Vendors accused of stalling WiMax

By Warwick Ashford, ITWeb London correspondent

Johannesburg, 08 Nov 2006

Competition among WiMax vendors for a share of the future mobile market is preventing Africa from implementing and reaping the benefit of existing solutions, says Johannesburg-based Rapid Cloud Technology.

"Some big vendors are punting future mobile WiMax because they expect this to be a higher volume and consequently much more lucrative market than current fixed wireless solutions," says Rapid Cloud CEO Arnoud De Nooy.

He says the emphasis on the still to be finalised mobile 802.16e standard above the fixed 802.16d standard was evident at the recent WiMax World 2006 conference, in the US city of Boston.

Vendors hoping to cash in on mobile WiMax are causing confusion in the market by casting doubt on the fixed standard, but existing solutions can already meet the needs of many developing regions, says Rapid Cloud MD Malcolm Clark.

De Nooy says fixed WiMax still has a place in the market, particularly where there is really little or no need for broadband connectivity to be mobile. However, he says vendors banking on the mobile WiMax are attempting to stall the market until they have product available.

"The debate around mobile WiMax has become so intense that opportunities are being missed for wireless Internet service providers and underserviced area licensees to deliver services using fixed WiMax solutions," he adds.

De Nooy is also critical of WiMax vendors who claim their current solutions require only a software upgrade to migrate from fixed to mobile services, accusing them of saying what they know the market wants to hear.

"The mobile standard is still evolving so there is no way of knowing if a simple software upgrade will be enough to accommodate changes from the current 802.16d standard, particularly if it uses an entirely new frequency band," he says.

Clark also cautions against false promises of easy migration. He says many vendors claimed their pre-WiMax products would comply with the 802.16d standard, but were unable to prove interoperability once the standard was ratified.

According to the WiMax Forum, which oversees the standard, the first certified mobile WiMax products are expected at the end of this year, or in the first quarter of 2007.