Frost & Sullivan: Mobile WiMAX is now or never

For analysts at Frost & Sullivan, Mobile WiMAX technology has a chance to survive if certifications and infrastructure deployments occur in 2008. For next year, it will already be too late.

The Mobile WiMAX has long been viewed as an effective alternative to 3G networks, providing transfer speeds and a superior architecture is closer to the ideal of all-IP networks. However, most observers believed that competition from another technology, LTE (Long Term Evolution), requires that the WiMAX will be worth in two years.

For the research firm Frost & Sullivan, the threat is even more serious: the first Mobile WiMAX networks and certification of products must be validated by 2008 without which this mobile technology not ever take off.

This dark omen is motivated by the repeated delays in several areas: delays in certification by the WiMAX Forum, a network of Sprint Nextel XOHM postponed to September 2008 when he was originally scheduled for spring but also increase rapidly certifications LTE , Which inexorably gain the development gap of two years between these competing technologies.

The survival of Mobile WiMAX is at stake
Technical problems may also make them think operators: while LTE is an extension of 3G networks and will remain backward compatible with them, the Mobile WiMAX does not offer this possibility. A terminal WiMAX can not switch seamlessly on cellular networks in case of non-covered area WiMAX.

On the other hand, Mobile WiMAX is not as optimized as its competitor to manage the flow of both voice and data. which may present a disadvantage compared to Dual mode terminals combining cellular and WiFi networks.

Hence the questioning of the economic model: users accept they install a WiMAX terminal for data, as a tablet or UMPC type MID, and a phone compatible with cellular networks for voice?

All these questions lead analysts Frost & Sullivan to believe that 2008 is a decisive year about the credibility of Mobile WiMAX as a mobile network technology. At the current pace of development, the first visible aspects of LTE are effective as of the end of 2009.

In this scenario, the only hope for proponents of WiMAX then lie in merging some of its components with LTE, which can reach a unified standard ready for 4G to 1 Gbps, but not before 6 or 7 years. The idea is gaining ground but has not yet found an early realization.

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