Unstrung reports that networking giant Ericsson is pulling the plug on WiMax development to concentrate on upgrading their 3G cellular technology.

The company confirmed on Thursday afternoon that it stopped internal WiMax development efforts at the end of last year and is instead relying on a reseller strategy for the technology. “Right now, we don’t work on a WiMax system,” says Mikael Persson, manager of strategy and business development for WCDMA at Ericsson. “We’ve invested in the basic research, but we don’t see the point in taking that final investment to prepare factories… because we don’t see the volumes in the market.”

He says Ericsson will continue to resell Airspan WiMax equipment.

“We want to focus our resources where we’ll get the most bang for our buck. And right now, there’s no bang at all putting it into WiMax,” says Persson.

“HSPA is where the market is happening right now. I’m really puzzled by this. I don’t understand how this market [WiMax] will survive.”

Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin issued a barely disguised threat to this effect at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona in February. Sarin expressed frustration at the slow pace of mobile technology development, saying that if LTE progressed more quickly, there would be no need to deploy WiMax. (See 3GSM: Mobile’s Fear Factor.)

WiMAX proponents say that OFDMA beats 3G CDMA (EVDO/UMTS) with better fade resistance, spectral efficiency and power management for low-data-rate users (with Scaleable sub-channels). Using Time-Division Multiplexing for simultaneous two-way communications, OFDMA enables cost/effective MIMO and beamforming for better range, performance and capacity.

Because channels differ in size in different countries, the 802.16 standard supports all of the various channel sizes, ranging from 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz — on licensed and unlicensed frequencies. While WiMAX is generally relegated to the less ideal 2.5/3.5 GHz band, service is expected to be faster and cheaper than 3G. The 700 MHz band promises longer range (10-12 miles).

Cellular operators are plotting the next stage for 3G, referred to as 3G Plus or, incorrectly, as 4G, but the standards setters at the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have dubbed it Long-Term Evolution (LTE), reports EE Times.

LTE also pushes mobile broadband to a theoretical 100 Mbits/second for downlink and 50 Mbits/s for uplink–well beyond what HSPA (the combination of HSDPA and its uplink counterpart, HSUPA) will be able to offer in a year or so.

LTE may “once and for all, draw the line” between the evolutionary path of the existing network infrastructure and the WiMax-based mobile broadband promoted by new entrants.

Or maybe not.

Cellular’s LTE deployment is expected between late 2009 and 2011, the same time frame as the next generation WiMAX — the newly proposed 802.16m Mobile WiMAX standard.

The IEEE has started working on a new version of the 802.16 standard that could push data transfer speeds up to 1 Gbit/s while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing WiMax radios, reports Unstrung. Dubbed 802.16m, at the IEEE’s January session in London, the group hopes to complete the new spec by the end of 2009.

WiMAX Trends reports that delegates at the ITU Working Party 8F meeting in Cameroon recently, agreed that it is very likely that WiMAX - or rather, the IP-OFDMA technology underpinning 802.16e - will be adopted as an IMT-2000 standard at the World Radio Conference in October. The decision process for WiMAX is now on a fast track.

The IEEE says it wants to develop a competitive and significantly improved radio access technology, compliant with the ITU requirements for 4G, while maintaining interoperability with mobile WiMax. This will likely mean up to 1-Gbit/s (fixed) and 100-Mbit/s (mobile) speeds with improved broadcast, multicast and VOIP performance. The muscle behind 802.16m will be larger MIMO antenna arrays on top of an OFDM-based radio system.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 am.