Nearly three years ago, telecom operators were in a guarded agreement that WiMAX will find its niche and leave UMTS/3GSM alone. They also believed that data throughput and transmission range will decide separate dominant applications and target user segments for the two standards. The medley of technologies and standards is far from clearing out into something that either the device manufacturers or the consumer can take advantage of. Did it really surprise anyone then when Sprint announced plans to deploy WiMAX and called it the "first 4G nationwide broadband mobile network?"

According to In-Stat, worldwide WiMAX subscribers will reach 222,000 in 2006 and grow to 19.7 million by end-2010. Industry reports seem to concur that most of the subscribers will be in the Asia-Pacific region. In China alone, In-Stat forecasts anywhere between 1.2 million and 3.5 million WiMAX subscribers by 2010, up from 8,000 in 2005. In-Stat calls attention to China Netcom, which started deployment of WiMAX 802.16-2004 systems (3.5GHz) for fixed wireless access in the Guangdong province early last year with a service aimed at small-to-medium businesses and the residential market.

In India, BSNL, a telco, started to roll out carrier-grade, WiMAX Forum-certified products from Aperto Networks last year. The deployment of base stations and subscriber units across six cities—Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune—and four rural districts in Haryana state is expected to be completed this month.

Even as WiMAX deployments are just beginning, the Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) or IEEE 802.20 working group aims to specify PHY and MAC layers of an air interface for operation in licensed bands below 3.5GHz, optimized for IP-data transport and with 1Mbps minimum peak data rates per user. Uniquely, this standard will support vehicular mobility up to 250kph. The IEEE-SA standards board temporarily suspended work on the IEEE 802.20 project in mid-2006, only to resume it last December with a two-year extension.

Then there's the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) project to improve the UMTS mobile-phone standard. It aims to specify download rates of 100Mbps and upload rates of 50Mbps for every 20MHz of spectrum, and a minimum of 200 active users (active phone calls) in every 5MHz cell. A company has proposed the High Speed OFDM Packet Access (HSOPA) as part of the LTE upgrade path for UMTS. Unlike HSDPA/HSUPA, HSOPA is a new air interface system.

Whatever the technology, "4G" ultimately implies a device that enables IP-based voice and streaming multimedia-based communication, and can control other devices and transfer information using a combination of short-range PAN and WLAN, and longer-range cellular communication technologies. The applications that such a device can enable at home and at work could bring about a small cultural change simply by changing the way we go about our everyday lives.

But we're tripping over standards and technologies for 4G when out of an estimated 2.5 billion cellular subscribers worldwide, a little over 400 million—a mere 16 percent—subscribe to 3G services. For one, 3G handsets aren't cheap, and the handset makers quote chip prices for that. Then the service providers offering 3G command steep pricing.

Driving down 2G costs opened up new markets for cellphones and services—the rural and other low-cost markets. For instance, operators made handset manufacturers realize new opportunities in offering low-cost handsets. A basic Motorola model "made in India" now retails in that country and others like the Philippines for about $25 to $30. And cellphone subscriptions in these markets, particularly in India, are rapidly growing.

Making 3G services affordable so that they can reach high levels of usage will pave the way for 4G acceptance.

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