Broadband access has changed how we conduct our business and social lives. At present, this revolution in our communications has been built and driven by the providers of fixed broadband services who have established a mode of operation that both businesses and consumers have readily adopted.

The challenge for the wireless industry is to leapfrog this fixed broadband service by providing a more competitive and innovative offering – a promise that has been made many times with previous wireless services, but rarely delivered.

But, given the years of experience, albeit it hard-fought, by mobile operators in deploying new technology, the prospects held out by WiMAX and HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) might provide them with the answer to offering a true wireless broadband service.

Evidence that a corner might have been turned is the number of cellular operators upgrading their W-CDMA networks to support HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) - now said to be well in excess of 100, and launching commercial services. Of more note is the move towards flat-rate pricing, something the mobile operator community must comprehensively adopt to avoid destroying users’ confidence when they receive their data usage bills.

An illustration of this comes from the new Japanese mobile operator eMobile that is offering an unlimited 3.6Mbit/s HSDPA service in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya for around €30 per month – with no ‘small print’ fair use constraints. This move is sure to provoke a reaction from the existing heavyweights – NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank, which have so far failed to offer flat rate wireless broadband for connecting desktop PCs or laptops.

Rapid evolution
One of the major sponsors of HSPA, Ericsson, claims that the technology is continuing to evolve at a brisk pace with commercially available data cards supporting a downlink speed of 7.2Mbit/s, providing a downlink rate of between 4Mbit/s and 5Mbit/s in reality.

“The system software we’re delivering is capable of supporting 14Mbit/s in the downlink with an uplink performance of 1.8Mbit/s,” says Ulf Ewaldsson, vice president and head of Ericsson’s product area radio. “This means that the limiting factors are the modules and data cards, but we expect this terminal situation to have improved by this summer. Looking forwards, we plan to launch our HSPA Evolution product next year, which will mean a software upgrade to provide 28Mbit/s in the downlink.”

The recently formed Nokia Siemens Networks is also talking the same language, making mention of introducing HSPA+ if peak downlink speeds greater than 10Mbit/s are required.

However, this ‘jam tomorrow’ talk is reminiscent of the past, and the market analysis firm Arthur D. Little remains unconvinced about the claims made for HSPA and its rival, WiMAX.

According to Michael Natusch, the firm’s head of its telecoms practice, there is no credible real-world evidence of the actual performances of either of these technologies in large scale deployments. “Nevertheless, it is likely that these two technologies will achieve comparable levels of performance in typical real-world situations, contrary to the notion that mobile WiMAX should be regarded as a "killer" technology.”

But the idea of comparing HSPA and WiMAX as competing wireless broadband technologies, while strongly advocated by some developers, is losing steam as discussions move away from the technical attributes towards what makes a viable business model for wireless broadband.

Economic scale
While A. D. Little is correct today about the absence of large-scale HSPA or WiMAX deployments, the growing number of cellular operators deploying HSPA, and the significant decision by US-based Sprint Nextel to deploy mobile WiMAX, indicates that there is a strong belief within the operator community that both provide the potential to address the wireless broadband market.

The more important argument is will one prevail over the other?

Ericsson, who admits to having decided not to develop a mobile WiMAX product (yet), points to HSPA winning the race due one simple factor – numbers, or the volume of HSPA networks and devices will simply overwhelm WiMAX.

“The wireless industry is an ‘economics of scale’ business,” states Ewaldsson. “Our decision not to develop a mobile WiMAX product was due to the business case - the volumes will be very limited. We see the integration of HSPA into mobile terminals becoming much easier. We’ve had chipsets available for over two years, with the first terminals becoming available 18 months ago. This year there will be many devices launched that support HSPA.”

Ari Lehtoranta, head of Nokia Siemens Networks radio access business, is less sure about HSPA winning. “We accept that the business ecosystem for W-CDMA and HSPA is already secure. But, looking at the number of operators ready to invest in mobile WiMAX, we believe there is a big enough ecosystem. There are many technology elements that are the same in WiMAX, W-CDMA and LTE (Long Term Evolution) – same modulation, same flat architecture, etc. What we can benefit from is creating modules that are applicable to both WiMAX and HSPA/LTE.”

This viewpoint could be due to Sprint Nextel selecting Nokia, along with Motorola and Samsung, as the key terminal suppliers for its mobile WiMAX network, which plans to provide coverage to 100 million US consumers by late next year.

According to Rob Westwick, a wireless analyst with PA Consulting, the Sprint Nextel project is critical to the worldwide fortunes of mobile WiMAX. “This deal could be the making of mobile WiMAX, if it is successful with subscribers. There are huge investments being made by those involved, namely Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, and they will be looking to leverage this early advantage across any other mobile WiMAX deployment around the globe.”

But again, A. D. Little is ruthless in its viewpoint: ”Mobile WiMax will be a niche technology within the overall global mobile broadband wireless access market, likely to account for at most 15 per cent of the network equipment market, and perhaps 10 per cent of mobile broadband wireless subscribers by 2011-2012.”

Natusch maintains that HSPA is taking the lead as the natural migration path for a large number of GSM and UMTS operators already operating commercial networks within the 3G spectrum. “This will give rise to significant economies of scale on user devices and a large ecosystem of global suppliers of components, subsystems, equipment, network design and implementation services. Hence this is the least risky and best understood route to offering broadband mobile services which can offer speeds comparable to first generation fixed DSL services.”

The issues against mobile WiMAX being a success are more than volume, says Natusch. “The coverage a WiMAX base station can achieve is substantially lower than HSPA, hence HSPA operators will be able to deploy a smaller number of base stations to cover the same geographical area. Indications are that radio access network CAPEX for current WiMAX technology can significantly exceed HSDPA CAPEX.”

But A. D. Little concedes that HSPA and WiMAX both face major development hurdles before they achieve the full promise of new, so-called 4G systems. “Their futures are uncertain and will be influenced by continuing expected shifts in the priorities and competitive alignments of major players in the wireless industry which has undergone a number of consolidations in recent months.”

Spectrum driven
What will also decide any HSPA vs WiMAX decision is the availability of spectrum. Lehtoranta claims that, while technology and terminals are major factors, it is all about spectrum availability and the frequency capacity. “Normally, the cellular operators have established spectrum and can live with what they have, without being troubled to look for mobile WiMAX spectrum. Only if this is not the case – a 2G operator might be in this position, would they consider looking at WiMAX, but not many will go this route.”

The consensus is that WiMAX is for operators that do not have 2G or 3G spectrum and there are a number of CDMA operators that are said to be considering WiMAX or LTE for their future wireless broadband roadmaps. Sprint Nextel is an obvious example, with its hand being forced by US-based operators rushing to gain a market advantage by launching HSPA-based services.

Dan Locke, an analyst at Pyramid Research, maintains that, to date, the majority of bidders for WiMAX spectrum have been smaller players, with large mobile operators remaining faithful to the cellular technology roadmap. "Deep pocketed mobile operators have long felt that owning 3G spectrum was central to their strategic future. Few feel the same about WiMAX or are willing to enter yet another expensive auction.”

And Locke believes that WiMAX spectrum is about to get a lot more expensive as more regulators release lower frequencies to be used for mobile WiMAX. “These bands are attractive because they enable an increase in traffic capacity without the need for additional base stations.”

Given that spectrum and lack of market scale are against mobile WiMAX, and the deployment of an accepted alternative (namely HSPA) is underway, then, regardless of its merit, mobile WiMAX will struggle to be the wireless broadband technology of choice.