qualcomm blasts wimax

Qualcomm blasts WiMAX lobby, says technical claims not proven CDMA pioneer Qualcomm has launched an astonishing attack on the WiMAX fraternity with the allegation that it has not substantiated its technical claims and has wildly
under-estimated the costs of wide-area wireless network installation.

In a 32 page white paper released to worldwide telecom media yesterday
afternoon, Qualcomm marketing EVP Jeff Belk (pictured) has upped the ante
in what has now been his two year campaign against the claims and what he
says is misinformation in the marketplace about the capabilities of WiFi and
WiMAX.

Belk’s key contention: turn-key WiMAX networks will face exactly the
same costs and challenges as 3G networks when it comes to testing, the constraints
of frequency wavelength on propagation, costs of tower sites and infrastructure
and device availability.

But they will lack the advantages of harmonised spectrum, a billion plus
installed user based for mobiles and the advantage of rich streams of legacy
voice revenues. And crucially, with WiMAX standards still immature, the major
3G standards have a massive headstart.

Belk is particularly critical of claims that WiMAX may be able to provide
through-puts of up to 75 Mbps at 50km. “Hanaro Telecom in South Korea installed
a massive amount of infrastructure and launched a WiBro (Korean Wi-
MAX) network. Did they get 75Mbps at 50km? Nope. They got 500kbps2Mbps
with cell sizes of 1-2km”. LOW VOLUMES: And even if WiMAX can become more technically competitive, Belk points to the limited use of WiFi to suggest that WiMAX may struggle to become significant.

He pointed to one of the large national WiFi hotspot providers in the US
which recently claimed it had recorded 64m minutes of paid use in one month.
“There are over 175m (mobile) subscribers in the United States at over 750
minutes a month. This means over 127 billion minutes of use per month. We
are talking about roughly a 2000-1 ratio here”.

Belk adds “so the WiMAX guys have a vague vision about metro coverage
and in other areas about rural coverage. There are also vague statements on
economies of scale and an intellectual property regime that is different from
other wireless technologies.”

“However, there is a basic problem that there has not been any examples of
data-only systems being economically viable, and no discussion, if the Wi-
MAX guys are going to do voice services, how they are going to penetrate a
value chain and wireless ecosystem that will be rapidly approaching a billion
units a year by the time the WiMAX guys get their act together”.

“Let alone what frequency these alleged systems will operate at. Or how
the standardization issues get solved”.


In its most biting passage, Belk’s paper also disputes whether laptop manufacturers
will happily incorporate WiMAX chips in their products, as is the hope of WiMAX promoter Intel.

“If you are a laptop manufacturer, you want efficient manufacturing and
global service strategies,” something Belk says is not possible with mobile Wi-
MAX for the next few years because it lacks a road-tested standard, has not
been properly tested for interference issues and works across so many frequency
bands that it will become overly expensive to cater them to all.

Grahame Lynch - Communications Day Oct 13 2005