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Early 2005 - State
of the WiMAX Industry
March 23, 2005
Michael Morris, Editor, WiMAX Industry
with
Adlane Fellah, CEO, Maravedis, Senior
Telecom Analyst
WiMAX Industry is pleased to
announce our new monthly column, State of the WiMAX Industry. Here, we
will keep you up to date on critical developments in WiMAX technology
and the wireless broadband marketplace. Keep us bookmarked, as this
column will be updated often with news, issues, challenges and breakthroughs in the WiMAX
marketplace.
Early 2005 is proving to be a very exciting time in the industry,
the WiMAX Forum adds 3 new key members, certification testing scheduled for
July in Spain.
Of course, one question on many people’s minds is, “How is the
certification delay going to affect the market in the coming months?”
Fortunately, to cut through the haze of conjecture and superstition we
have Adlane Fellah, Senior Analyst and CEO of
Maravedis, a leading telecom market research company, and author of
the landmark report “WiMAX and
Broadband Wireless (Sub-11Ghz) Worldwide Market Analysis and Trends
2005-2010”.
I asked Mr. Fellah what we can expect to see in the market given the
move to June-July for certification testing.
“First of all, it’s not a surprise. Secondly, how is it going to affect
the market? I don’t think it is going to affect it much at all because
vendors are still working on their conformance. You need two things to
have certified equipment. First you need your equipment to be
conformant. That’s something vendors can continue to do in-house because
they know the specs. They do their own testing in-house and they start
talking to other vendors on a gradual basis. So. the fact that the lab
won’t be ready before July or June doesn’t prevent vendors from
continuing to fine tune their equipment, and it doesn’t prevent
operators from deploying WiMAX. WiMAX is a migration, it’s not an
evolution, not at least in the first year or two.”
Michael Morris: "How is the
timeline for 2005 testing, certification and ultimately shipments shaping up?"
Adlane Fellah: "The first
conformance testing is going on right now, internally within
manufacturers. They will need an independent body to certify
conformance and that will happen in the summer of 2005. Some companies
may take a month or two. What is going to take longer is the
interoperability testing. It is sort of Vendor A vs Vendor B. Right now,
vendors are shifting their strategies about who they are
interoperating with. Interoperability will probably take two or three
months. Then large scale shipments occurring as early as Q1 of 2006."
Michael Morris: "I know you are
working on a significant update to your
market report issued in 2004,
can you give us a glimpse of numbers for 2004 and where those
deployments have been?"
Adlane Fellah: "Yes,
about 1/2 Billion US$ in 2004 shipments.
In
Spain there is a
large deployment with Iberbanda to provide
nationwide narrowband connectivity to rural areas with SR Telecom
equipment with approximately 80 base stations already installed and
many more to come. In Australia, Unwired has already deployed 200 base
stations from Navini and signed-up about 15,000 broadband subscribers.
Axtel in
Mexico
who has been deploying wireless narrowband systems for years and has a
subscriber base of 400,000, is migrating to wireless broadband.
Clearwire in the US is apparently rolling
out in various markets although we do not have a precise number of
subscribers. There have been many, many smaller installations around
the world."
Michael Morris: "OK, we're going
to have to wrap it up today, we'll look forward to discussing 802.16e
WiMAX mobility with you next week. One final question, with the
testing delay having seemingly no effect on the roll-out of WiMAX
technology, what are the compelling factors driving these
pre-certification deployments?"
Adlane Fellah: "Well, I think the industry
has done their homework in the past 2 years. CPEs in 2002 cost an
average of US$2,000, now it's probably around US$500 - US$700, and that’s
already a compelling story. The fact that CPEs are now inexpensive
makes it easier for the service provider to buy CPEs and install them.
As well, the equipment is higher performance, it can reach longer
distances. We have "no line of sight" (NLOS) capabilities. In wireless
there is always a trade off of coverage, bandwidth and the power that
you can transmit. So the farther you are from the base station, the
less likely you have coverage in a no line of sight situation. In any
case, the compelling story is that, even though we are still in
testing, systems are far less expensive and far more robust than 3
years ago."
Michael Morris: "Well, thank you very much for the wealth of
market information. I think we all have a better understanding of what
to expect in the coming months. We are looking forward to having you
back for this column in the future and I am quite excited about next
week's discussion of the future of WiMAX mobility, 802.16e and the
South Korean WiBro technology. Thanks again, Adlane"
Adlane Fellah: "Thank
you, Michael"
Adlane Fellah is CEO of
Maravedis, a leading telecom research
firm, and author of the landmark
report “WiMAX, NLOS and Broadband Wireless Access (Sub-11Ghz)
Worldwide Market Analysis 2004-2008”.
Michael Morris is Senior Editor
of WiMAX Industry and
VoIP NEWS, leading industry publications
in voice over IP and broadband wireless markets.
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