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| Mobile WiMAX or mobile WiMINOR? |
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| Tuesday, 08 May 2007 | |
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Study finds only niche opportunity for next five years.
A favourite subject of discussion in the wireless community of late has been mobile WiMAX and its potential impact on the well established world of GSM/3G. A new report by Arthur D Little on behalf of the GSM Association has been weighing up the future of the technologies. The report ‘HSPA and mobile WiMAX for Mobile Broadband Access’ forecasts that HSPA (the combination of HSDPA and HSUPA) will account for the majority of mobile broadband networks worldwide over the next five years. Mobile WiMAX will be a niche technology over this period, as it will only be a competitive technology for operators to deploy in a limited number of circumstances where conditions are favourable. The main change in the long term for mobile broadband wireless systems will be the advent of technologies, such as OFDMA and MIMO, whose development is being actively pursued throughout the industry and are part of the evolution path for both WiMAX and 3GPP. While first generation mobile WiMAX systems are expected to achieve significantly greater data transfer rates than today's HSPA networks (theoretical peak data rates of, for example, 16.8Mbits/s in urban areas versus. around 10Mbits/s for HSPA in the same 5MHz channel bandwidth), mobile WiMAX cells supporting these higher data rates will tend to be notably smaller, at only one half to a quarter the cell radius of the equivalent HSPA cell. Other takeaways from the report include: · the calculation that to build a mobile WiMAX network capable of achieving the same effective data transfer rates as an HSPA network would cost about 20 to 50% more in CapEx · the assessment that early generation mobile WiMAX systems have less voice traffic capacity than 3G/HSPA networks, limiting the size of their potential market and the scope of user needs they can address and hence the revenues and returns they will be able to generate. Early mobile WiMAX systems also cannot support the same level of mobility as HSPA networks as their core OFDMA technology is more prone to inter-channel interference from Doppler shifts caused by the rapid movement of user terminals The report concludes that “…the advent of mobile broadband access is accompanied by significant uncertainties over the likely future successes of the new technology choices that are becoming available. In particular, the relative commercial and technical advantages and disadvantages of operating HSPA vs. mobile WiMAX remain unresolved. Operators, regulators and vendors are developing their plans for the future in a cloud of hype, biased comparisons, and easily misinterpreted statistics.” |
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