3G and Beyond: Promises, Problems of WiMax, Its Offspring

Third-generation (3G) networks with speeds ranging from 144 Kbps to more than 2 Mbps for data trnsmission. 4G ready? below texts are relating news.

``Necessity is the mother of invention,'' said the Greek philosopher Plato more than two millennia ago. But the history of human technology thereafter has shown that necessity alone cannot make an invention commercially successful if it fails to get political or financial backing. This is why the eyes of many Korean engineers and government officials are fixed on Geneva this week, where the general conference of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is being held. The panel is likely to decide whether it will incorporate the Korea-driven communication technology called Mobile WiMax (or ``WiBro'' in Korea) as an international standard for the IMT-2000 third-generation (3G) telecommunication platform. The Mobile WiMax is one of the competing technologies for the faster mobile Internet and voice call networks. South Korea has played a main role in developing the technology, with Samsung Electronics, Korea Telecom and Posdata having making serious investments. The Ministry of Information and Communication is also deeply involved in the project, promoting it as one of its greatest achievements over the past few years. The Mobile WiMax is fast and long-reaching, and thus has been expected to be a possible replacement for both the cellular phone network and the Wi-Fi wireless Internet network. It is supposed to be much faster than Wi-Fi and is able to send and receive signals in fast-moving vehicles. The reach is still shorter than the cellular phone network but still covers a wide area. Even though such technological prowess, its commercial success is yet to come. Supporters believe that one of the big hurdles is recognition as a global standard. Some ITU member nations such as Germany and China are known to have been against it as they want to protect their own industries. The ITU meetings have delayed recognition of Mobile WiMax as an IMT-2000 standard for years, but this time, the Korean delegation is very determined to pass the test. ``I believe that the odds are more than 70 percent,'' a Samsung Electronics executive said on condition of anonymity. ``A new market will open once it becomes the new standard. More than 50 million gadgets will be sold with the WiMax receiver built in.'' There are numerous cases in history of a promising invention fading due to lack of industry support. The best-known case is that of the video tape format war between the 1970s and the 1980s. Sony was thought to have a technological edge with its smaller Betamax type, but the bulky VHS type supported by multiple manufacturers eventually won the battle.Similar worries have been raised about the future of the Mobile WiMax format. According to the Information Ministry's initial plan, there should be millions of people using the WiBro service from Korea Telecom or SK Telecom by now. But in reality, only around 67,000 are subscribing to it with some of them believed to be employees of the companies. A big reason for such unpopularity is mobile service firms' reluctance toward it. As the voice call services are making huge profits in almost every market in the world, the firms don't wish to damage this business by offering WiMax services, the Samsung executive says. The lack of a ``Killer Application'' is another reason that consumers are so far paying very little attention to WiMax, he said. Competition against other mobile technologies is also a daunting problem. HSPA, LTE, UMB and iBurst are all ready to take the spotlight. Especially, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) has become Mobile WiMax's nemesis since it is based on the GSM network platform, the most widely used mobile network with some 2.5 billion users worldwide. According to Britain-based Juniper Research, HSPA will dominate the mobile broadband network deployments by making up 70 percent of total subscribers in 2012, with Mobile WiMax having only 9 percent of the market. Amid such a gloomy forecast, Korean firms are still betting high on foreign markets. Samsung was selected as a major provider of network equipment to Sprint Nextel as the firm is committed to spending $5 billion over the next three years to build a Mobile WiMax network in the eastern part of the United States, including New York and Washington, D.C. ``Whether it wins ITU recognition or not, we will keep going forward,'' the executive said.In Japan, Korea Telecom last week joined a consortium of ACCA Networks and NTT DoCoMo in the bidding for WiMax licenses to be granted by the Japanese government by the end of the year.``Given the population and economy of Japan and its 5 million wireless modem users, the potential is enormous," Han Hoon, head of KT's strategic planning team, said in a release last week.

Beyond 3G Apart from the ongoing 3G battle, there are people who are already preparing for the distant future. Last week, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) of Korea demonstrated a wireless transmission platform fashionably named the NoLA (Nomadic Local Area Wireless Access). With a download speed of up to 3.6 gigabits per second, it is by far faster than 3G technologies mentioned above. Theoretically, the NoLA network will enable one to download a DVD movie file in just a couple of seconds, which takes around one minute when using the vernacular 100-megabits line, ETRI said. Previously, the fastest data transmission rate available to users on the move was 1 gigabit per second, which was displayed by Samsung Electronics. ``With many countries engaged in a fierce competition to preempt the standardization in the 4G communications market, we have successfully developed and demonstrated the 3.6-gbps technology, putting South Korea a step ahead of other rivals in the race,'' Choi Mun-kee, head of ETRI, said during a demonstration held at the institution's headquarters in Daejeon last week. ETRI is planning to start lobbying international groups from late next year to make NoLA a 4G standard, and to commercialize the technology around 2012. But the commercial prospect is still foggy, given that even the 3G technologies are far from making significant profits, ETRI admits, saying it is committed to doing the research alone if companies take a lukewarm attitude in making investment in the NoLA platform.

source: korea times