Mobile WiMax may not make the cut when placed against its wireless competitors, according to recent research from Frost & Sullivan.

The research company believes that if spectrum auctions and commercial mobile WiMax rollouts compliant to Wave 2 Phase 2 certification do not take place by the end of the year, the market scope for mobile WiMax on a global basis will be "insignificant." Frost & Sullivan said further that the technology is facing a several challenges that are likely to make it "unfeasible as a mobile access technology."

However, Frost & Sullivan said that the work carried out on mobile WiMax has the potential to spur new ventures, which could potentially lead mobile WiMax to merge with 3G LTE.

"Recent events have been unfavourable toward mobile WiMax," Frost & Sullivan Program Manager Luke Thomas said in a statement today. "For example, Sprint-Nextel recently announced a delay to the commercial roll-out of its mobile WiMax service, Xohm, and has now stated that the first commercial service of Xohm will be in Baltimore in September 2008 followed by Washington DC and Chicago by Q4 2008 (provided the new WiMax venture 'Clearwire' deal closes by Q4 2008)."

Sprint and Clearwire announced in May they would combine their WiMax businesses to encourage the technology's advancement. Industry giants including Intel and Google backed the merger with $3.2 billion in combined investments.

Wireless challengers

Thomas continued to point out that any operator looking at Mobile WiMax has to keep in mind that 97% of laptops are shipped with Wi-Fi. He further noted that 3G LTE is expected to be a fully ratified standard by the end of 2008 or beginning of 2009, with deployments slated to occur in late 2009 or first months of 2010 offering peak data rates of up to 170 Mbps.

According to Frost & Sullivan, mobile WiMax faces additional challenges from dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular mobile phones, the number of which are on the rise.

The company noted that Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sony Ericsson recently invited all interested parties to join an initiative to keep royalty levels for essential LTE patents in mobile devices below 10% of the retail price.

Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan said that it is still unclear if members of the WiMax Forum have reached an agreement pertaining to the IP (intellectual property) rights they possess for mobile WiMax. That, in turn, encouraged some forum members, including Intel and Samsung, to form the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) to address IP rights.

Thomas estimated that 2009 will be the year when operators begin to realize that mobile WiMax can no more be considered as a "feasible mobile broadband access technology."

"In terms of indoor wireless broadband, Wi-Fi fits well in this space and with the emergence of 802.11n, which includes MIMO, throughputs would be far better than what Mobile WiMax can deliver," he said. "With respect to outdoor mobile broadband environments, users would expect mobile WiMax to seamlessly hand off to cellular networks in the absence of WiMax reception. In reality this is not possible as mobile WiMax is not backward compatible with existing cellular technologies."

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News - Electronic News

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on WiMAX, a roundup of content related to the next-gen wireless comms technology