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WiMAX: the path to certification

The image of WiMAX as being a ‘grown-up Wi’Fi’, as it was often called in its earlier days, was once a definite plus. It made a hitherto obscure technology readily understandable and generated excitement on the back of the boom in all things WLAN. Now this association is becoming something of a curse.

The focus of the WiMAX community is shifting rapidly towards the licensed spectrum profiles and mobility, and so to a platform that must be truly carrier class, and necessarily far more complex than Wi-Fi. But there is still a belief that this platform can be created, and certified for full interoperability, in a single relatively simple process that would actually only be appropriate to low cost, unlicensed band products. The impossibility of delivering a sophisticated mobile broadband platform, with a development and certification process as simple as that for consumer access points, has created a gulf of understanding that is now being used in anger by WiMAX’s detractors, and is causing genuine confusion in the market.

There is a real dilemma for WiMAX suppliers. Should the process, already heavily criticized for slipped deadlines, be delayed further to make the ensuing products carrier class? Or should equipment be rushed out to stave off the critics, but with only basic capabilities certified?

The answer is both – there is a role for basic and for complex gear in different sectors, but it must be very clear to the market which is which, and that the latter will take longer to be fully standardized. This in turn requires a more complex understanding of the testing and certification processes behind this multi-layered agenda.

The market has widely expected the WiMAX roll-out experience to be similar to that of Wi-Fi – waves of development that would enhance but not fundamentally change the original technology, and a first certification wave that would produce, in short order, a fully fledged solution ready for immediate uptake.

The reality has become entirely different, largely because of two factors. First, the mobile technology is now entirely different from the existing fixed 802.16-2004 platform, having adopted the Samsung-inspired SOFDMA physical layer. Therefore development and testing of 802.16e equipment is not a linear extension of the work on 802.16-2004. Second, the critical target market has shifted towards tier one and two carriers looking to add or enhance mobile broadband services. This has vastly increased the complexity and quality of products that will be required, and so put new pressure on the R&D and testing processes.

WiMAX vendors are put in a dilemma by this situation. The WiMAX Forum is still committed to delivering on its schedule of seeing the first certified standard equipment in the market around the end of 2005. But the speed of the process requires that these first tier products will only be tested and guaranteed for the bare essential, the air interface. The standardized functionality will be low level and upper layers will remain absent or proprietary, limiting their value. This will also limit, we would assume, uptake of these products, keeping volumes small and delaying the hoped-for price reductions that will spring from a volume market. Therefore the main reason to publish certification for this first stage is for publicity value and a statement of credibility about commitment to standards. Most existing suppliers will find that their existing semi-proprietary gear is more sophisticated and functional than their certified offerings, and so it will be hard to find a real market for it.

Yet if they delay until the certification moves on to more advanced iterations, they will be accused by rivals of falling behind on their schedules.

Rather than look at the certification process as a series of linear waves a more useful way would be to think of it as a pyramid. The move towards full mobile broadband will be about a basic, broadly supported but fairly low functionality foundation, on which more and more specialized and complex layers will be built, reaching the apex of full mobility (and future enhancements in future as we move towards ‘4G’). Rather than releasing commercial and certified equipment for each layer, some vendors will choose to do two or more layers at once, depending on their market focus. Motorola, for instance, plans not to join the certification process until the fourth, apex layer, because it is only interested in the mobile market. It will, of course, have its offerings tested for compliance with the basic air interface, but it would be a waste of its money and efforts to release products without all four layers, since they would be inadequate for its chosen target base. Vendors that support the base layer will either be selling a bare bones product – suited to the low end WiSP market, or a foothold for new market entrants – or adding proprietary layers to ensure QoS and so on.

Alvarion is in the same position as Motorola, although, since it does have strong presence in the fixed wireless market, it plans to leap on to the pyramid at an earlier stage, in the second layer, where WiMAX gains certification for key functions in the outdoor CPE market, notably quality of service. In wave one products, QoS will be included in a pre-certified form only.

“Alvarion is engaged in the lab in order to make it operational and ensure implementation of the different waves based on our customers’ requirements,” explained global head of marketing communication Carlton O’Neal. He gives very comprehensive reasons both derived from the extensive deployments of WiMAX-ready systems with customers. Alvarion’s WiMAX-ready equipment, BreezeMAX, is a full featured solution superior to the requirements defined in Wave 1 and is already deployed by more than 130 operators. Alvarion believes certification should cover a broader set of features, which is only addressed in the wave 2 of the certification process scheduled for Q1/06 time frame, since its customers are not willing to take a step back in functionality.

O’Neal believes that releasing an officially certified product would create false expectations among existing BreezeMAX customers. Since the market is still largely wedded to the linear progression image of WiMAX evolution, there is a widespread assumption that the first WiMAX Forum Certified products will be a step ahead, in functionality terms, of current pre-certified offerings. Many service providers, for instance, are hoping that a certified product from Alvarion or Airspan, the two vendors that have so far shown off indoor customer premises equipment (CPE) units, will include those indoor facilities. In fact, as the pyramid indicates, first wave certification will apply only to the air interface

“We have 130 customers for BreezeMAX,” said O’Neal. “We are working on including the capability to enable very high indoor radio penetration self-installed CPE. That is what the customers want first and we won’t delay that to prove we can work over the air. Also, wave one will not support QoS, VOIP, security, and other features that we currently offer in BreezeMAX. Customers will want certification but they will expect that to equate to at least what we are offering now and next year.”

In other words, the standards will not catch up with real world, pre-certified equipment in terms of scope until the first half of 2006, with wave two, the first to test real commercial functionality, and wave three, which extends that to the vital systems with indoor, portable CPE.

In our view, wave one is vital to the chipmakers, but to everyone else it is important as a credibility boost and a stepping stone rather than because it will bring WiMAX systems flooding on to the market. It is like the foundation of a house – essential, but you can’t live in it. Some companies will therefore not seek certification for such a basic level of testing – others will feel they need the certification to reassure customers, but will still have to add significant additional functionality outside the basic platform to make real sales.

WiMAX has found itself in a difficult position. Its scope and ambition have vastly expanded in the past two years. From being a more economically attractive version of traditional BWA niche products, or a technology to extend the promise of Wi-Fi in unlicensed bands, it has become a truly mobile broadband platform with appeal to large carriers and the chance to support new markets and players. But it has been stuck with expectations of a certified product roll-out schedule that is wholly unrealistic for such a complex requirement. The WiMAX Forum needs to ensure that expectations are realistic. That may hand some short term weapons to enemies by disappointing the most optimistic hopes of when WiMAX gear will be available in volume. But the counter-message must be that, when wave two, three and four equipment does appear, it will be carrier class, as a rushed job could never be. Being first to turn up at the labs in Cetecom, or first to put a WiMAX Forum stamp on a box, is good publicity but little more. Operators are looking for well rounded systems with functionality that is better, or at least equal to, their actual existing choices. They are likely to be prepared to wait another six months for that.Technorati: WiMAX, Alvarion, certification, standards, WiFi