Asia's WiMAX adoption gains momentum

Ronny Gorlicki, executive vice president, sales, Comsys Communication and Signal Processing Ltd, discussed the issues and challenges of WiMAX deployment in Asia. Excerpts:



Which countries will lead in WiMAX deployment in Asia?

Three countries are investing heavily in WiMAX—Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Some China base station manufacturers are investing in product development, but they expect to sell outside of China. India is going to be there before China–no question about it. China will delay WiMAX deployment because it is pushing for 3G as it has yet to release the licenses for its proprietary 3G technology, TD-SCDMA. For the rest of Asia, they are pretty advanced. They have 2G, 3G and Wi-Fi services—all of which will be converged into a single device.

When will the market start to pick up significantly?

We expect WiMAX deployment to be in 2008. Right now we are targeting the handset market. Our latest product–the ComMAX–a baseband processor for mobile Internet convergence, provides extensive power and cost savings at both chip and handset levels, and is a cost-effective path toward seamless 4G services. The processor and accompanying reference designs will be available in the market this year. Therefore we see our customers being able to introduce their products in mid-2008.



Why choose WiMAX over 3G or HSDPA?

There is a huge demand to complement WiMAX with 2G. Many countries don't have nationwide coverage for 3G, so 2G is a very important technology. We see that there are fixed line carriers that want to get into the wireless. As there is no way they can get into cellular, WiMAX is a big opportunity for them, plus the cost to deploy it is not too high. For 2G operators, WiMAX offers a better data rate than HSDPA. Also, to transfer 1bit of WiMAX is about 1/10 of what it costs to transfer it in HSDPA. WiMAX is a fantastic opportunity for them to be able to give 3G services without investing in 3G.



From a technological standpoint, do you see any deterrents to the growth of WiMAX in Asia?

One is the allocation of spectrum. WiMAX will have the image of the cellular technology. If you cannot offer the availability of spectrum for this technology, it won’t take off. It has to be a spectrum like what we have today in cellular. The allocation of spectrum has to be defined.



Some telecom operators, like Sprint Nextel, have already announced their investments in WiMAX networks. Will others follow?

A nationwide operator announcing that it sees WiMAX as a competitive 4G solution for its subscriber indicates that WiMAX is reality. This is not just a door opener; this pushed the door totally open. The volume that a company like Sprint Nextel will generate makes this technology very attractive, especially now that they are talking about a hundred million subscribers. The economic benefits of volume production will come into play.