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Carriers
beware
By Kevin Fitchard
There will be a new predator prowling the halls of NXTcomm this year:
the WiMAX vendor. You already thought you were getting it on all sides
from optical, copper, Wi-Fi and satellite equipment makers. Well, now
it's WiMAX's turn.
Last year at Globalcomm, WiMAX was a questionable, if not somewhat
intriguing, technology--one positioned at competitive ISPs, smaller
carriers and the like. But since that June, Sprint has signed on to
WiMAX, and big carriers worldwide such as British Telecom have started
expressing renewed interest. All of sudden, WiMAX is squarely in play
among Tier I providers, and you can bet your friendly neighborhood
vendor has a value proposition to pitch you.
As Nokia Siemens Networks radio networks general manager Ari Lehtoranta
points out in today's Q&A, the full impact of WiMAX is still up in the
air. It's no longer a question of whether the technology will have an
impact--merely a question of how big. Lehtoranta said Nokia got into
the
WiMAX game with the idea of selling gear to smaller providers,
fixed-line carriers and ISPs, but with Sprint's decision, the market
opened to CDMA. And with CDMA on the line, the whole cellular market
may
just open up. The world's largest GSM operator, Vodafone is reportedly
considering a WiMAX deployment.
What was a small-to-middling potential market a year ago has now blown
up to encompass the entire breadth of the carrier market. Frequencies
like the 2.3 GHz bands are still idle, and the 700 MHz spectrum is ripe
for picking. So whether you're a cable operator considering
participating in the next auction, a small rural provider, or an AT&T,
you can bet the new WiMAX vendors out there have your number. Don't say
you weren't warned...
Contact me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.
|
Telephony's Inside Telecom LIVE Webcast:
Carrier
Ethernet
Watch live on June 12, 2PM ET / 11AM PT
The market for Carrier Ethernet services may have reached its tipping
point, as
a large number of carriers are putting Carrier Ethernet's attributes to
use in a
variety of ways to serve enterprise customers. Join
Telephony's Ed Gubbins and Boyd Chastant, Director Advanced Network
Services
for IDC, as they discuss the evolution Carrier Ethernet services. Find
out more
about the competition, the ongoing market-share shifting and where this
industry
segment is headed next. Don't miss this lively, interactive discussion.
Register
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Sponsored
by Qwest Global Wholesale Markets
|
By Kevin Fitchard
Nokia Siemens Networks has been a surprise player in the WiMAX
community. While other vendors looked to WiMAX as a new technology to
salvage poorer cellular network sales, Nokia Siemens is one of the
largest GSM/UMTS in the world and has a viable interest in promoting
its
traditional technology. But as Nokia Siemens head of radio access
networks Ari Lehtoranta explained in a recent interview, Nokia Siemens
sees the two technologies co-existing, creating a new infrastructure
market for the vendor while keeping faith with its cellular roots.
Below, Lehtoranta details Nokia's original decision to pursue WiMAX and
the future the new Nokia Siemens sees for the technology...
Read more of this interview
|
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|
Sprint isn't taking any chances on WiMAX. It's brought all of its
vendors together to collaboratively devise an ideal technology for a
nationwide rollout...
Read more of this
feature
|
Nokia-Siemens Networks will attempt to prove the Mobile WiMAX
concept at NXTcomm this year, demonstrating mobile connectivity between
its Flexi base station and a souped-up version of Nokia's N770 Internet
tablet...
Read more of this story
|
Caribbean broadband wireless operator Onemax has selected
softswitch
and media gateway vendor Veraz Networks for deployment of an IP
multimedia subsystem-over-WiMAX solution...
Read more of this story
|
Foundry makes service provider
drive
|
With a recent boost from the federal government and enterprise
customers, router vendor Foundry Networks is making an aggressive drive
into the service provider space this year, adding new products and
beefing up its sales staff while promising growth among big-name
customers in the back half of 2007...
Read more of this
story
|
WiMAX Strategies will provide attendees with a clear vision of the
pros and cons of deploying WiMAX. Discover whether WiMAX will be an
ally
or a competitor to your portfolio of voice and data services. Should
operators incorporate mobile and fixed WiMAX technologies into their
businesses? Can operators make money by deploying this technology?
We'll
answer these questions and more at WiMAX Strategies...
Read more about this
event
|
By Kevin Fitchard
Nokia Siemens Networks has been a surprise player in the WiMAX
community. While other vendors looked to WiMAX as a new technology to
salvage poorer cellular network sales, Nokia Siemens is one of the
largest GSM/UMTS in the world and has a viable interest in promoting
its
traditional technology. But as Nokia Siemens head of radio access
networks Ari Lehtoranta explained in a recent interview, Nokia Siemens
sees the two technologies co-existing, creating a new infrastructure
market for the vendor while keeping faith with its cellular roots.
Below, Lehtoranta details Nokia's original decision to pursue WiMAX and
the future the new Nokia Siemens sees for the technology.
On WiMAX's potential market: We are not religious about radio
technology. We've always wanted to be more agnostic on the radio. Of
course, when we saw carriers like Sprint going after WiMAX, it became a
much more interesting market. Initially we thought this was going to be
just a fixed network play like with British Telecom and other wireline
operators who wanted to offer mobility but didn't have 2G or 3G
frequencies. But now we see there also will be mobile plays like CDMA
operators who are going for WiMAX, and even some new growth markets.
There will be some GSM players who will go after WiMAX, either
positioning it a little bit differently than cellular, or because they
don't have 3G or expect to have 3G--there are various reasons.
For us WiMAX is just like any other radio access technology we have.
There is no special strategy there. We just want to help operators to
lower the total cost of ownership because radio is such a big part of
the cost burden, both on capital expenditures and on operations.
On Nokia Siemens' plans to co-develop WiMAX and other 4G
technologies: We are the only one in the world that has a big
global
presence in GSM, wideband CDMA and WiMAX. We, of course, can leverage
synergies across these different technologies. WiMAX to a great extent
is similar to the wideband CDMA evolution to LTE--it's the same radio
modulation, the same flat network architecture. Our strategy is
twofold:
to develop WiMAX but at the same time to develop components and modules
for LTE, so we won't have these multiple silos of R&D. There will be
several commonalities between the two technologies. MIMO [Multiple
Input/Multiple Output smart antenna technology] is a good example. MIMO
will be implemented in both streams. We are using the same base station
platform in both, and therefore we will be able to benefit from global
volumes. We have learned from the device side that volumes are kind of
nice: You are able to get the lowest product cost and end up having the
lowest margins. Ultimately it is to the operator's benefit to have a
supplier who can leverage those volumes.
On whether service providers will deploy WiMAX or UMTS: There
will be some customers that will implement both. However, I have to
make
a disclaimer. This is a question we don't really know the answer to.
For
example, recently there have been rumors about Vodafone joining the
WiMAX Forum, which I believe will happen.
Operators are still doing some soul searching. It could well be there
will be a much bigger overlap than we see today. We have already
actually won one GSM deal because of WiMAX. Think about it. We have a
won a deal for GSM because the operator wants to implement WiMAX in the
future, and we were the only one that they see as having a suitable
offering for both. As another example, if Vodafone feels that LTE needs
a complementary technology or if they want to address enterprise with a
different technology, they could choose WiMAX. The jury is still out
there.
On what frequencies WiMAX will focus: That is one of the risks
of
WiMAX, that it will become too fragmented. It's not a big issue
regarding the base station because with our modular concept we can
develop new frequencies relatively easy. It's going to be the device
issue. The device market starts to fragment, and it might be there may
not be enough competitive devices because the costs would be too high.
So there are all these different variants. Of course, the 2.5 GHz/2.6
GHz area is the one we hope will gain traction. In Europe it's 3.5 GHz.
We have heard about 3.3 GHz, 3.6 GHz versions and some of the other 2
GHz versions, but we will definitely start with the mainstream 2.5 GHz
and 3.5 GHz versions.
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