Mobile WiMax systems will finally hit the UK this April, when Maidstone in Kent hosts a pilot service run under the auspices of the Mobile WiMax Acceleration Group (M-Wag). However, doubts remain about the ability of mobile WiMax to deliver a service that customers would want at a competitive price.

Factors that could hold back the mass rollout of mobile WiMax include issues over radio spectrum availability and suitability. Another potential problem area is backhaul network capacity, which will need to cope with data transfer rates as high as 10Mbit/s on the downlink. Availability of hardware that conforms to the mobile WiMax standard is another possible stumbling block.

These problems, combined with the competition from mobile operators’ existing high-speed mobile services and wired broadband connections, some of which offer 50Mbit/s, could mean mobile WiMax will struggle in vain to gain a foothold in the market.

M-Wag is trying to change this perception by bringing together communication and media firms that it hopes can work together to deliver a commercially viable end-to-end mobile WiMax service.

Currently, M-Wag consists of 10 firms, including industry heavyweight Nortel, which is supplying the base station technology, WiMax pioneer Alvarion, specialist systems integrator Quiconnect and wireless services firm Red-M.

Covering 7.5sq km of Maidstone, the pilot network will consist of three base stations using a temporary licence from UK communications regulator Ofcom that allows use of the 2.5GHz radio band for the trial. Normally, a single base station can service a number of so-called cells or sectors, but each base station, two at one site and one at another, will service one sector only. The base stations will be sharing 30MHz of radio spectrum at the lower end of the 2 .5GHz band, with channel sizes of 10MHz.

A range of devices will be trialled during the pilot, including PC Cards, USB dongles, nomadic customer premise equipment (CPE) and also some handheld devices.

Potential applications
M-Wag said it would trial a range of applications in order to explore the business case for national wholesale and retail mobile WiMax networks. These will include mobile voice over IP (VoIP), video streaming and live broadcasting using WiMax between client device and base station.

M-Wag chairman Kerl Haslam said, “The Maidstone 2.5GHz network is the next step in M-Wag’s strategy to assemble the mobile WiMax ecosystem and demonstrate the business case for the technology.” The first application to be tested over the network will be CCTV, which Haslam said would demonstrate how well the system handled broadcast television applications.

Mobile WiMax is defined by the IEEE 802.16e standard, which is an amendment to 802.16-2005, itself an amendment to the 802.16-2004 standard. The advantage mobile WiMax gives over current 802.11a/b/g variants of Wi-Fi is range, and where Wi-Fi connections are shared, higher upload and download speeds, with M-Wag quoting 2Mbit/s and 10Mbit/s respectively. To put this into perspective, Vodafone’s recently launched High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) service offers a maximum upload speed of about 1.5Mbit/s and a download rate of about 5Mbit/s. Cost, however, could be the main deciding factor in whether customers take up WiMax, with M-Wag claiming it will be cheaper than rival high-speed 3G technologies such as HSUPA.

Meanwhile, the WiMax camp received a boost recently on the issue of hardware availability when chip giant Intel announced a “substantial investment” in WiMax pioneer Freedom4. Intel’s UK and Ireland managing director Graham Palmer said, “We’re working closely with Freedom4 from a business perspective to get a mobile broadband service using WiMax.”

Palmer said that Intel’s mobile WiMax system would provide users with web access “on the move”. Dubbed Echo-Peak, the WiMax system will form a key part of Intel’s next-generation Centrino mobile platform, currently codenamed Montevina. “This will be available in the middle of the year, primarily focused on the US,” he said.

Palmer added a rider pointing to one of the next steps on the road to major mobile WiMax rollouts in the UK: “We’ll see [WiMax] as an add-in capability coming into the UK market as radio spectrum becomes available,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Ofcom said the Maidstone trial would have a test and development licence to use the 2.5GHz spectrum. Meanwhile, consultation on arrangements for the main spectrum auction for mobile WiMax services closed on 1 February, according to Ofcom. “We’ll publish the draft regulations in the spring, and a notice of who the bidders are will be published before the auction kicks off, which should be around July,” the spokeswoman said.

While big-hitters such as BT are reported to be planning bids, the auction is unlikely to raise anywhere near the £22bn spent on 3G licences.

WiMax cannot rely on a killer app
Early adoption will be patchy, writes Quocirca principal analyst for mobility Rob Bamforth

"The big question regarding the viability of WiMax is: how do you balance the investment necessary to achieve a critical mass of coverage, both in the air and in people’s hands, against the returns generated from patchy initial usage? The likelihood is there will not be a killer application, so initial WiMax usage will consist of a patchwork of early adopters, with everybody buying it for different reasons. This means those firms looking to provide WiMax services will have to nurture a varied portfolio of users and applications. Focusing on the right ones will be key to success.
Remember, with 3G it was not consumers using clunky 3G phones to do video calls that drove uptake, it was mobile business users with 3G modems on their laptops. So the model was nurture the early wins and grow to mass adoption, with cheap ubiquitous chips with everything – à la Centrino – being a necessary requirement. I do not see WiMax as being a disruptive force that will unseat rival mobile offerings. The opportunity for fixed carriers to build mobile propositions using it will be the most interesting thing to watch."