Intel bankrolls mobile WiMax

Chip maker Intel is offering generous funds to service providers willing to gamble on WiMax

Broadband service provider Pipex Wireless has published the results of its WiMax trial in Stratford-upon-Avon, coinciding with reports that its financial backer Intel has promised a “blank cheque” to European carriers willing to deploy the technology for fixed and mobile voice over IP (VoIP) and data broadband services.

“We will do whatever is necessary to make WiMax wireless broadband ubiquitous on a global scale,” Ashish Patel, managing director for Intel Capital in Western Europe, told The Business Online.com.

In what analysts regarded as a major endorsement of the technology, another Intel-backed operator, Sprint Nextel, announced last week that it will spend $3bn (£1.6bn) to build a WiMax network across the US over the next two years.

But while fixed WiMax services in the UK may deliver broadband to rural communities where other fixed broadband links do not reach, competition in urban areas from DSL and fibre may prove too fierce for another access technology to gain a foothold. And WiMax has yet to prove conclusively that it can support the roaming mobile usage that Intel is pushing for by integrating chipsets into portable devices such as notebook computers and mobile phones.

Other UK operators already using fixed WiMax within their own core networks noted that mobile WiMax will have similar economics to third-generation (3G) networks and will face regulatory, spectrum and interference hurdles. “The ‘we will build it and they will come’ attitude that Intel is embarking on has failed in the telecoms industry in the past and could fail now,” said operator Thus in a statement.

Falk Bleyl, Thus’s senior product manager for VoIP, argued that Intel is just trying to scale up its own manufacturing as a chip maker. “I’m dubious about whether there is any point in using a scattergun approach to achieve blanket coverage over the country,” he said. “Why would anyone want to swap from wired to wireless unless there was a compelling mobility argument?”

Meanwhile, the recent Pipex Wireless test achieved 2Mbit/s upstream and downstream from inside an office 1.2km from a base station. The trial was conducted in conjunction with WiMax equipment maker Airspan in the 3.6GHz to 3.8GHz radio frequency waveband. Outdoor links using external antennae provided between 9Mbit/s and 10Mbit/s, but increasing the distance from the base station to 6km saw rates drop to between 4Mbit/s and 6Mbit/s.

Pipex’s business development director, Graham Currier, said the trial suggested WiMax connections from stationary equipment work well for data and VoIP, but voice calls from moving vehicles such as cars or trains were not as robust.

“You can drive somewhere and get a static connection,” Currier said. “You’d call that nomadic. But if you got in a car and drove along there’s a risk you’d lose the service because it’s not ‘mobile’.”

The chipsets required to give mobile WiMax an even chance of success will not be widely available until 2008 at the earliest, however, giving providers such as Pipex plenty of time to experiment with the technology and decide whether it can prove a viable alternative to 3G.

“The key driver for Intel is its Centrino chip, which is likely to be available around the first or second quarter of 2008,” added Currier.