Gigabit WiMax Bids to be 4G Standard
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A standards group has begun work on a 1-Gigabit-per-second version of WiMax that could replace both cellular and WiMax.
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Here&#39;s one way to jumpstart WiMAX deployment: make a &quot;significant investment&quot; in a wireless broadband company that promises to use your technology and products.
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By Anonymous  No sooner has the market for consumer electronics devices incorporating Wi-Fi begun to gain real traction than another, based on high-speed connections via 3G cellular technologies or mobile WiMAX, is starting to take shape.
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In a briefing later this week, Intel is expected to announce the availability of a "tri-mode" Wi-Fi chip that supports the 802.11b wireless standard and its speedier cousin, 802.11g -- as well as the less-used 802.11a.
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Wireless speeds of 300 Mbps downstream. That&#39;s the goal of &quot;Super 3G&quot; experiments that Japanese telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo will begin this month.
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High-speed wireless Internet access will debut in the Tampa Bay region Monday, with what Verizon Wireless calls the fastest data network available over a cell phone network.
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Motorola is going after the emerging WiMax market in a big way. This week the company has been showing off its new hardware and software at WiMax World USA in Chicago -- one of six U.S. metropolitan areas in which Motorola will build the network infrastructure for Sprint Nextel&#39;s high-speed &quot;Xohm&quot; network.
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Cingular will not only roll out a 3G UMTS cellular data network next year, but it also will use even faster wireless technology that will compete, at least in part, with wireless broadband technologies like WiMAX.
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HP and Global Mobile demonstrated a mobile WiMax station for use in hospitals.
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Sprint Nextel Corp.  and  Clearwire Corp.  plan to build a U.S. nationwide mobile  broadband network using WiMAX technology that will be five  times faster than current wireless networks and cost less.
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WiMax earned an important seal of approval on Thursday when the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)&#160;certified it as a 3G mobile data technology.Heavily promoted by Intel and sometimes criticized as overhyped, WiMax is based on industry standards but has been the young upstart in the telecommunications industry. With this week&#39;s decision in Geneva by the radio group, also called ITU-R, it can finally rub shoulders with widely deployed technologies such as WCDMA and CDMA-2000.Many governments dictate technologies when they allocate wireless spectrum, and they typically look to the ITU, which is affiliated with the United Nations, to say what technologies qualify. WiMax will now be one of their choices when faced with a requirement for 3G, which the ITU calls IMT-2000.&quot;Having the ITU say that it counts really opens up some opportunities,&quot; said Peter Jarich of Current Analysis Inc. In particular, carriers that participate in upcoming auctions in Europe may choose WiMax instead of the more established 3G systems, he said. Broader deployments of WiMax in Europe, which has seen a few rollouts so far, would help increase production volumes and in turn lower equipment prices worldwide, according to Jarich.The ITU-R approval is a victory for advocates of technology neutrality, who want carriers to have more choices for high-speed wireless deployments, Jarich said. In most parts of the world, 3G is dominated by WCDMA, the next step on the migration path from GSM. But the ITU-R has also recognized CDMA-2000, the 3G upgrade to CDMA networks, and TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code-Division Multiple Access), developed in China, as well as other technologies.&quot;To have WiMax approved as an IMT-2000 technology is a huge win for the WiMax Forum,&quot; said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMax Forum, the industry group that certifies interoperability of products using the technology.What the standards body actually voted to support was OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing), which forms the basis of WiMax today but is also set to power future technologies, including LTE (Long-Term Evolution), a system now under development as the next step in the GSM migration path. Commercial LTE deployment is expected in 2009 or 2010.WiMax, based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, is designed to deliver IP data traffic at multiple megabits per second over a range of several kilometers. A fixed version is already certified by the WiMax Forum industry group, which plans to start certifying interoperability among mobile products next year. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire plan to deploy WiMax in markets across the U.S. starting late this year in what is set to be the biggest rollout yet.
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(InfoWorld) - WiMax World 2007 opens in Chicago Tuesday with major service providers and network equipment vendors expected to offer demonstrations and a few details on plans for mobile WiMax deployments that will hit their stride next year. Sprint Nextel CTO Barry West will provide an update of Sprint's Xohm wireless network in a keynote Wednesday. In August, he said the service will be launched in Chicago and the Washington/Baltimore area by year's end and will reach 100 million users by the end of 2008. Motorola, meanwhile, is planning to demonstrate its coming mobile WiMax technology from a boat in the waters of Lake Michigan. Many of the WiMax plans are focused on major hardware devices being sold to carriers for backhauling wireless signals from outdoor mesh networks that have Wi-Fi connectivity. Sprint's Xohm will be open access, giving WiMax-certified devices like laptops and handhelds the ability to operate at speeds up to 4Mbps, perhaps five times faster than what carriers call third-generation wireless speeds, West said in August. However, one vendor, MobileAccess Networks in Vienna, Va., announced new WiMax hardware today that will work in remote wiring closets of businesses to deliver WiMax capabilities alongside Wi-Fi, cellular, and public safety networks. The MobileAccess WiMax module, to be shown at the trade show, will undergo WiMax certification from Sprint, said MobileAccess CEO Cathy Zatloukal in an interview. "We expect several existing customers will be interested in it," she said. The module will fit inside an existing MobileAccess MA-2000 Universal Wireless Network box now deployed in many businesses to aggregate multiple wireless signals for Wi-Fi, cellular, and public safety, she explained. The value of having a WiMax module to add-in is that it will work alongside existing infrastructure and provides a single cabling infrastructure to support it. One MobileAccess customer, Tommy Russo of Akridge Real Estate Services in Washington, said he plans to add the WiMax module to his MobileAccess hardware when it is available. "WiMax will give us bigger play and more robust service," said Russo, CTO at Akridge, which provides Wi-Fi and cellular services in a downtown building for hundreds of employees and customers. "As more devices use WiMax, which will happen, it enables more things to connect, everything from telephones to laptops with WiMax." Russo said he expects building management and lighting controls could run over WiMax. Someday, WiMax could even be used to merge Wi-Fi and ZigBee, a wireless standard for embedded control devices, he said. Russo said he has seen the MobileAccess module, but he has not tested it and is eager to start testing as soon as possible. His building has been using voice-over-Wi-Fi for about 18 months. The price for the module has not been announced, Zatloukal said. MobileAccess' module is so far unique, although placing WiMax alongside other wireless modes inside a building will be important to other vendors, said Craig Mathias, an analyst at The Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., and a Computerworld columnist. MobileAccess competes with LGC Wireless in San Jose and Interwireless in Universal City, Calif., he said. At WiMax World, there will be plenty of demonstrations, including the module by MobileAccess, Mathias said. "The WiMax market is here now, and we'll see a rollout of commercial services this year, so the show is a chance to get your hands on it, to see what it does and what it costs. The reality is coming quickly, and we'll see how successful it will be." Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Cisco Systems has agreed to buy Navini Networks, a developer of WiMax broadband wireless access systems.The $330 million deal marks Cisco&#39;s first foray into the technology: Earlier this month, Cisco dismissed&#160;rumors that it planned to buy Navini, saying it had no plans to develop wireless base stations using any technology other than Wi-Fi.Navini makes mobile WiMax wireless base stations.Wi-Fi and WiMax are wireless networking technologies defined in standards set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. WiMax (802.16) has a range over a hundred times greater than the older and more widely deployed Wi-Fi (802.11) family of standards.Cisco said it is particularly interested in Navini&#39;s expertise with &quot;smart beamforming&quot; technologies used with Multiple-Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna arrays, which in Wi-Fi systems allow base stations to handle much higher data throughput.Cisco plans to fold Navini into its wireless networking business unit. It expects the acquisition, its 124th, to close by the end of January.&#160;
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Based on a CDMA EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) 3G network, Verizon&#39;s BroadbandAccess promisses speeds of 300-500kbps. The company announced BroadbandAccess will be available in 13 major metropolitan markets
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Three companies are set to use the backdrop of the 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to debut a device that can use WiMAX technology to make calls.
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New WiMax partners say they will blanket the U.S. with an open network on the 700MHz band.
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(InfoWorld) - The process to standardize a rival to the broadband wireless WiMax technology is back on track although the delay and scandal around it could present a serious set back to the effort. On Tuesday, standards setting body the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced changes that would allow the 802.20 working group, suspended in June, to continue to develop the standard. The group will elect all new officers and resume working once a chair is approved, which IEEE hopes will happen by Nov. 12. Participants in the group will also be required to disclose all of their affiliations, including any company that pays, employs or sponsors the member. Some experts warn, however, that the changes could be coming too late. "Whatever the reality behind it, 802.20 is now so heavily associated with Qualcomm that it will not be perceived as an independent standard," said Caroline Gabriel, an analyst with Rethink Research. The IEEE put the new measures in place in hopes of correcting the problems that lead to the suspension of the group in June. At the time, the standards body had received several complaints, including some that accused the independent analyst who served as chairman of 802.20 of being paid by Qualcomm, an accusation he later confirmed. In addition, the IEEE said the group's activities had become unusually contentious. The 802.20 group began as an offshoot of 802.16, the standard that forms the basis of WiMax. The goal of the 802.16 effort initially was to build a fixed broadband wireless technology that would compete with DSL (digital subscriber line) and other wireline technologies. As work progressed, however, 802.16 members decided that in the future, the standard should be capable of supporting mobile or portable access as well. But some of the members didn't want to have to build the mobility feature on top of a standard that was originally created for a fixed application. Consequently, they split off to create 802.20, a mobile broadband wireless standard that could be created from scratch and would be designed to support broadband wireless access for users moving at very high speeds, such as on a train. While 802.16 emphasizes throughput speeds, 802.20 emphasizes supporting access at very fast user mobility. IntelÂ is a major backer of the 802.16 process and ArrayCommÂ and Flarion have been heavily involved in the 802.20 process. Intel competitorÂ Qualcomm acquired FlarionÂ last year. Qualcomm is best known for its development of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and strict licensing policies. The process of completing the 802.20 standard was already far behind its 802.16 competitor when the suspension occurred. The specification for the fixed version of 802.16 is finished with products currently shipping and the mobile version of 802.16 was ratified late last year. The 802.20 standard will also have to compete with the developing cellular standards, such as HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).