The future of wireless technology

WAY OF THE FUTURE: A report has predicted that there will be more than 2.6 billion WiFi-enabled consumer devices roaming our planet by 2014.

BY 2014 there will be more than 2.6 billion WiFi-enabled consumer devices roaming our planet.

In the space of just a few years, WiFi has been transformed from an expensive luxury into a necessity for consumers that feel the need to remain connected at high speeds regardless of their location.

An August 17 report from Strategy Analytics predicts that the embedded WiFi device market will continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next four years, exceeding an market value of US$250bil (RM787.5bil).

"Consumer demand for the 'everywhere web' will drive WiFi adoption in mobile Internet devices," says Peter King, director of the Connected Home Device service at Strategy Analytics. "Even where 3G or 4G technologies are available, WiFi will still be a preferred access route for many, as hotspots and home networks proliferate."

Mobile internet devices will not be the only electronics goods to connect to the Internet via WiFi. Mainstream WiFi adoption will also take place across a wide spectrum of consumer electronics channels and will become commonplace on devices such as digital cameras, MP3 and digital media players, handheld games consoles, digital video recorders, digital audio systems, digital photo frames and networked storage devices by 2014.

"While today the market is dominated by portable products, WiFi Networked TV & Blu-ray players will become significant products in the family room by 2014," added King.

In July American network carrier AT&T reported handling 68.1 million connections on its public WiFi network during the second quarter of 2010 - a stark increase from the 20 million connections seen by the company during the entirety of 2008.

The impressive year-on-year WiFi usage increases point to a future where constant connectivity is ubiquitous; a time where a dropped Internet connection is like having the power cut out in the developed world, a rare incident that completely disrupts day-to-day life.

Is WiMAX or LTE the better 4G choice in Malaysia?

WiMAX or LTE (long-term evolution) – which is superior? It, of course, depends on who you talk to. The vendors have their own stories, and the operators theirs. For the consumers, it is not about technology. It is about speed and seamless connectivity, and not having to buy different devices to operate on different platforms.

From the technical viewpoint, both are next-generation technologies for the wireless world. The choice between WiMAX and LTE hinges on the needs of the operator and the market demands, but the fact is, there seemingly is an insatiable appetite for data on the go.

WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) is a fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications technology primarily for fast broadband.

Also a 4G mobile technology, LTE allows a peak download speed of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) on mobile phones, compared with 20Mbps for 3G and 40Mbps for WiMAX.

“For operators, the choice of technology depends on a number of things including available spectrum, legacy inter-working, timing and business focus,” says Nokia Siemens Networks head of sub region, Asia South, Lars Biese.

To deploy either technology, operators will have to commit tens of billions of dollars in network upgrades for the new mobility landscape, which now includes social, video, location-based and entertainment applications and experiences.

In many countries, the current generation of mobile telecoms networks is 3G. Those in Malaysia are deployed by the four mobile players – Celcom Axiata Bhd, DiGi.Com Bhd, Maxis Communications Bhd and U Mobile Sdn Bhd.

Biese reckons LTE is the next step for mobile networks like GSM, WCDMA/HSPA and CDMA in the move to future networks and services.

The common belief is that the natural migration path is from 2G to GPRS, from GPRS to 3G, and from 3G to LTE. But IDC Asia/Pacific’s telecom research director Bill Rojas has a differing view. To him, LTE is a totally new set-up.

“GSM and GPRS were part of a migration. In Asia, the players may put LTE on top of 3G, but this will not cover the entire population. The concentration will be on urban centres. For full coverage, the operator needs to build more than 30% new cell sites,” Rojas says.

It has been reported that LTE’s main advantage over WiMAX, in addition to speed, is that it is part of the popular GSM technology and can allow backward compatibility with both 2G and 3G networks.

LTE is relatively new compared with WiMAX. The world’s first public LTE service was made available only at the end of last year by TeliaSonera in Stockholm and Oslo.

Some people may said that LTE means "Late To Evolve"... However, LTE is fast catching up with WiMAX even though the WiMAX Forum, an industry organisation, stresses that its platform is at least two years ahead in terms of equipment availability and testing.

The Global Suppliers Association (GSA) says there are more than 59 LTE network commitments in 28 countries. In comparison, according to the WiMAX Forum, there are 559 WiMAX networks worldwide.

“To date, all existing GSM and WCDMA (3GPP) operators and CDMA (3GPP2) operators have committed to LTE as the technology of choice for their mobile network evolution, and by 2013, it is expected that there will be 20.4 million connections activated on LTE in the Asia Pacific,” says Biese.

On the other hand, YTL Communications Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Wing K Lee claims that mobile WiMAX is the only commercially proven technology that has been deployed on a large scale.

Nevertheless, market dynamics will determine the outcome of the race.

There are four WiMAX spectrum holders in Malaysia, namely, Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd, REDtone International Bhd, Asiaspace Sdn Bhd and YTL Communications, which is the only one that has yet to roll out services commercially.

Rojas of IDC says both technologies can co-exist, but to him, WiMAX is still the purest 4G network. Naturally, the promoters of LTE have the opposite view.

That aside, Lee of YTL Communications points out that LTE and WiMAX serve the wireless broadband market and both technologies fundamentally share the same technological foundation. Therefore, they have more similarities than differences.

Should they then be merged, as suggested by US-based Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow, given the overlap in the technologies?

While the debate rages on, the mobile operators in Malaysia still have a little bit of time to decide on which route to take to add capacity. This is because they have not fully exhausted their 3G spectrum. Even the WiMAX players have not fully exploited their 2.3G spectrum.

At some point, Rojas believes, the Malaysian Government will have to decide on spectrum allocation for LTE. Until then, do not expect the operators to fast-track their network expansion, even though some may face bottlenecks soon.

Furthermore, the Government needs to be certain that LTE is what the market needs. “Without (additional) spectrum after 3G, operators will have to move to LTE using the 3G spectrum,’’ Rojas says.

Whatever is on the minds of the players and industry regulators, one thing is clear – the need for speed is growing by the day, and the planning for spectrum allocation should start before we hit bottlenecks.

Some industry players have also called for the Government to refarm spectrum so that there is a coordinated approach to spectrum allocation and assignment. Not that there isn’t, but given that spectrum is becoming a rare commodity, the Government should make sure that the spectrum awarded is put to good use.

Rojas expects major commercial roll-outs of LTE and WiMAX in Asia this year and next, but devices remain an issue in the world of 4G. At the same time, experts say it is about time that the industry focuses on a single device that works on all platforms.

WiMax vs. LTE: Which Will 'Win' in a Fast Deployment Cycle?

One of the biggest stories during the next year or so will be the rollout and subsequent marketing of 4G wireless networks.

It will be an interesting process as the two approaches – Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax – vie for supremacy. The die already seems to be cast, however: WiMax, through Clearwire and its Clear service, is first out of the gate. LTE, however, through its use by Verizon and AT&T, seems positioned to be the dominant player when the dust settles.

WiMax suffered a bit of a blow earlier this month when Cisco decided not to build radios for the platform:

Technology is not an either/or game.The Cisco move clearly is not good news for WiMax, both in terms of image and because the vendor brings a lot to any table at which it chooses to sit. It’s also clear that WiMax will not be as big as LTE. All that said, however, it is apparent that WiMax remains a significant wireless networking force.

It is important to remember that the platform that comes in second in such a massive market will still be very successful. There are, for instance, secondary and specialty niches:

…WiMax is making strides with at least one significant niche category: smart grid networking. Earth2Tech reports that startup Arcadian Networks has released the AE20r gateway, a WiMax-focused device. The story says that Arcadian, which owns spectrum in the middle of the country, sells smart grid services to utilities. The story notes other vendors in the smart grid/WiMax arena, including Grid Net, General Electric, Alvarion and National Grid.

To be sure, Clearwire is not backing down:

Clearwire seems to be at the center of cable’s move to mobilize voice and advanced mobilized applications. FierceWireless, in a general report about Clearwire’s progress, said that the company plans to introduce a WiMax-enabled smartphone during 2010. The aim, according to CEO Bill Morrow, is to have the device in the field during the second half of the year. The story says that Sprint is planning 3G/4G phones, also by the end of 2010.

On the other side of town -- or of the R&D lab hallway -- is LTE. While WiMax was first out of the gate, the LTE sector is making up for lost time:

The LTE trial and test phase is white hot.

Driven by the increase in demand caused by fixed-rate data plans, coupled with the popularity of the iPhone and other advanced devices, the pace of testing of one of the two flavors of 4G technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE), is accelerating.

LTE is particularly active on the international front. ABI Research says that as of the end of September, 100 mobile networks were holding trials or were set to start. More than 40 of the trials are ongoing in the Asia-Pacific region – led by Japan and South Korea, with 33 contracts awarded. ABI Research says that though the first networks won’t start commercial operation until the end of next year, a robust 32.6 million subscribers will be served by LTE by 2013. The pressure is so great that many operators are taking the interim step of upgrading 3G networks to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) status.

The stage was set once AT&T and, especially, Verizon made their choices:

Details are emerging on Verizon Wireless’s LTE rollout. Softpedia reports that the carrier, in one configuration, will offer per-user data speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps). The system will support video sharing, surveillance, conferencing and streaming. The story runs through the other advantages that Verizon Wireless is touting, and some of the challenges to older technologies that it supposedly alleviates.

The interesting thing is that LTE and WiMax are fairly close from the technical point of view. That means that it is theoretically possible for differences to be overcome and competition to become a thing of the past. While possible, it is thought unlikely:

On one hand, the battle for the future of 4G between LTE and WiMax will be fully joined. However, both are IP-based and use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and, experts say, are relatively close on the telecommunications family tree. Indeed, the biggest difference may concern the other IP: intellectual property. Despite the maneuvering today, it is possible that in a few years the two will blend together.

The next year or so will be a good deal of fun for folks who like mano-a-mano competition, price pressure, glitzy ads -- and high-speed wireless networks. At the end of the day, it almost certainly is destined to end up as expected:

LTE will be the top dog, with WiMax a strong supporting player.

WiMax Vs LTE : future mobile communication trend ?

After a long debut about the next-generation cellular and WiMax deployment in the near future for the new communication module, seems they will show something to us, LTE and WiMax for future communication module. Both are still struggling to prove their capability, performance reliability and signal efficiency towards higher bandwidth requirement from community. Whihc one will win the segment? However, before we further jump into conclusion, some clarification need to be mentioned here. There are still some people really confused about those two; what are they? what they do? how great performance they can produce? how reliable they are?..Well, if we put these two together, they are almost the same. First, both are 4G technologies designed to move data rather than voice. Both are IP networks based on OFDM technology for fixed (802.16) and OFDMA (802.16m & LTE) for mobile — so rather than rivals such as GSM and CDMA, they’re more like siblings. But does the siblings all the same. no right? So, there a plenty of difference among them.

WiMax is based on a IEEE standard (802.16), and like that other popular IEEE effort, Wi-Fi, it’s an open standard that was debated by a large community of engineers before getting ratified. In fact, we’re still waiting on the 802.16m standard for faster mobile WiMax to be ratified. The level of openness means WiMax equipment is standard and therefore cheaper to buy — sometimes half the cost and sometimes even less. Depending on the spectrum alloted for WiMax deployments and how the network is configured, this can mean a WiMax network is cheaper to build. The speed for the WiMax (802.16) is up to 70 Mbps, while the mobile WiMax (802.16m) is up to 100Mbps.

Malaysia is still in progress in deploying WiMax Technology, but the condition is stillon “testing” for so long . Do not know why. Izzi is a new name in Malaysian Broadband challange and the claim to have 4G connection. Check it first before you subscribe (affraid only for the best effort - as another slumpy monopoly carrier advertise their broadband). Sprint Nextel will aslo deploy this WiMax technology to become their 4G carrier.

Whilst, The LTE, (3GPP Long Term Evolution), is the next-generation network that beyond 3G. In addition to enabling fixed to mobile migrations of Internet applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video streaming, music downloading, mobile TV and many others, LTE networks will also provide the capacity to support an explosion in demand for connectivity from a new generation of consumer devices tailored to those new mobile applications. Most of the Telcos believes LTE will be the standard chosen by 80 percent of the carriers in the world

LTE is the natural evolution of 3GPP GSM and WCDMA networks. It is also an evolution candidate for 3GPP2 CDMA networks. Efforts are underway to harmonize the standards. LTE itself is a new paradigm in access, with a new modulation technique, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) or some people said it use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), and antenna technology, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output).

Nortel, Nokia , LG, and Alcatel-lucent are among the group who perform test on LTE deployment.

To much technical right?

The funny thing about technology businesses is that technology counts for so little in the final result. Politics, human nature, and all of the frailties inherent therein trump the technology issues in virtually every case. So, logically: LTE will win.

The cellular carriers control the market, so they control the decision. Now if the WiMAX camp could come up with something that was phenomenally better, then the cellular carrier would have to look more closely at this, but unfortunately, physics works the same for everyone. With no compelling technical advantage for WiMAX, LTE will win. Agree?