Wireless broadband system looks toward WiMax

Although standardized products that are expected to drive down the price of WiMax wireless broadband gear may be as much as a year away, Alvarion Inc. on Wednesday used the Wireless Communications Association (WCA) conference in Washington, D.C., to roll out equipment that it said can be easily upgraded to support the emerging standard.

Alvarion already makes its own proprietary wireless broadband infrastructure, which it sells to carriers that want to provide high-speed Internet access over long distances. The BreezeMax product line introduced Wednesday, based on an Alvarion chip, includes wireless base stations that later will be able to serve WiMax CPE (customer premises equipment). All that carriers will need in order to support the new CPE is a firmware upgrade, according to Patrick Leary, assistant vice president of marketing at Alvarion, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Vendors including Alvarion and Intel Corp. are counting on high-volume production of WiMax silicon to drive down the price of customer gear and make wireless broadband a profitable carrier service. WiMax is designed to deliver data speeds comparable to cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) services over a distance of as much as 30 miles. The WiMax Forum industry group expects to begin certifying WiMax products by the end of this year.

The group is working toward specifications for three pieces of radio spectrum, around 2.5GHz, 3.5GHz and 5GHz, Leary said. Alvarion’s platform introduced Wednesday, the BreezeMax 3500, will use the 3.5GHz band. Once an Intel chip set that supports WiMax in the 3.5GHz band is commercially available it will be integrated into new, standardized versions of Alvarion’s CPE and its base stations, he said. Leary expects the chip set to ship around the middle of next year. That standardized, high-volume silicon should drive down costs significantly, Leary said.

The BreezeMax 3500 line will include “macro” base stations for dense urban areas and “micro” base stations for rural deployments, along with three kinds of CPE. One CPE device is for IP (Internet Protocol) data only, one supports both data and VOIP (voice over IP) and one has an integrated 802.11g wireless LAN access point for wireless hotspots or small businesses. For the CPE, Alvarion will charge carriers between $200 and $500 depending on volume, capacity and configuration. The micro base stations will range from $10,000 to $15,000 and the macro versions from $50,000 to $60,000.

Though much attention has been focused on the licensed 2.5GHz and unlicensed 5GHz bands, Alvarion is aiming at the initial sweet spot with a 3.5GHz product, according to Leary. That band has already been licensed for wireless carrier services in many countries outside North America, he said. The 3.5GHz BreezeMax products have been in trials at carriers in Europe and Asia.

The 3.5GHz band is “the most stable environment in a regulatory sense, and it’s where we believe mass deployment can be achieved most rapidly,” Leary said.

Yankee Group analyst Lindsay Schroth agreed. Outside the Western Hemisphere, many major carriers already hold spectrum in that range, she said. By contrast, WiMax deployment in the 2.5GHz range probably will have to wait for decisions by two big U.S. carriers, Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc., Schroth said. Unlicensed 5GHz services probably will remain the realm of enterprises and small rural providers, she added.

“The U.S. market in general is kind of up in the air in terms of how quickly people will deploy stuff,” Schroth said.