Truce is called in the WiBro war as Intel and LG agree to collaborate over the mobile standard 802.16e

Rethink IT, Jan, 2005

WIBRO VERSUS 3G

Another area where Korea's experience may be instructional for western vendors will be the positioning of WiBro against 3G. In the first phase, the Korean vendors are taking a conciliatory approach in the hope of" encouraging mobile carriers such as SKT to support WiBro and eventually provide integrated services. This means that WiBro's performance will be capped at 60-70 miles per hour, rather than more than 100 miles per hour, which it could technically support; and at 1Mbps end user data rate to the handset or laptop--about the same as advanced versions of the country's most popular cellular network, CDMA.

With the WiMAX faction still uncertain about how faar to position 802.16e as an alternative to cellular, the early experiences in Korea will be valuable to monitor.

Professor Dong-Ho Cho of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, says the limitations are partly technical--though both will be enhanced over time--but partly political. "Ground speed is a trade-off with data speed, and both are limited by the cell-site parameters," he said. "At the outset, we do not want to burden the system unduly, nor do we want WiBro to compete immediately with the 2.5G and 3G networks. We will test the system and improve data speed and connectivity over time."

BOOST FOR START-UPS

The convergence of WiBro and WiMAX will be a major boost for some start-ups that have focused on high mobility. Navini has worked extensively with Korean operators and has the capability to provide significant input into a WiBro-WiMAX bridge, which will in turn give it influence beyond its size and revenue base. It will also greatly raise Navini's perceived value--with one of the roadblocks to mobile WiMAX removed, the big players will gain confidence in this market and will accelerate their efforts, and may be prepared to pay a good price to acquire expertise rapidly through purchasing a start-up. Navini is already particularly close to Alcatel, which OEMs its equipment.

Another start-up benefiting from the US-Korean detente will be California chip designer TeleCIS Wireless, which is working on 802.16 chips but also has strategic alliances with Samsung and Korea Telecom. Its strategy is to develop integrated multi-protocol chipsets supporting combinations of Wi-Fi, WiMAX and WiBro simultaneously. David Sumi, head of marketing at the company and also secretary to the WiMAX Forum, said: "TeleCIS's first product will be a dedicated 802.16 WiMAX-conlpliant fixed access chip. This will be followed rapidly by a dual-mode--fixed and mobile--WiMAX chip for notebooks, PlDAs, handsets and other devices. Following that, we will introduce a tri-mode product for fixed and mobile WiMAX, plus the WLAN 802.11-a, -b and -g protocols, all in a single chip." This last product is scheduled for sampling in early 2007.

Again, while a start-up will find it hard to survive independently once WiMAX chips are demanded in high volume and the big names ship their silicon, the intellectual property that TeleCIS has developed, coupled with its rare knowledge of the WiBroWiMAX intersection, could make it all attractive takeover target for a larger organization, or could even enable it to build up sufficient OEM deals to take its place in the wider market unacquired.