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 Charles F. Moreira
While stating that WiMAX
is a complementary, not competing technology to cellular, isn’t news these days,
Dr. Ray Owen, Motorola Australia Pty Ltd director for wireless broadband in
Asia strongly believes this will come about, especially in their long-term
evolution.
“The media of course
likes to sensationalise the issue as a battle between wireless technologies but
in fact they will eventually complement each other,” Owen, who has pretty sound
arguments to back his stand, told a technology track at the 3GSM World Congress
Asia event in Singapore in October.
“Firstly, no size fits
all in mobile voice and data. At one end of the scale, we have mobile phones
with their small screens and processors optimised for low power consumption,
long battery life, voice and high mobility,” said Owen.
“On the other we have
notebook PCs with their large screens, powerful processors and optimised for
data and for use while stationary at different places (ie. “nomadic”),” he
added.
Also, WiFi is highly
computing-centric, with its high data rates at very affordable prices but it offers
very low terminal portability or mobility, while 3G is
telecommunications-centric with its high terminal portability and high mobility
but with moderate cost-effectiveness and moderate data rates.
WiMAX falls somewhat
between the respective strengths and weaknesses of WiFi and 3G with its
moderately high mobility, portability, data rates and cost effectiveness.
In May this year,
Wateen Telecom appointed Motorola to deploy a WiMAX-based wireless broadband
voice and data network in Pakistan using Motorola’s IEEE 802.16e-based MOTOwi4 WiMAX access network and subscriber units, IP
Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core and services to quickly and cost-effectively
connect the unconnected.
Owen’s second argument is that WiMAX, WiBRO,
WiFi, iBurst (802.20), other wireless broadband and future evolved 3G technologies
will all share a radio access modulation technique called Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which will form the basis of evolved 3G or fourth
generation (4G) cellular network, while CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is
currently used in 3G networks today.
“CDMA and GSM technologies are worlds apart
but OFDM will bring them all together,” said Owen.
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