Yesterday, the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board (SASB) announced its plan to enable the IEEE 802.20 Working Group to move forward with its work to develop a mobile broadband wireless access standard. The new plan calls for the working group’s reorganization including the appointment of new officers as well as new balloting and balloting resolution committees.
The 802.20 controversy with the IEEE stemmed from the domination of Qualcomm’s Flarion. Scott Fulton, of BetaNews has an excellent summary of recent developments:
A bitter dispute between Mobile WiMAX partners Intel and Motorola, and wireless broadband partners Qualcomm and Kyocera, over the possible adoption of a Qualcomm technology as wireless broadband standard 802.20 forced the IEEE yesterday to order the complete reorganization of the 802.20 Working Group.
Both sides in the dispute have been crying foul since last November, when Intel and Motorola alleged that a merged standards proposal to the Working Group blending elements of Qualcomm and Kyocera technologies violated IEEE procedures. Suspicion over the way these complaints were handled by the Group’s chairman at the time, Jerry Upton, led the companies to allege that he was actually a paid consultant for Qualcomm - an allegation which Upton later admitted.
Standards are adopted in IEEE working groups under a one-person/one-vote protocol. Motorola and Intel alleged that Upton’s chairmanship of the Group led to a 2003 election of committee officers that was too heavily weighted in Qualcomm’s favor.
A report released yesterday by the Standards Board of the IEEE Standards Association stated, “After completing our investigation and hearing from interested parties, the SASB unanimously concluded that the existing IEEE 802.20 process was not effectively serving the IEEE-SA goal of high-quality standards achieved through a fair and open process.”
The report went on to state that the SASB decided to excuse from the Working Group decision making authority anyone who might have a conflict of interest, “in an effort to provide clearly neutral leadership and to eliminate perceptions of possible bias.” The Wall Street Journal learned this dismissal affected Upton and three other members.
While yesterday’s dismissal stopped short of finding fault or placing blame, it clearly gave hope for key Qualcomm rivals who have contended for a year or more that the company has been using monopolistic tactics, based around the extension of standards built on its patent portfolio, to muscle a dominant position for itself in wireless broadband.
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