New spectrum may trigger 4G wars; Vodafone wants peace

BARCELONA--The WiMAX Forum today said it would include 700 MHz in its future certification profiles, creating a new opening for WiMAX vendors to sell their gear. With the forum officially pursuing 700 MHz, the stage may be set for a showdown between WiMAX and Long Term Evolution as both technologies are now targeted squarely at the spectrum.

Verizon Wireless has already cemented plans to launch an LTE network and AT&T last week confirmed LTE would be its 4G technology choice. And both carriers may have significant 700 MHz assets in the coming months. AT&T is finalizing its purchase of Aloha partners and its gobs of 700 MHz license, while Verizon is likely to emerge from the FCC’s 700 MHz auction with new licenses.

WiMAX technologies are actually being rolled out in the 700 MHz bands today. Soma Networks has been selling IEEE 802.16e gear to small operators using the 700 MHz band, which while not official WiMAX gear is essentially Soma’s WiMAX gear tuned to a different frequency. With WiMAX certification on the horizon larger more vendors are likely to pick up on the spectrum, especially as other carriers express interest in the technology. Many of the operators bidding in the auction are looking toward cellular technologies, but some carriers like Towersteam are participating in the auction with future WiMAX networks in mind.

Alvarion vice president of strategy and marketing Rudy Leser said Alvarion—one of Towerstream’s suppliers—has not announced any plans for WiMAX infrastructure at 700 MHz, but it is definitely considering the possibility if it sees customer demand. Creating a 700 MHz kit would be a simple matter, he said.

“The way we planned the product, it is very agnostic to the form of duplexing used, and it’s also flexible in band,” Leser said. Many of the major vendors have also pointed to 700 MHz as an ideal band for WiMAX, but none of them have commited to a 700 MHz product. The big appeal of WiMAX, though, is that the technology is commercially viable today, while the first LTE gear won’t appear until 2009.

The debate over which band is optimal for which frequency is likely to put vendors in an awkward marketing position in the coming years as the clear distinction between WiMAX spectrum and LTE spectrum dissolves. Previously Nokia Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent could point at separate spectrum such as 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz that were targeted for WiMAX, distinguishing it from the cellular spectrum where LTE was likely to emerge. But as new spectrum becomes available across the globe, much of it has no technology restrictions attached, making it ripe for either technology. Many of the major cellular operators have thrown their weight behind LTE because of its roots in the GSM world, leading the GSM Association to disregard WiMAX as more of nuisance.

At his keynote address today at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress, GSMA CEO Rob Conway wrote WiMAX off as a “niche technology,” optimal only for certain types of deployments and particular spectral bands. The GSMA’s largest member, however, sees it differently. During his keynote, directly following Conway’s, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said that WiMAX should be merged into the LTE standard to ensure that two competing technologies don’t compete for the limited capex dollars in the market. The result would be interoperable networks and devices across the world on a unified 4G standard. While that scenario is highly unlikely, Vodafone carries a lot of weight. It has 250 million subscribers in national networks in dozens of countries, and it owns a significant chunk of Verizon Wireless.

Vodafone’s biggest impact on the market, however, may be in its inaction. Sarin said Vodafone will not launch LTE networks, waiting until it reaches maturity. Instead of focusing on 4G, it’s committed to enhancing its current 3G network, Sarin said, revealing that Vodafone will start trialing HSPA+, a new iteration of the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard that will double download speeds from 14.4 MB/s to 28.8 MB/s over a 10 MHz channel.