To date, the biggest success of WiMAX has been to attract a core of wireless industry innovators and, leveraging the best technologies, standardized platform and open protocols, to spin off a large industry consensus on what will be the next-generation broadband wireless infrastructure. WiMAX first worked to regenerate the stagnant fixed wireless industry — inspired by Wi-Fi achievements — by addressing wide area and carrier-grade performances. Following the ratification of 802.16-2004, WiMAX attacked the mobility challenge driven by the growing wireless laptop market and the huge cellular opportunity that has traditionally been dominated by voice revenues and legacy circuit switched technologies. Will 802.16 Evolutionary (802.16e) OFDM now work to create a fixed-to-basic mobility market?

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WiMAX is a wireless broadband technology with disruptive potential. For operators, it makes the most of OFDM air interfaces, IP and session initiation protocol (SIP) as well as highly efficient service delivery. It is causing a lot of noise in the 3G and DSL communities, making services convergence a reality, fading out territory borders for fixed and mobile operators and targeting infrastructure cost saving by an order of magnitude.

To accelerate time to market and optimize performance vs. applications, WiMAX members have promoted two mobility task groups: the Evolutionary Task Group (ETG) and the Mobility Task Group (MTG). While MTG focuses on scalable OFDMA strengths and is aimed at top mobility performances, ETG builds on OFDM 802.16-2004 evolution to optimize throughput and availability for fixed to basic mobility applications. In the process, ETG addresses a wide range of business models going from backhaul to DSL extension to wireless laptop connectivity.

OFDM 802.16-2004 is efficient for high-speed fixed applications. It complements DSL and microwave backhaul. It can evolve successfully to complement OFDMA 802.16e for mobility applications by addressing high throughput basic mobility requirements for laptop data-hungry markets. Basic mobility, driven by the ETG task group, fits well the window of opportunity for the wireless emerging broadband applications in the urban and wide areas networks.

802.16-2004 is already at the advanced certification phase with first deployments planned for the first half 2006. OFDM 802.16e has completed the WiMAX profile adoption phase. Chipsets will be commercially available in 2006 from a few suppliers.

The portability aspect of fixed WiMAX OFDM greatly boosts the product attractiveness compared to fixed line DSL. Its performance, in terms of coverage (NLOS), quality of service (QoS), security and carrier-grade reliability, makes it competitive vs. other wireless standard-based technologies like Wi-Fi. However, the most exciting development for fixed WiMAX service providers is the opportunity provided by WiMAX ETG to evolve WiMAX OFDM fixed network to address basic mobility while retaining backward compatibility with early infrastructure.

This new basic mobility market segment provides great opportunities for WiMAX OFDM operators. It gives them access to the portable device market (e.g., laptops and PDAs), by providing high throughput and reliable connection to mobile workers and multimedia enthusiasts willing to trade off mobility for fast access and hot zones coverage. The fixed-to-basic mobility WiMAX market also represents a solid opportunity for industrial and atypical market segments in terms of pricing and margin.

WiMAX 802.16e OFDM possesses strong qualities as an enabler for application/service and carriers convergence. One of the most powerful value-adds is its open platform with standardized air interface, QoS and IP protocols. These features allow infrastructure cost reduction by an order of magnitude. Today, a typical base station costs between $5000 and $15000 per sector. Customer premises equipment (CPE) will soon be available below $100.00 depending on the form factor. A second significant benefit provided by WiMAX basic mobility is the fixed to mobility convergence that will remove the network boundaries between fixed wire-based and mobile operators.

WiMAX is a powerful technology for delivering broadband services in fixed and mobile networks. However, because the OFDMA full mobility platform is still too far away for mobile operators' rapid adoption, the WiMAX Forum's decision to implement the ETG is being well received in the industry. It will speed up time-to-market to address the emerging laptop basic mobility markets where WiMAX ETG success opportunities are real. WiMAX ETG flaunts a portability advantage over wired technologies, the data performance of OFDM 16e full IP platform over current cellular technologies and a great cost advantage over cellular infrastructure. It is now opening the door to new operators and new ventures from existing ones.

Smooth product evolution and timely implementation are great ways to build customer confidence, optimize time to market and deliver robust infrastructure. WiMAX 802.16e OFDM has made an excellent step in that direction. An evolutive approach will secure operator investment while providing short-term revenue diversification.