Whether WIMAX Will Live Up to ‘Hype’
LAS VEGAS -- The CTOs for the 4 Bells said they're looking closely at WiMAX but haven’t decided how much they will deploy the emerging standard in their networks or whether it will ultimately live up to the hype. The CTOs also indicated they aren’t sure which spectral range would best accommodate WiMAX or how much they may invest in 700 MHz spectrum, another topic getting considerable attention in recent months. The CTOs spoke on a kickoff panel late Mon. of Telecom ‘05 here, sponsored by USTelecom and ATIS.
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“Good technical journals like USA Today would say you can move 60, 70 MB 100 kilometers,” said Qwest CTO Balan Nair: “What spectrum do you operate this in? I think that’s the big question in the U.S. If you look at the Europeans, it’s 3.5 GHz. They've done a much better job of deciding what they want.” Qwest hasn’t tested WiMAX but is launching a trial.
SBC has looked at least 3 different ways of using WiMAX, including broadband fill-in, for use to provide special access outside the SBC service territory and to replace copper loops, said CTO Chris Rice. “One of the challenges of WiMAX for us isn’t going to be so much finding the applications for it because I think there are some niche applications,” Rice said. “But there’s a limited amount of spectrum that you have, so [with] a licensed model it would be too difficult to acquire spectrum.”
The other major sticking point will be equipment, especially if the rest of the world wants gear for 3.5 GHz applications, Bird said. “It gets to the cost question,” he said: “Is there going to be enough scale in the U.S. for a WiMAX technology that’s in a different spectrum band? Will that drive more costs for us and if it does where does that really fit?”
BellSouth is still exploring how to use WiMAX, CTO Bill Smith said. In more densely populated rural areas, DSL has proven to be more cost effective than WiMAX. “If all you're trying to do is get broadband to your customers in most cases a DSL-based system is preferable,” he said. “We see it as a complement. There’s a lot of hype about it being a total and complete replacement, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.”
BellSouth recently launched a trial of mobile pre- WiMAX among college students in Athens, Ga., and is offering wireless data using pre-WiMAX in New Orleans. Getting equipment costs down and finding suitable spectrum will be major challenges, Smith agreed.
Mark Wegleitner said Verizon tested pre-WiMAX as a DSL substitute in rural areas, but found it to be of limited usability. Verizon will also test pre-WiMAX for hotspots in urban and suburban settings and also for data in rural areas. “I don’t think the capacity of WiMAX is going to match something like fiber to the premises or fiber to the node,” he said: “We're talking about a whole new service set.”
The CTOs acknowledged in a meeting with reporters there’s no agreement among Bells on what spectrum might be most appropriate for WiMAX. European nations have embraced 3.5 GHz for WiMAX, but that spectrum isn’t available in the U.S. The CTOs said 3.5 GHz also likely wouldn’t work well in rural areas, a major focus of WiMAX efforts in the U.S.
“Our [spectrum] holdings differ,” Wegleitner said. “Whatever we have is what we've got, aside from additional acquisitions. You're got to figure out a way to get a critical mass out of that and I don’t think anyone has done that yet.”
“I think in 6 months you'll see a lot more 3.5 GHz- type certified WiMAX products,” Nair said: “What good does that do in the U.S.? That’s questionable.” The CTOs expressed skepticism about whether 700 GHz spectrum, which that will be sold by the FCC after it’s returned by broadcasters, will be the answer. “It'd be attractive spectrum, but it’s going to be pretty expensive when it goes to auction,” Bird said: “Are you going to bet a lot of money? That’s not the best investment for our shareholders to go off and place a bet on spectrum to see if that’s the right thing.”
The CTOs agreed IPTV will be an important part of their future. Verizon, through FiOS TV and SBC through Project Lightspeed, have already announced IPTV rollouts. Nair denied reports that Qwest is unlikely to offer a full-fledged IPTV offering and will instead focus on selling DBS bundled with voice and data. “That’s not true,” he told us: “We have the capital necessary to do what’s next.”
BellSouth is also preparing to test IPTV, Smith said: “I think that IPTV can potentially represent the next generation of video entertainment as we know it.” Smith compared the advantages IPTV offers to his experience last year buying TiVo.
The CTOs also warned that as the Bells roll out next- generation networks new reliability issues will emerge. Smith said the conventional wisdom is that the new elements need to have the “5 nines” (99.999%) reliability traditionally standard for legacy networks. But that may be no more than a “bare minimum” standard, he said.
“Once you move to this converged network, when you lose the network you basically lose everything,” Smith said. “I would submit that that requirement alone says that 5 nines is kind of bare minimum because once you've got everything on that platform you need to be better than that.”