Flash-OFDM challenges EV-DO: key vendors add credibility to wireless plaform of future

America's Network, Nov 15, 2004 by Grahame Lynch

Just a few short years after the wireless industry engaged in a heated battle about the benefits of CDMA versus TDMA/GSM, a new technological dividing line is emerging. Now, a debate is raging about orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and its market position versus EV-DO.

Many industry experts contend OFDM is the platform of the future. But it faces many challenges, including the fact that most service providers are constrained in their technology choices by their spectrum holdings. Another uncertainty involves whether a proprietary version of OFDM from a small company can emerge as a credible competitor.

However, OFDM recently has made a move into the mainstream, propelled by the emergence of Flash-OFDM as a contender for mobile broadband and the anticipation of Wi-Max and large scale Wi-Fi rollouts.

OFDM got a big boost recently when vendors Qualcomm and Nortel Networks backed it. Qualcomm announced in October that two enhancements to its CDMA standards will incorporate OFDM. Under the first enhancement, EV-DO will provide a "soft" transmission of data packets from multiple cells in order to provide multi-casting services combining video, voice and data--using not CDMA, but OFDM. And a separate FLO technology platform will provide an OFDM-based alternative link to provide multicasting, even where the primary link still employs EV-DO or WCDMA protocols.

Nortel, meanwhile, is more agnostic about standards than Qualcomm, which derives much income from CDMA patent royalties. Still, Nortel has much at stake in ensuring a decent product life for the investment in its CDMA offerings. So, when a CDMA marketing director from that firm backs OFDM as a technology of choice, it is noteworthy.

"We believe that future wireless wide area network access systems beyond 3G are likely to be based on OFDM and MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology," says Ruchi Prasad, global CDMA marketing director for Nortel. "And operators need to consider technology enhancements--one being Flash OFDM and others being High Speed Downlink Packet Access (for WCDMA) and EV-DO (for CDMA) to enable them to offer advanced wireless broadband services and increase revenue potential."

Nortel's endorsement of Flash OFDM is especially interesting because it is the proprietary technology of Flarion Technologies, a company barely five years old that lists Cisco Systems as a key shareholder.

What makes Flarion's Flash-OFDM so hot is the increasing probability that it will provide the platform for at least two national mobile broadband networks in the United States.

U.S. BACKING

Its key installation is Nextel, the idiosyncratic wireless operator that comprehensively demolished mainstream wireless orthodoxy when it successfully deployed Motorola's proprietary iDEN technology to sign the nation's highest APRU-generating customer base.

Nextel sees less risk in pursuing eccentric technology choices than the more conservative business strategists at Sprint, Verizon, Cingular and AT&T Wireless. So it's no surprise that it is taking a shot on the fourth generation with Flash-OFDM.

Nextel's 2.5 Ghz Flash-OFDM installation is confined to a commercial trial covering about 1 million POPs (and 2,000 paying and non-paying customers) in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Neither Nextel nor Flarion are particularly keen to elaborate on details of the 125-150 cell-site trial, presumably because commercial negotiations between the two are at a sensitive stage.

But the few user reports to have filtered out from the trial are positively glowing. Two Prudential Securities analysts, Chris Larsen and Anthony Gerrits, signed onto the service in late September and spent a day testing it in various environments, including a shopping mall, a business park, a highway and at the local airport using various applications such as uploading and downloading files and streaming video.

According to the two, measured throughput speeds varied between 300 kbps and 1.6 Mbps. "It is not clear to us these varying measurements are a function of Nextel's network or the testing service, but we do note that the majority of readings we saw were ahead of the 400 kbps-600 kbps range we have observed while running Verizon Wireless' EV-DO service," Larsen and Gerrits say.

Both are also impressed with Nextel's pricing for the service, with the cheapest price plan costing just $600 in the first year. Not only is this cheaper than rival EV-DO offerings, but puts it firmly into DSL-substitute territory (BellSouth's 256K DSL offering costs about $450 per year.)

NEW DEPLOYMENT

Flarion scored another coup last month when the nation's largest holder of 700 Mhz spectrum, Aloha Wireless, committed to a 2005 trial of Flash-OFDM with a plan to offer public safety and DSL-substitute services. Ronny Haraldsvik, Flarion's vice president of global communications and marketing, says this new trial underlines a key strength of its technology: It can operate in just 1.25 MHz of paired spectrum anywhere between 400 MHz and 3.5 GHz on the frequency band.