Service providers anxiously awaiting broadband wireless equipment officially branded “WiMAX” by the technology's chief backing group, the WiMAX Forum, may have to wait longer than they expected, with certification proceedings for current fixed versions of the technology now apparently postponed for reasons unexplained.

The WiMAX Forum's so-called plugfest — the process by which broadband wireless gear based on the IEEE's 802.16-2004 (formerly 802.16RevD) standard was to be subjected to interoperability testing that would result in it being certified WiMAX equipment — scheduled for this month is now on hold. In addition, chipmakers like Intel and Fujitsu have yet to release the crucial silicon that will go into the customer premises equipment gear necessary to start interoperability testing.

None of that appears to be hampering the vendor hopefuls in the WiMAX community, however. At a conference last week held by the Wireless Communications Association, many broadband wireless equipment vendors were looking past fixed versions of WiMAX technology toward 802.16e, the version with mobility capabilities. Although that version of the standard is not expected to yield equipment until the second half of 2006, for many vendors — and possibly the WiMAX Forum as well — it appears to represent a much larger addressable service provider market for WiMAX technology.

Plugfests for 802.16-2004, the fixed version of WiMAX, have been tentatively rescheduled for June or July — in the meantime, however, many vendors are opting to go ahead with their own interoperability testing separate from the WiMAX Forum's officially sanctioned event. Some vendors appear unfazed by the delays in the certification process and are going ahead with product launches and simply labeling their gear “WiMAX-ready.”

Gordon Antonello, senior technical adviser for broadband wireless equipment vendor Wi-LAN and chairman of the WiMAX Forum's technical working group, said the plugfest delays were caused by difficulties in selecting a testing lab and getting the lab equipped for the 802.16-2004 testing stack once the lab ultimately was selected — the forum went with an independent facility located in Spain.

“WiMAX is several orders of magnitude more complicated than Wi-Fi, and even though it's not as complicated as 3G, it's just about,” Antonello said. “It's taking a while to set this up.”

Antonello, however, expects that forum members will start using the lab's facilities in the second quarter of this year for initial rounds of certification testing and interoperability trials. While those rounds of tests will be done rather quietly, the WiMAX Forum is hoping it will take only one cycle of testing before vendors are ready for the public plugfest over the summer.

“Right now, there are vendors who are still on their timelines to release their products by the end of the year,” Antonello said.

Several vendors don't appear to be waiting for the certification trials to get their products to market. Alvarion, Aperto Networks, Wi-LAN and others are already marketing what they term WiMAX class gear. While Aperto's PacketWave gear won't be its final WiMAX product, CEO Reza Ahy said the latest revisions of his company's gear already contain all of the feature functionality written into the WiMAX spec, with the exception of interoperability. Ahy added that Aperto will be shipping its WiMAX product line to key customers in the spring. Wi-LAN's WiMAX gear, based on its proprietary wideband-OFDM technology, will be incorporated into a line card upgrade, which can be incorporated into Wi-LAN's existing base stations. And Alvarion's BreezeMAX system is its final WiMAX kit.

Alvarion vice president of marketing Carlton O'Neal said the base station will need some adjustments and some software upgrades as it makes its way through the certification trials, but otherwise, it's ready to go — ready enough that Alvarion is already selling it. Alvarion has already racked up a few customers for BreezeMAX gear, and the company announced an OEM agreement with Lucent Technologies last week under which Lucent plans to integrate Alvarion's WiMAX system into its next-generation converged network solutions.

“Whether certification comes today or tomorrow, it doesn't matter,” O'Neal said. “We're already shipping product.”

Indeed, some service providers that rely on broadband wireless technology for their networks are getting antsy about officially certified WiMAX gear. Graham Barnes, CEO of NextWeb, the largest wireless ISP in California (see related story, page 16), said his company understands the importance of the certification step but believes the whole process needs to speed up in order for the market to ignite.

“NextWeb supports the WiMAX plugfest as a necessary step for vendors to solidify the standard and reduce future interoperability pitfalls,” Barnes said. “However, vendors need to start releasing product soon. The whole industry is waiting for WiMAX.”

Barnes added that a report last month from the FCC on high-speed Internet access shows that the market share for satellite and wireless has now reduced from nearly 2% in 1999 to less than 1.5% in 2004 — evidence the market needs certified products and WiMAX network deployments to keep pace in the broadband technology race.

“The WiMAX standard will create the confidence required to launch the wireless WAN mass-market, in the way that the Wi-Fi standard launched the wireless LAN mass-market,” he said.

Clearwire, another broadband wireless service provider, is moving ahead with an aggressive network rollout plan regardless of the readiness of WiMAX. The Craig McCaw-backed company uses network gear from its own subsidiary, NextNet, which earlier this year got an unspecified amount of investment from Intel and is working on developing systems based on the 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard. But the seemingly muddled certification process is not slowing Clearwire's efforts, which include three currently operational markets, with plans to launch 20 more in 2005.

“Anyone can sit in a room and develop standards,” said Gerry Salemme, executive vice president of Clearwire. “The reality is that someone has to build a network.”

IEEE 802.16 Standard