Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
WiMAX technology has been pushing the mobile industry forward for the last several years. In many aspects, WiMAX can take the credit for the further development and falling price points of 3G, and even the accelerated development of LTE; Intel Corp. and others have referred to this as the “WiMAX effect.” Even the strongest of LTE supporters have said that their work is focused on catching up to WiMAX.
For the last few years WiMAX has been the only technology providing the content and applications industries have needed to make their next-generation ideas a reality. WiMAX is doing a lot of noticeable work with service providers, and has been for many years; however, WiMAX fulfills other broadband needs that many people know little about. This is mostly because many applications aren’t as glitzy as high-end consumer devices. But mobility isn’t just your app store. Mobile broadband encompasses a wide range of vertical markets that include some of the basic foundations of modern society: transportation and energy.
Over the next few months, I will provide a reality check with a four-part series on the work going on at the WiMAX Forum and the significant developments within the WiMAX industry. This week, my focus is on two new WiMAX Forum initiatives that will help vertical industries support their ever-increasing communications infrastructure needs. The WiMAX Forum and its members are working to help provide airline communications standardization and smart grid profiles and to meet the needs of the next decade and ensure vital services continue as demand increases.
Airport communications
The U.S. airport communications infrastructure is straining under the weight of 5,178 public use airports and an average of more than 25,000 commercial airline flights per day. With so many planes to track and coordinate, the aging air traffic system desperately requires an upgrade.
The Federal Aviation Administration and industry leaders are looking to WiMAX to solve their communication infrastructure troubles. WiMAX trials are already underway by a few airline carriers, but there is need for standardization to allow for a solution that would create an interoperable network across the entire U.S. airport system and launch a global airport communications system by 2020.
Next month, the WiMAX Forum will host a meeting with representatives from the FAA, EuroMACS and major WiMAX vendors to establish a WiMAX Forum initiative to create product standards for the 5.1 GHz band that will meet common international aviation regulator requirements. ITT Corp., a leader in air traffic management solutions, recently joined the WiMAX Forum, and we expect airline carriers to follow suit given the interest and commitment expressed to date.
I expect these standards-based aviation solutions to really take off in late 2011 or early 2012, and eventually represent billions of dollars in business for the WiMAX ecosystem.
Another promising revenue stream for equipment vendors is smart grid technology by means of WiMAX.
Smart grids
In the past couple of years, the “smart grid” concept has generated a great deal of attention because of its potential to revolutionize how utilities do business. Smart grids will create “smart” power grids overlaid with WiMAX technology that will enable utilities to communicate real-time information between energy production plants and customers. The increased data flow on usage, failures, and other information allows a utility to run a more reliable, cost-efficient service – the benefits of which are shared among both the company and its customers.
To achieve this, the utility companies must introduce real-time, two-way broadband communication across the national grid with access points at each consumer location. WiMAX has already proven to be a perfect fit for smart grid applications with the benefit of its global, open standard, high bandwidth capability and economies of scale with low chipset prices. But promising initiatives like this don’t come without their obstacles, and that is where the WiMAX Forum and its members are placing a significant amount of attention in the near future. There are three primary hurdles for deploying smart grids: spectrum, security and latency.
Currently, spectrum in the 3.65 GHz band for fixed and mobile applications is available to utility companies in the U.S., but more, and perhaps different, spectrum is needed. Utility companies are lobbying the Federal Communications Commission for a national 1.4 GHz license. WiMAX Forum member Airspan Networks has taken the innovative step of securing exclusive access to a privately held swathe of 1.4 GHz spectrum which, when coupled with WiMAX equipment in this band, has the potential to provide utilities a powerful solution on fully licensed and protected spectrum. Other countries are also taking the first steps to step aside spectrum for smart grids. For example, Canada has already allocated 50 megahertz in the 1.8 GHz band for radio systems carrying traffic exclusively for maintenance and management of the electrical grid.
Smart grids also require secure broadband networks that cannot be compromised, so extra security protocols will be needed to protect the integrity of a nationwide grid. While the WiMAX Forum already has robust security protocols available, utility companies will likely incorporate an additional proprietary layer.
Smart grid solutions are already starting to be deployed over WiMAX networks in the U.S. and Australia with potentially significant build outs over the course of the next three to five years. A growing number of wireless operators are eager to take charge of providing smart grid network solutions to utilities. However given the well-publicized latency challenges experienced by current 3G wireless networks, which are often overwhelmed by the growing number of data-hungry consumer devices, utility companies are not convinced. Instead the utilities firmly believe that they require their own separate networks to ensure reliability. Utility companies with private WiMAX networks would have the low latency and open standards needed to provide significant advantages over other solutions.
The WiMAX Forum’s Smart Grid initiative is in the process of developing protocols to address security and latency issues, as well as creating standardized profiles for these types of networks by mid-2011. Next month, the WiMAX Forum is hosting a Smart Grid Summit in Los Angeles to make marked progress with these efforts.
While the core of WiMAX business is still the service provider (over 590 operator networks covering over 620 million people), there are many other promising and real opportunities and applications that WiMAX will address beyond the delivery of mobile broadband and VoIP services for consumers and businesses. The need for improving air traffic communications systems and making smart grids a reality are vertical markets in which WiMAX is making a valuable contribution. Ultimately the goal of WiMAX is fulfilling a common need for reliable, cost-effective and high performance broadband networks, which are becoming ever more pervasive across every industry.
Next month, I will discuss another topic that is providing for differentiated and economically attractive service provider revenue models: wholesale strategies.
Declan Byrne joined the WiMAX Forum in May 2010 as the director of marketing. Byrne has more than 12 years of experience in the wireless industry and has held senior executive wireless corporations including Airspan and AT&T. He welcomes your comments at declan.byrne@wimaxforum.org.
