| Is P1 WiMAX REALLY 4G? |
| by Kashminder Singh | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 05 March 2010 16:56 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In the midst of the Potong uproar, another thrust of its advertising message has gone relatively unnoticed. Sometime last year, P1 also began referring to itself as The 4G Broadband Network. Given that its competitors are all 3G operators, the obvious implication is that P1 WiMAX is an advanced next generation network that can run rings around its competitors.
But is P1 WiMAX really a 4G Broadband network? Well, not in my books and from the research I did on this subject; the wireless industry sides me on this. In fact I can approach this issue from two different perspectives and come up with the same answer!
The technology view
The short answer as to why P1 WiMAX is not a 4G broadband technology is because wireless authorities have not even finalized the definition of 4G technology. The ITU (International Telecommunications Union; the UN body that sets wireless standards) is in the final stages of defining the IMT-Advanced wireless standard that we consumers will call 4G. Wireless standards however are not decided in days or weeks; it usually takes years before standards are approved. Various committees entrusted with the task publish initial requirements which are then hotly debated by industry professionals. The requirements are usually changed many times along the way to accommodate the latest developments. Technology companies fight tooth and nail to ensure that the specifications they want are included because that would give them competitive advantages. The long road to 4G is thankfully at its final stages. In October 2009, the ITU announced that it has received six candidate technology submissions. It added that ‘the selected technologies are expected to be accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced - to qualify as true 4G technologies - in October 2010’. In short, until October this year any claims that a technology is 4G is simply not true. WiMAX is of course competing to become accepted as a 4G technology. The ITU statement said that the six proposals were ‘aligned around the 3GPP LTE Release 10 and beyond (LTE-Advanced) technology and the IEEE 802.16m technology’. The LTE Advanced technology is the next generation technology path for current 3G GSM technologies. The IEEE 802.16m technology is better known as WiMAX. So yes, there are basically 2 candidate technologies for 4G and WiMAX is one of them - but not in its current incarnation. Earlier versions of WiMAX are in fact 3G technologies as it was accepted as a 3G technology in 2007 when it was added to the IMT-2000 standard that is used to define 3G technologies. While the requirements of 4G are manifold, I just want to highlight one major requirement. Very briefly, a 4G system is supposed to have target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbps for mobile usage and around 1 Gbps for stationary wireless access. I don’t need to elaborate more here except to say that all current wireless services in Malaysia (including P1’s WiMAX) is not within touching distance of this. Users can count themselves very lucky if they even get one-tenth of these speeds currently. Suffice to say that no one in the world can claim to have 4G broadband running when the defining body has not approved the standard yet. User perspective But there’s really no need for one to look at technology specifications to conclude that P1 WiMAX is not 4G. A user would expect dramatic improvement from a current standard when they move to a new standard. Let’s use automobiles as an example. A Proton Saga driver would expect – and get –dramatic improvement in speed, handling and ride quality when he upgrades to a Ferrari. Unfortunately P1 falls short in this area too. The usual complaints one hears from 3G subscribers in Malaysia are inconsistent speeds and accessibility problems. The usual complaints one hears from P1 users are – you guessed it – inconsistent speeds and accessibility problems. A true 4G system, in my definition, would be a system that completely revolutionizes the user experience. It would allow data and multimedia to be streamed in real time. It should be able to cope with the large numbers of users who would be creating and consuming content at very high volumes. The truth is that P1’s WiMAX is simply an evolution of 3G technologies. 4G is being bandied around by marketing people to simply indicate that the network is supposedly faster than 3G networks. I’m willing to bet that no technical expert from P1 would come out and defend its claim of being a 4G broadband network. Consumers too would be wise not to be taken in by marketing hype.
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