The Yankee Group reckons that standardised mobile WiMAX will not become a reality until early 2008, and even then there will need to be substantial progress in the specs-making arena. “While the WiMAX standards process has led to much frustration in the industry, the standard is essential to the market success for the technology,” ventures Tara Howard, Yankee Group, Broadband Access Technologies analyst. “Standards are critical for ensuring vendor interoperability and certifying devices. Therefore, it is also important to educate service providers and potential customers on the actual timeline for standardised products to help avoid a burnout.”

According to the recently published Yankee Group DecisionNote, ‘When Will WiMAX Become a Reality?’,  while standardised mobile WiMAX will not reach marketplace status until at least a year from now, proprietary broadband wireless - both fixed/stationary and mobile - already exists in the marketplace, and we are starting to see deployments of fixed/stationary WiMAX. True mobile WiMAX is waiting on WiMAX Forum’s seal of approval to make it a reality.

The Yankee Group offers the following tick list for IEEE 802.16e-2005 opportunities, and a challenge:

Opportunities
·         Device development and applications: more devices and applications will be developed to utilise WiMAX mobile access.

·         Established markets: wireline operators will want to wait for the full spectrum of capabilities before investing in WiMAX, which means that “e” is the best fit.

Challenge
·         Defining customer segments and targeting them: it is crucial for vendors to clarify just who this technology will truly benefit and why the service providers will want to invest in the technology.

Also running the rule over the prospects for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) and mobile WiMAX is Europe ’s IDATE. In its recent and aptly named analysis ‘Broadband Wireless Access’ IDATE argues that improvements to BWA technologies have renewed the debate over the place in the telecom market for fixed and mobile WiMAX, traditional 3G technologies and their offspring - UMTS TDD, FLASH-OFDM and iBurst. New BWA technologies are also expanding consumer services and selection, forcing mobile and fixed carriers to either upgrade or pursue a dual network strategy.

According to IDATE the biggest change in the BWA industry is undoubtedly the WiMAX ecosystem's shift toward a new mobile standard. Some takeaways from the IDATE analysis are:

·         CDMA and UMTS evolutions will retain the lion's share of the mobile market, but alternative BWA technologies will gain strong positions in the wireless data segment.

·         BWA overlay of cellular sites could lower per-Mbyte costs for premium    services and offer greater traffic capabilities.

·         Several major operators with large blocks of spectrum may adopt an EV-DO/BWA or UMTS/BWA dual network strategy to fulfill increasing network capacity needs.

·         Driven by Mobile WiMAX, the initial timeline for the WiMAX ecosystem has been pushed further into the future, but its service proposition now seems more attractive.

IDATE also notes that technology convergence, regulatory changes and increasing spectrum needs are creating an opportunistic environment, with all the players vying for the same spectrum.
John Williamson