The IEEE standards association announced a leadership shake-up in its troubled 802.20 working group, which is supposed to get the work on a mobile wireless broadband access standard back on track.
All of the officers of the working group will be replaced “in an effort to provide clearly neutral leadership and to eliminate perceptions of possible bias,” according to a statement by the IEEE.
Activity in the 802.20 working group had been suspended since early June due to several appeals on its workings, as well as the fact that “activity in the group appears to have become highly contentious-significantly beyond what is normally experienced in IEEE,” according to a letter from standards board chair Steve Mill issued in June.
“A preliminary investigation into the group’s operation revealed a lack of transparency, possible `dominance,’ and other irregularities,” Mills wrote in the letter. The suspension was supposed to be in effect through Oct. 1 and now will last at least until a new chair is approved by the IEEE’s standards board; that is expected to take place on or before Nov. 12.
Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. sniped at each other over the suspension of the working group, and both companies are backing different flavors of the mobile WiMAX standard: 802.16e is backed heavily by Intel, and 802.20 is supported by Qualcomm. Intel had complained about alleged voting improprieties in the 802.20 working group, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Intel engineers also charged that Qualcomm-connected consultants were voting as a group to shape the standard.
While Qualcomm declined to comment on the changes to the 802.20 working group, Intel said it supports the actions taken by the IEEE as “we believe this action will help restore fairness and openness to the standards process.”
Intel’s 802.16e WiMAX agenda got a major boost in August when Sprint Nextel Corp. chose WiMAX technology over Qualcomm’s Flash-OFDM, and IPWireless Inc.’s UMTS TDD for the carrier’s extensive 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. Sprint Nextel said it expects to dole out about $1 billion on WiMAX in 2007 and another $1.5 billion in ’08.
Qualcomm will not be completely left out of the WiMAX revenue windfall, as the chipmaker has pointed out that Sprint Nextel is upgrading its CDMA2000 1x EV-DO network with Revision A capabilities and the carrier expects to offer dual-mode devices laced with Intel’s WiMAX chips as well as Qualcomm’s Rev. A chips.
Another part of Qualcomm’s high-speed wireless broadband plans could very well include collecting on OFDM licensing agreements, as the company has long argued that its OFDM patents forms the basis of WiMAX technology. The company already has a couple of OFDM royalty-bearing license agreements under its belt and the expansion of such a scheme could force Intel and other WiMAX vendors to pay Qualcomm nonetheless.
Aside from new leadership, the IEEE is taking additional measures to ensure the effectiveness of the new working group:
- Working group executive committee members must hammer out a plan to “identify and address any efforts to dominate” the group, and how they will make sure no such dominance occurs. The IEEE standards board also has established an oversight committee to work with the executive committee and “assist them in implementing corrective actions.”
- All participants must disclose their “true affiliations” at each meeting-meaning, according to the IEEE, “any person or organization that, directly or indirectly, has requested, paid for or otherwise sponsored his/her participation.”
- All ballot and ballot resolution groups will be dissolved and re-formed. The working group can then move forward with the work they’ve already done or consider alternative technologies.
