprint and Clearwire forming a mobile WiMAX joint venture could be the entry point that cable operators are looking for. The WiMAX partnership includes investments from cable operators Bright House Networks, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable amongst others.

Dave Williams, senior VP of wireless and technology for Comcast, provided insight into the company’s mobility plans at Femtocells Europe 2008 this week. He revealed that 5 MHz of the spectrum owned by the new Clearwire is made available to the consortium partners to deploy in-home femtocell services. What is a femtocell? A femtocell is a miniature base station about the size of a backpack or even a desktop modem. Unlike the big antennas associated with base stations that cover one or more kilometers, femtocells have a range of tens of meters (hundreds of feet). Femtocells have become a topic of increasing interest in the cellular voice market to fill in coverage holes that exist inside homes and offices.

WiMAX femtocells as a market entry for cable operators is discussed further at WiMax.com

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Aperto adds Mobile WiMAX and announces 3.65 GHz win

Aperto Networks added a line of 802.16e-2005 WiMAX products to its offering and announced that California-based NextPhase Wireless has selected its 3.65 GHz products for WiMAX services in Southern California. The equipment manufacturer used the WiMAX Global Congress in Amsterdam last week to unveil a modular base station along with a series of modems and CPE based on the 802.16e-2005 standard. Traditionally a fixed wireless provider, Aperto placed its hat into the mobile ring. In addition, the company has partnered with wireless ISP NextPhase Wireless to begin canvassing the U.S. countryside with WiMAX signals for home and business broadband services in underserved markets.

The workhorse of the new product line is the PacketMAX 4000 modular base station. With support for one to four sectors and smart antennas techniques, including STC, MRC, and 2×2 or 4×4 MIMO, the new base station meets or exceeds the requirements for Wave 2 gear set forth by WiMAX Forum. The system also supports the three frequency band profiles established by the industry consortium - 2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz.

More about Aperto’s 802.16e-2005 product line announcement and 3.65 GHz win can be found at WiMax.com

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Sprint Xohm service to launch in September

The city of Baltimore, Maryland will be the first to offer commercial mobile WiMAX service on the Sprint Xohm network. The announcement of September service was made by business unit president Barry West during last week’s WiMAX Global Congress in Amsterdam. Washington DC and Chicago are expected to join Baltimore during the last three months of the year as the first cities with Xohm service. The Charm City ranks 20th on the US list of largest metropolitan areas.

Initial products at launch in Baltimore were confirmed to include embedded WiMAX laptops using Intel chipsets, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, a Samsung PC Card, a ZTE USB dongle and a ZyXEL CPE modem. Other vendors and products are expected to be approved by Sprint for use on the network and enter commercial availability in the future.

More about the Xohm launch can be found at WiMax.com

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Nth Air takes 3.65 GHz WiMAX to the Nth degree

Internet service provider Nth Air took center stage at the Broadband Wireless Pavilion in this week’s NXTcomm08 conference with the company’s launch of WiMAX services to Las Vegas. The California-based provider of business-class wireless services announced a partnership with Fujitsu Network Communications to roll-out fixed WiMAX using the recently allocated 3.65 GHz spectrum available in the United States. Nth Air currently offers wireless broadband services in the greater San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.

The company chose Fujitsu as its supplier of WiMAX equipment and managed services. Fujitsu announced a supply agreement earlier this year with Airspan to resell its gear, including the 3.65 GHz WiMAX line. Airspan’s familiar space saucer CPE design was on-hand for the Vegas premiere. In addition, Fujitsu is providing a package of managed services to Nth Air that range from RF engineering to site acquisition. Establishing a turnkey solution for 3.65 GHz will enable the service provider to replicate market roll-outs in underserved communities using a proven network recipe and partner, says Nth Air CEO Craig Niemeyer.

More about Nth Air’s plans for nationwide WiMAX services at WiMax.com

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Can one 4G standard drive the future of mobile broadband?

During the final GSM World Congress in 2007, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin used his keynote address to warn cellular technology providers that WiMAX was making in-roads and the cellular industry needed to quicken development of competing solutions. In February, the executive augmented his message (at the same event now called Mobile World Congress 2008) to call for WiMAX and 3GPP’s LTE (Long Term Evolution) technologies to merge into a single 3GPP project. Sprint’s Barry West responded during the WCAI conference in April to Sarin’s suggestion that LTE should be merged into WiMAX, since LTE doesn’t exist yet and WiMAX is available in many countries today.

The 3GPP Release 8 specification containing LTE isn’t slated for completion until end of 2008. Standards development organizations have waged this posturing battle for many years between developments that are led by either European or American constituents. Most are familiar with the Wi-Fi standards that evolved from the IEEE’s 802.11 standards effort. The 802.11 protocols won market favor over the HiperLAN program from ETSI. Uniquely, IEEE 802.16e-2005 and the ETSI HiperMAN equivalent are identical, harmonized standards approved by both camps. And did I mention that 3GPP is an ETSI program?

Intel has chimed in too. Read about their perspective on merging 4G standards at WiMax.com

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Clearwire by the numbers

Clearwire executives took some time this last week to set expectations for the company’s proposed joint venture with Sprint Nextel. If approved, the pair’s WiMAX plans would merge into a single entity aspiring to provide nationwide mobile broadband coverage in the US. Investors and those considering investing in the company were treated to a 31-page slide presentation describing the strategy and projections for the next nine years of service. For those who either didn’t make it to the presentation and those who simply couldn’t sit still that long, here is the WiMax.com version of Clearwire “by the numbers”:

1.2: Average number of devices that a subscriber is expected to have on the Clearwire service in 2009.

1.7: Average number of devices that a subscriber is forecasted to have on the Clearwire service in 2017.

2: The number of executives named in the proposed Sprint/Clearwire joint venture, namely Ben Wolff as CEO and Barry West as President.

3: The target uplink speed (in Mbps) for the Mobile WiMAX network service.

6: The group of major investors named in the financing of the joint venture with Clearwire: Brighthouse, Comcast, Google, Intel, Sprint and Time Warner.

6: The target downlink speed (in Mbps) for the Clearwire service.

12~18: The number of months historically that it takes Clearwire to launch service in a new U.S. market.

17.5: The revenues (US$ billions) forecasted by Clearwire for 2017.

109~259: The monthly “share of wallet” (US$) projected by 2017 for Clearwire services that encompass residential broadband, residential voice, mobile broadband, mobile voice and mobile entertainment.

120~140: The millions of potential U.S. subscribers who will have Clearwire network coverage by 2010.

220: The millions of potential U.S. subscribers within reach of the Clearwire network by 2017.

2009: The year that Clearwire expects to pass 1 million subscribers.

More about the figures associated with Clearwire’s rebirth can be found at WiMax.com

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Nortel announces strategy changes for WiMAX and 4G programs

Nortel Networks has its sights set on wireless growth over the next three years and announced several product strategies to realize those goals. The major WiMAX news from the Toronto-based company is the formation of a joint venture with Tel-Aviv’s Alvarion. The venture will see Alvarion pick up the mobile WiMAX product development for the telecom supplier, freeing up resources for Nortel’s pursuit of LTE solutions. The Nortel and Alvarion mobile WiMAX solution is expected to combine technologies from both companies. Alvarion is an established radio manufacturer citing 200 commercial WiMAX deployments worldwide, while Nortel is recognized for core network solutions and strong value-added services including VoIP.

Nortel has struggled to assemble its own WiMAX portfolio, instead choosing to partner with Airspan Networks for fixed WiMAX while pursuing its own 802.16e-2005 base station and a joint venture with Korea’s LG Electronics for devices. “Wireless broadband is one of the fastest growing opportunities in the telecommunications market,” said Richard Lowe, president at Carrier Networks, Nortel. The new Alvarion relationship keeps the company in the WiMAX market while freeing its telecom R&D staff to focus efforts on the forthcoming 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) protocol that will compete with WiMAX for 4G mobile operator networks.

More about the Nortel strategy change and partnership with Alvarion is available at WiMax.com

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Six WiMAX Companies Launch Open Patent Alliance

Intel announced that it joined forces with Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung Electronics and Sprint Nextel to form the Open Patent Alliance (OPA). The group will create a WiMAX patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost. The OPA will initially focus on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard.

The patent pool will aggregate essential patent rights needed to implement the WiMAX standard as defined by the 802.16e-2005 standards and the WiMAX Forum. This approach will focus on providing a competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMAX products. The patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool.

Additional details about WiMAX IPR and the formation of the Open Patent Alliance can be found at WiMax.com

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GCT Adds Single-Chip Solution to WiMAX Portfolio and Embedded Win at ASUS

GCT Semiconductor announced sampling of the industry’s first mobile WiMAX 3.5 GHz Wave 2 single-chip, GDM7213, which includes RF, MAC and PHY, all into one monolithic integrated circuit.

Based on the company’s CMOS RF technologies, the GDM7213 implements MIMO, and all PHY and MAC features required for WiMAX Forum Wave 2 Certification. The solution offers a highly integrated, low-power transceiver which minimizes the number of external RF front-end components. It also includes a mobile WiMAX baseband with dual processors.

More about GCT’s single-chip WiMAX announcement can be found at WiMax.com

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European Commission ruling in favor of mobility in 3.5 GHz is a win for WiMAX

A late May decision by the European Commission has breathed life into the future of the 3.5 GHz frequency band. The Commission issued a decision on May 21st to harmonize spectrum in Europe across the 3400~3800 MHz region. Restrictions on the bands in most cases have relegated use to fixed wireless services. This limit has become an increasing concern to spectrum holders as global markets push for greater mobile use. The decision encourages Member States to quickly move and allow mobility in these frequency bands.

Spectrum holders appear pleased with the Commission’s decision. “The Decision is meaningful for Clearwire’s European operations, where we widely utilize 3.5GHz spectrum,” said Benjamin G. Wolff, chief executive officer of Clearwire. “With extensive holdings in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Romania, and Spain, and our affiliate’s holdings in Denmark, our licenses cover more than 200 million people throughout Europe.”

More about the EC ruling for 3.5 GHz mobility can be found at WiMax.com

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Sequans Ups Uplink Performance with WiMAX Expo Taiwan Announcement

Sequans Communications announced new WiMAX chipset capabilities this week at the opening of the WiMAX Expo in Taiwan. The provider enabled a second transmitter in its 802.16e-2005 silicon to boost performance using uplink MIMO. The additional transmitter could lead to infrastructure cost-savings of up to 50 percent.

Sequans is enabling the second transmitter in its mobile station semiconductor products to boost Mobile WiMAX system performance. The company claims it is the only WiMAX provider offering this capability across its entire product family. As a result, smart antenna techniques applying MIMO in the uplink (device to infrastructure base station) are now possible in addition to the downlink. “The benefits of uplink MIMO cannot be ignored,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. “WIMAX network operators’ recent experiences show that, as in other wireless networks, coverage is limited by the uplink. With the diversity introduced by uplink MIMO, up to a 50 percent reduction in infrastructure costs can be achieved with very little incremental cost to the mobile device and no incremental cost at the base station.”

More about the Sequans uplink MIMO announcement is available at WiMax.com

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The vehicle as mobile hotspot (part 2)

The combination of on-board computers, in-car displays, and a broadband wireless connection introduce several exciting services to transportation. Not only do these systems tell you precisely where you at, but they clue you into what is around you: weather, traffic, lifestyle, and business services. Point-of-sale transactions can be accomplished by authorizing payment through a handheld mobile device instead of carrying cash, credit, or a specialized payment token. Concierge services remotely unlock doors when your keys are lost, inform a service center of diagnostics errors, notify emergency services of an airbag deployment, and even locate stolen or missing vehicles.

WiMAX proponents are demonstrating interactive automobiles that download songs from Internet music services; place phone calls through online Skype service; view the latest news, traffic and sports videos; and take digital photos that are uploaded to photo-sharing sites. WiMAX and similar next-generation mobile networking technologies bring broadband wireless service to the vehicle, also enabling distribution of Wi-Fi access by integrating an on-board router.

A plethora of new opportunities for wireless communications: in your car, on the road, and in your daily life. More at WiMax.com

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The vehicle as mobile hotspot (part 1)

Mobile broadband services introduce enhanced vehicle communications. Rental car agencies, such as AVIS, offer in-car Wi-Fi hotspot services as a premium service in some markets where business travelers can’t wait to find a Starbucks coffee shop or a bookstore to stop and check company email

Going to a wireless hotspot for Internet access could become an inconvenient task of the past, if emerging wireless broadband services continue to turn your home, office, and car into personalized mobile hotspots. This message is taking shape through stitching several unrelated broadband services together and envisioning what a seamless world of network connectivity can create.

Is the vehicle the ideal wireless hotspot? Read more at WiMax.com

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