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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Lots of folks ask me why Education seems
to prefer and back WiMAX while telecom giants like AT&T are going to back
LTE? Well, this article seems to hit the nail on the head in my book. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>-bj<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=4 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black;font-weight:bold'>Culture
clash </span></font></b><font size=1 color="#999999" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#999999'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=1 color="#999999" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#999999'>From The Economist
print edition, Jul 17th 2008<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=1 color="#999999"
face=Verdana><span style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#999999'><a
href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751174">http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751174</a><br>
</span></font><font color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:
"Times New Roman";color:black'><br>
</span></font><b><font size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black;font-weight:bold'>As “third
generation” (3G) networks proliferate, the focus shifts to 4G</span></font></b><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>WHAT would the
technology industry be without standards wars? Like a city without sex, some
might argue. But not all fights are winner-take-all battles like the one
between VHS and Betamax in videotapes, or Blu-ray and HD DVD in high-definition
video discs. Sometimes there need not be a loser, and the din of battle may
drown out the real issues—as in the fight between WiMAX and LTE.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>These are the main contenders for the next generation of wireless
networks, known as “fourth generation” (4G) networks. Many
equipment-makers are already working on 4G technology, even though consumers in
many countries have yet to experience the 3G sort. And hardly a week passes without
news from the battlefront. This week ELRO, a Danish utility, awarded a contract
for a nationwide WiMAX network in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Denmark</st1:country-region></st1:place>; and Verizon Wireless, an
American operator, said it would launch an LTE network in 2010.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Both 4G technologies promise wireless nirvana: fast, ubiquitous
broadband. Once radio chips are cheap enough, they will crop up not just in
handsets and laptops, but in devices such as digital cameras and electricity
meters, which are unconnected today. But the telecoms and computer industries
have very different ideas about how this should be done, and this explains the
split between WiMAX and LTE (which are technically similar). WiMAX is an
attempt by the computer industry to export its way of doing things to the
telecoms industry—and LTE is the response.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>WiMAX’s main cheerleader is Intel, the world’s biggest
chipmaker, which wants to remain dominant as computing goes mobile. Since 2002
it has rounded up a coalition of firms, each with its own interest in seeing
WiMAX succeed. Google, for instance, wants to get online advertisements onto
mobile devices. For Sprint Nextel, an embattled American wireless operator, it
offers the chance of a comeback.</span></font><font color=black
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Intel’s vision, and that of its allies, is that wireless
broadband should be as “open” as the internet. WiMAX devices need
not be subsidised by operators and will be sold in retail stores. The
intellectual property will be shared. Consumers will pay a flat fee for access,
and can then use whatever online services they want. Commoditising the transport
of data will, the WiMAX camp hopes, boost demand for Intel’s chips,
Google’s services and so on.</span></font><font color=black
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>What Intel is to WiMAX, Ericsson is to LTE, which stands for Long
Term Evolution. As its name suggests, it is meant to be an update to
today’s mobile-network technology. This makes it attractive not just to
Ericsson, the world’s biggest maker of such gear, but also to other
vendors and to most mobile operators: they can build on their existing
investments. Another member of the LTE camp is Qualcomm, an American chipmaker
that owns vital chunks of intellectual property in wireless telecoms.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Like the WiMAX alliance, the LTE camp stands for a certain way of
carving up the pie, which critics call “closed” because it may
limit consumers’ choice. Operators, they worry, will control which
devices can connect to their networks and will try to keep users within a
“walled garden” of services, as they do today, in an effort to
capture more of their users’ online spending.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Until last autumn, WiMAX seemed to have a lot of momentum. Its
standards had been agreed on, equipment-makers were already making the gear and
some 300 operators across the world were building networks (albeit mostly of
the “fixed wireless” kind, where the wireless link is a substitute
for a tethered broadband connection). In America Sprint and Clearwire, a
wireless start-up, had started building nationwide WiMAX networks. WiMAX, it
seemed, was ready to go, whereas LTE was still under development.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>But since then the tide has turned. Sprint and Clearwire ran into
financial and technical problems. Other operators reported that the technology
was not ready for prime time. Auctions of radio spectrum suitable for WiMAX
have been delayed. And the LTE camp has fought back. Its technology recently
received the official backing of the influential GSM Association, a global club
of wireless operators. And Verizon and AT&T, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s largest operators,
said they would adopt LTE.</span></font><font color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Now everybody seems to think that WiMAX will be no more than a
“niche technology”, in the somewhat self-serving words of Hakan
Eriksson, Ericsson’s chief technology officer. Frost & Sullivan, a
market-research firm, predicts that if spectrum auctions and commercial
roll-outs do not happen this year, “the market scope for mobile WiMAX on
a global basis will be insignificant.” Nortel, another big
equipment-maker and an early WiMAX backer, estimates that its market share will
be 10% at best by the end of 2012, and recently said that it would now focus on
LTE.</span></font><font color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>It would be wrong, however, to count WiMAX out just yet. It will
find a place in developing countries, where today’s wireless technologies
are less entrenched. Tata Communications, an Indian firm, for instance, intends
to build the world’s largest WiMAX network. And Intel and its allies
still seem willing to spend heavily to jump-start the technology. Intel’s
venture-capital arm has invested in WiMAX firms around the world and will
continue to do so, says Siavash Alamouti, one of Intel’s WiMAX
evangelists. Intel, Google and three American cable operators are investing
$3.2 billion in Clearwire, which is merging with Sprint’s WiMAX
operation, called Xohm.</span></font><font color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>The new entity, still called Clearwire but majority-owned by
Sprint, has about two years to prove the value of WiMAX, says Peter Jarich of
Current Analysis, another market-research firm. This will be hard. Clearwire
hopes to launch in September in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Baltimore</st1:City></st1:place>,
but further delays would not come as a surprise. In the meantime, operators are
upgrading their 3G networks to reach similar access speeds.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>Yet even if Clearwire fails and WiMAX is confined to a niche, the
efforts of Intel and its allies will not have been in vain. The LTE camp has
already taken more than one leaf from WiMAX’s book, says Olivier Baujard,
chief technologist at Alcatel-Lucent, another big equipment-maker, which has a
foot in both camps. The first LTE networks will now be deployed much faster
than expected, perhaps as soon as 2009. Makers of LTE gear have also agreed to
fair cross-licensing of intellectual property (although, predictably, Qualcomm
has refused to join either patent club). And mobile operators appear to have
realised that they need to open up their networks.</span></font><font
color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><font
size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>This rapprochement may explain why there is now talk of merging
the two technologies, by making WiMAX part of the LTE standard. Even Sean
Maloney, Intel’s Mr WiMAX, says “they ought to be
harmonised”. Although this is still unlikely, it would not be a bad
outcome. Subscribers could then take advantage of internet-like openness
combined with the robustness of wireless technology—without having to put
up with the inconvenience of two different standards.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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