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Intel WiMAX: "We can't wait" as commercial networks start up, and "rogue" mobile WiMAX tests start

A London ISP has started testing mobile WiMAX technology, at the same time that Intel has announced that thirteen carriers from around the world "are now deploying the world’s first fixed WiMAX networks based on Intel Corporation WiMAX technologies" - pre-empting the IEEE's current tests on standards compliance.

Intel's announcement is designed to show that it hasn't been left behind by Radionet of Finland, whose hardware has also been seen "live" in commercial installations, such as Red Kite's in London.

Intel has felt obliged to open up with the big guns in response. Today's announcement quotes Scott Richardson [left] general manager of Intel’s Broadband Wireless Division, saying: "As WiMAX gains momentum in full deployments, homes and businesses gain the ease and power of cost-effective wireless networking. We are now delivering the promise of WiMAX -- high-speed, cost-effective wireless broadband access -- to businesses and consumers in cities and suburbs around the world."

But even as the plug-fest tests get under way in Malaga for 802.16d (fixed WiMAX) standard equipment, and long before there's any hope of building certifiable 802.16e (mobile WiMAX) equipment, word has reached NewsWireless of experimental mobile rollouts in London.

Sources refused to identify the group involved in these tests, and insisted that commercial services were "months, maybe more than a year" down the road. But the provider of the system is again Radionet.

A source close to the project said that the system would use pre-standard 16d hardware. "But we need to see how well it works, and what it can and cannot do," said this source. "And the only way we can do that, is to test it with real users."

Technical advisors think that the characteristics of WiMAX under this test should be very similar to what can be achieved with WiFi. "We've seen people cover large towns, with full mobility, on WiFi networks," said the consultant, "and frankly, we can't see why this can't be achieved with WiMAX hardware too."

The plan will be to give laptop users and mobile (car-based) nodes access to the network, and see what problems arise. "It may be that we can only use it as mobile in the sense that you have to stop and use it at a fixed location for the session," said the source, "but then again, it may be that you can actually travel and access it. This is exactly what we need to know."

In other parts of the world, such as Korea, WiBro experiments are also under way. These have been dismissed by most members of the WiMAX consortium as irrelevant. Critics say that WiBro is a purely Korean standard, doomed to being expensive, and requiring licensed spectrum.

However, WiBro is far more like the mobile 802.16e standard than Intel's 802.16d version, or Alvarion's Breezemax (pdf) which was launched June 2004. At that time Carlton O'Neal [right] Alvarion marcoms boss, correctly forecast that certification would be delayed till the end of 2005, and at the same time, said that Breezemax would be updatable to conform, if it didn't already.

The question of whether WiBro will equally be able to update itself, is one to which the answer is unguessable. But if it has a track record of success in Korea by the time the IEEE starts defining final specifications of 16e, history suggests that it could easily become a de facto standard which has to be accommodated by the paper standard.

Intel clearly has some publicity ground to make up, and so it has rolled out Scott Richardson, in its latest advisory.

is announcement listed thirteen carriers around the world, "using equipment based on the Intel® PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface," - commercial networks from Altitude Telecom (France), AXTEL (Mexico), BEC Telecom, S.A. (Dominican Republic), Dedicado (Uruguay), Globe/Innove (Philippines), Iberbanda (Spain), Irish Broadband (Ireland), SferaNET (Poland), Mikkelin Puhelin Oyj and Savonlinnan Puhelin Oy (Finland), Telgua (Guatemala), Ukrainian High Technologies (Ukraine), and WiMAX Telecom (Austria and Slovakia).

Another nine names were given of carriers planning commercial deployments with this technology.

Tags: WiMAX, WiBro, Intel, Alvarion, IEEE, 802.16