Wireless broadband unlikely to push 3G aside

For fans of 3G who are eyeing the impact of emerging wireless broadband technology, the news is good: In a few years, you'll probably have a choice.

The emerging mobile WiMax standard and other networks that follow you around will probably be sharing the air in the next few years, but they aren't likely to displace the technologies that big cellular operators are deploying now and planning to upgrade, according to carriers, vendors and industry analysts. Instead, look for wireless broadband to be deployed by mobile newcomers, such as cable operators and smaller carriers, and as a supplement to a few big carriers' 3G networks.

Both 3G and mobile wireless broadband systems are designed to deliver high-speed services to users on the move, but they have different technical foundations. Whereas 3G is the latest generation of cellular technology, wireless broadband systems are the first generation of new types of networks. The two paths may converge in a future "4G" system, but that is still years away from being defined, according to Michael Cai, an analyst at Parks Associates, in Dallas.

Today, carriers and analysts view wireless broadband as well suited to rich multimedia and enterprise applications that are more likely to be used on notebook PCs than on handsets. Meanwhile, cellular systems such as 3G can keep doing what they do now, serving many users over a larger area using smaller devices.

Much attention has been focused on WiMax, which should be out this year in fixed systems but around 2007 is expected to go mobile with the still-developing IEEE 802.16e standard. The WiMax Forum foresees mobile users getting at least 1M bps (bits per second) and being able to do real-time applications such as VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls. That compares with average data speeds of about 400K bps (bits per second) to 700K bps on the major 3G systems.

There are other wireless broadband technologies, namely FLASH-OFDM (Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff-Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) from Flarion Technologies Inc. and UMTS TD-CDMA (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Time-Division Code Division Multiple Access) gear from IPWireless Inc. Both are available now. CDMA powerhouse Qualcomm Inc.'s acquisition of Flarion earlier this month could make FLASH-OFDM a formidable competitor to WiMax. Qualcomm said it sees wireless broadband based on OFDM as one of a range of technologies that cellular operators may deploy. But the potential for standards-based economies of scale -- even though a mobile standard isn't expected until at least late this year -- has put WiMax in the center of the picture for many in the industry.

WiMax can't outrun 3G in the next five years because it will take about that long to get established, in the view of IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi.

"In the short-to-medium term, it is going to disrupt nothing, because I don't think it'll even find itself a very strong footing in that time," Bakhshi said. "By the time it comes to market ... the cellular world would have progressed, too," he added.

The roadmaps of major mobile operators in both of the world's major cellular technologies, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA, are pretty solid, said Cai of Parks Associates. This is largely true even in China, a relatively young mobile market, he said.