WiMax - the next frontier for mobility

Propelled by an increased worldwide demand towards mobility – three companies Nokia, Wi-Lan and Ensemble came together in April last year to formulate WiMax. With a broader reach of around seven kms, the 802.16 technology can be quite vital when it comes to providing wireless broadband at the rural level. Based out of Canada, Wi-Lan is one of the co-founders of the WiMax forum and is quite optimistic about its prospects in a country like India. Zia Askari, of CyberMedia News, spoke with Regional Sales Director – India & SE Asia at Wi-Lan, Terry Wason.

Excerpts from the interview.

What is WiMax and what is your organization's role in it?

WiMax, or 802.16a, has been touted for its potential to make broadband wireless more affordable and easier to deploy. Though, there has been a flurry of activity focused on bringing the technology to market by different vendors, not much has happened on the actual deployment side. This is changing fast and there are companies, the world over engaged in pilots involving WiMax. Actual deployments will only start by next year.

We are in the process of producing and licensing semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) cores incorporating the physical layer (PHY) of the 802.16a standard. The standard, which was ratified in January, provides a wireless alternative to cable and DSL without requiring a direct line of sight to a base station.

How cost-effective is this technology?

A technology like WiMax can be quite powerful in providing low cost wireless broadband access to the rural countryside within this region. When implemented at the village level, WiMax can boost the connectivity of the nation to quite an extent and provide the last mile solution for the connectivity problem. So once this technology is in place, people living within the radius of five km will have good connectivity and that too at an affordable cost.

We have our channel partners based in India and we are working with Adino Telecom Ltd, which is an Onida group company. It is our gold channel partner, and has set up the wireless connectivity in the GSWAN. Besides it is also working in West Bengal with WEBEL. We are also providing our expertise for the wireless backbone in the Mallapuram district in Kerala.

How different is 802.16 from 802.11?

Both these technologies are designed primarily to provide seamless mobility but there are certain differences in both of these technologies. 802.11 is optimized for users within a 100-meter radius and here we need to add access points or high gain antenna for wider coverage.

On the other hand, 802.16 is optimized for a typical cell size of 7 kms to 10 kms. So that way, 802.16 can provide greater penetration with the same equipment to the far-flung areas of any region.

What’s more is the fact that with 802.16 the channel bandwidth is flexible from 1.5 MHz to 20 MHz for both licensed and license exempt bands.

What are the objectives of WiMax?

Nokia, Wimax and Ensemble founded WiMax and now there are a lot of other companies like – Fujitsu, Hughes Network Systems, Intel, Yahoo, etc who are joining in. All these companies are contributing towards the development of this technology.

Wimax is a non-profit corporation made up of key industry players. It comprises of broadband wireless access equipment manufacturers, component suppliers (silicon, RF, antenna, software, test services) and service providers (carriers, wireless ISPs). The charter of WiMax is to certify equipment that conforms to the IEEE 802.16a standard and is proven interoperable and this includes equipment that conforms to interoperable standards, such as ETSI HiperMAN.

How imporatnt are certifications for WiMax?

With WiMax, a service provider can choose from multiple vendors with interoperable equipment and multiple sources of broadband wireless hardware and minimize the risk of product availability for deployments.

Certification also provides an opportunity for backward compatibility with 802.16 IEEE stacks and innovative time-to-market solutions with a stable, standards-based PHY design.

I sincerely believe that India is a country with a lot of scope in this area. At present, the situation calls for an increased penetration at the rural level and WiMax can ensure that. So going forward, I see a lot of WiMax activity happening in this region.

CyberMedia News