dailywireless.org » Nokia WiMAX: UK Tough, U.S. Litigious

Nokia WiMAX: UK Tough, U.S. Litigious

I want us to be friends, Faye. And we all know that friends don’t hit each other… unless they have to. — Get Shorty

Pipex Wireless, the WiMAX arm of UK telecoms firm Pipex, said on Thursday it will use technology from Nokia Siemens Networks to build some of its new WiMAX networks in the UK.

Pipex is trialling WiMAX services in England but has yet to launch a commercial product, says Unstrung. Pipex gave no value for the Nokia Siemens deal. Nokia Siemens Networks, formed on April 1, merges Nokia’s mobile networks unit and Siemens’s mobile and fixed carrier-related operations, and is the world’s second largest maker of mobile telecom network equipment.

In April 2006, Pipex created a joint venture, Pipex Wireless, with Intel, to trial WiMax services in British metro areas. The duo has rolled out services in the town of Milton Keynes and plans another in Warwick. Pipex’s current supplier is Airspan (Word doc). Nokia Siemens Networks will be used for Pipex Wireless’s third U.K. pilot at a location yet to be decided, says Graham Currier, the joint venture’s business development director.

Pipex put itself up for sale last month. Its assets include a web hosting business, 570,000 broadband customers and one of the UK’s only two WiMAX spectrum licences. BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse are all expected to look at the company, although analysts say the 500 million pound ($984 million) price tag is too high.

According to Unstrung:

Gabriel Brown, chief analyst at Unstrung Insider, can’t see the Pipex Wireless rollouts ever getting beyond limited, local services, and believes there won’t be much money in it for any vendors even in the long term.
“There’s no sense in building anything like a national WiMax network in the U.K., where we already have five 3G mobile operators and DSL access covering nearly the entire population. What would be the point?” asks Brown, who says Pipex has been making a lot of noise over very little.
“And the spectrum Pipex currently has [3.8 GHz] isn’t much use,” he adds. “A lot more could be done with the 2.5GHz spectrum that’s coming up for auction in the U.K. soon, but even then I can’t see that being used for much more than wireless city initiatives and for connecting local government buildings.”

Many mobile firms are having to write off their huge 3G costs, after spending more than 100 billion euros ($128 billion) some six years ago for 3G spectrum. Now they are attempting to thwart WiMax in the hope of forcing people to use their 3G services.

The GSM Association is particularly concerned about the fate of the 3G extension bands (2.5 – 2.690 GHz), which it believes must be reserved for the IMT2000 (3G) technologies.

Pipex holds the national license for 3.5GHz spectrum but, to date, hasn’t used the asset, leaving the PCCW-owned UK Broadband the only significant player in licensed broadband wireless services with its nationwide 3.4GHz holdings.

UK Broadband’s owner is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong telecoms giant, Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW), which currently owns all 15 licenses for the 3.4GHz UK band.

Sprint’s U.S. WiMAX Cities will use Nokia Siemens WiMAX (802.16e-2005) gear, in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Seattle. Nokia says their Flexi BTS Multiradio Platform enables radio network operators to halve the number of sites they need.

Sprint says it will light up its initial WiMax markets late this year with a full rollout of the network beginning in 2008. Sprint Nextel intends to cover 100 million people nationwide with mobile WiMAX by the end of 2008.

Nokia’s Flexi Platform also has a Flash-OFDM component (pdf) to exploit the 450MHz band (and possibly 700MHz), which could be key component for Sprint’s 700 MHz stategy to deliver combined rural/public service broadband access.

Qualcomm’s Flash-OFDM Flexband, which was originally developed by Flarion, uses duplex, 1.25 MHz carrier sectors. They claim it can sustain 2.5 Mbps throughput on the downlink with consistent performance of up to 800 Kbps at the cell edge.

Aloha Partners launched a pilot 700 MHz mobile data network in Tucson, Arizona, in 2005. Aloha Partners’ Charles Townsend says about 25% of the country is already interference-free in channels 54 and 59. Aloha owns channels 54 and 59, covering some 175 million pops, including 84% of the pops in the top 40 markets.

Flarion, now owned by Qualcomm, claims their duplex, 802.20-based “standard” is three times more spectrally efficient than CDMA2000, and has 3-4 times further range than 2.5 GHz Mobile WiMAX.

In other news, today Nokia agreed to pay Qualcomm $20 million to give Nokia the right to continue using Qualcomm UMTS patents after April 9 when an important IP agreement between the two firms expires. Nokia’s announcement comes just a few days after Qualcomm filed a patent-infringement suit against Nokia. Qualcomm and Nokia signed their current license agreement for CDMA products in July 2001.

The $20 million payment — coupled with Nokia countersuits against Qualcomm — threaten to extend the litigation between the two firms into the distant future.

Meanwhile, Motorola’s WiMAX group says it has nine 802.16e WiMAX contracts for it’s gear and is taking part in 25 trials, worldwide. Sprint says Motorola gear will be used in Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

Clearwire and Motorola are also tight. According to Wireless Week, Clearwire also has licenses for 2.5 GHz spectrum covering 210 million people in the United States. Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff (left), says they have spectrum covering all or parts of 72 of the top 100 markets.

Yes, but does Motorola have the right 700MHz stuff for a rural broadband play? Why should Motorola rob Peter to pay Paul if they can squeeze Mobile WiMAX into a 700MHz slot?