Iindustry Insiders: Peter Curnow-Ford, WiMAX Expert

By Gerry Blackwell

Peter Curnow-Ford may never be a household name in the wireless industry, but it’s guys like Curnow-Ford—backroom boys, movers and shakers—who help push the industry forward.
A player in the IT-telecoms space for over 30 years, on both sides of the Atlantic, but mainly in the UK, Curnow-Ford has worked for big guns, such as Nortel Networks, Fujitsu, and Logica (consulting). He launched and ran his own enterprise messaging business. For five years, he worked with 3G-focused dot-coms in the U.S.
Now he gets his kicks helping “early stage” wireless companies. Curnow-Ford is deeply involved—as investor, director, executive, or all three—with four firms, and consults to others.
He’s executive chairman of Bluenowhere, a UK-based wholesale WiMAX operator set to launch commercially in 4Q09. He’s a non-executive director at Plasma Antennas, a maker of beam-forming antennas, originally for the military, but now also for the Wi-Fi/WiMAX industry.
He’s non-executive chairman of Eisar, a company looking to develop technology that will bring the multi-profile, multi-threading functionality of netbooks to the handheld form factor.
And he is a non-executive director at SafetyPay, a U.S.-based company developing solutions that will let mobile workers and merchants accept and securely authenticate credit/debit card payments anywhere.
We talked to Curnow-Ford recently about the companies he’s working with, the role WiMAX will play in an evolving wireless world and the very different approach to municipal and publicly-funded wireless in the UK.

Bluenowhere

Bluenowhere is working on two different WiMAX plays. Later this year, it will launch its 802.16e-based wholesale mobile WiMAX business in selected cities in Britain. (It has been involved in a pilot in Maidstone, Kent since early last year as part of a Mobile WiMAX Acceleration Group initiative.)
In the meantime, it’s developing a new model and infrastructure for a wholesale WiMAX business to support triple-play operators in rural areas offering voice, video, and broadband Internet services. “Whereas in urban areas, it’s 80% mobile and 20% fixed/nomadic,” Curnow-Ford says. “It will be the reverse in rural areas.”
The company plans to deliver at least 8 Mbps to rural homes using WiMAX for the last mile and very high-capacity millimeter-wave wireless technology from suppliers, such as GigaBeam and DragonWave for backhaul to the fiber backbone.
It hopes to find support for this in government initiatives flowing from the Digital Britain report, the preliminary recommendations of a parliamentary committee that include guaranteeing availability of 2-megabits-per-second (Mbps) or faster broadband access to every home and business in the country.
WiMAX will almost inevitably play a role, Curnow-Ford believes. While fiber-to-the-home is the logical choice for high-speed broadband services in much of the country, there will still be 8.9% of the population that for business and technological reasons can never get 2 Mbps over a wire.
“And 40% will never get [wireline] 8-Meg service,” he adds. That’s the minimum needed for a triple-play service.
The European Union, meanwhile, is mandating funding in the $1.5 billion range for national broadband initiatives, such as Digital Britain.

WiMAX to the max

Given his involvement with Bluenowhere, it’s no surprise Curnow-Ford is more bullish than many about the future of WiMAX. According to some, the technology is foundering and will be overwhelmed by LTE (Long Term Evolution), the GSM-based mobile broadband technology currently under development.
But as he points out, WiMAX has key advantages, quite aside from its head start over LTE, that should ensure its place in the 4G world.
First and most simply, he says, it’s “a good, flat IP architecture.” “Day one, out of the box, you can deploy WiMAX, users can take a USB dongle, connect to the network and immediately get 100% data access. That’s absolutely critical. And operators can then choose what kinds of applications and services to support—video, data, voice, machine-to-machine communications.”
Second, WiMAX offers unbeatable economics for new operators who would find it difficult or impossible because of the cost of 3G licenses to break into the wireless broadband business using traditional cellular technology.
“WiMAX allows small, medium, and large-scale companies to go out and deploy networks on a local, regional, or national basis,” Curnow-Ford says.
Finally, WiMAX uses an open network approach—no SIM cards, no walled gardens as in the traditional cellular model. “And that means it’s a brilliant tool for content developers and providers, and it’s a superb tool for service providers, enabling them to extend their reach.” Which is, of course, why Bluenowhere is using WiMAX.

WiMAX vs. LTE

Not that LTE won’t have a dominant role in the market for mobile telephony and handheld computing, Curnow-Ford concedes. But the beauty of WiMAX is that while it can compete with 3G and LTE on handhelds, it also connects laptops and netbooks.
This is something 3G claims to be able to do as well, but that it will increasingly only do with limitations, he argues. His mobile carrier, for example, recently started blocking Skype traffic over its 3G network.
And while WiMAX’s strength may be on the PC side, don’t write off its potential for delivering services to handhelds. He points to UQ Communications in Japan and Yota in Russia, both of which are finding innovative ways to mass market WiMAX services.
But WiMAX’s place is by no means assured, Curnow-Ford hastens to point out. It will require continued aggressive development by key operators such as Yota, UQ and U.S.-based Clearwire. He’s encouraged by what he sees.
He points to Clearwire’s recently announced partnership with an operator in Taiwan, a market too small to be of interest normally. The move, he says, is a canny play to secure Clearwire’s supply of WiMAX customer premise equipment (CPE), most of which is currently made in Taiwan. He also points to Clearwire forging new alliances with cable TV operators in the U.S. as evidence that it’s not letting up.

Muni WiMAX?

In Britain, Curnow-Ford points out, WiMAX is increasingly finding a role in municipal Wi-Fi because of its superior coverage capabilities. “Muni Wi-Fi” usually refers in America to efforts by local government to provide free or low-cost fixed and nomadic broadband wireless as an amenity. The market, for a few reasons, has evolved differently in the UK.
For one thing, 3G and Wi-Fi hotspots are more ubiquitous, so there are fewer gaps in  public broadband wireless availability. Also, EU and UK competition laws prohibit municipal governments building networks and then using them to deliver services in competition with private-sector operators.
There are ways around this. Local governments can be involved in funding networks if they then turn them over to a private sector partner to manage. But more often in Britain, commercial operators are having to build their own networks.
“It’s actually tended to hold back muni Wi-Fi a bit,” Curnow-Ford says. “But where it is happening, it’s done on a more constructive, longer-term basis. The business models coming out of this are ones that will work. And there is much greater cooperation between muni Wi-Fi operators and local authorities.”
This is in part because local governments are obliged by law to show clear-cut return on investment for any initiative in which they invest. So operators and local government have a strong incentive to work together and develop applications that can deliver financial returns and/or demonstrable public good.
Result: muni Wi-Fi in the UK is more about applications, such as connecting mobile municipal workers—allowing highly-paid experts to stay in one place and deliver their expertise to workers in the field, for example—or networking CCTV cameras, or enabling work-at-home programs that reduce traffic and pollution. Broadband access for consumers is an afterthought at best.
“The approach taken here is much more realistic,” Curnow-Ford believes. “And it tends to be much stickier—once [governments] have made investments [in one muni Wi-Fi application], they look for more they can do.”
The great thing about talking to a guy like Curnow-Ford who has so many irons in the fire is that you can get the big picture, but also drill down for as much detail as you want. The not so great thing: the conversation as a result could go on for days, if you didn’t, regrettably, cut it short.
Eisar? SafetyPay? Check out their Web sites. You won’t be bored.

The Future of 4G: LTE vs. WiMAX

By Gerry Blackwell

October 22, 2009

LTE, the 4G mobile broadband technology backed by major cellular network equipment providers and operators, casts a long shadow across the WiMAX landscape—even though LTE products are thin on the ground and no operator has launched commercial service using it.
Verizon, however, has committed to rolling out LTE (Long Term Evolution) starting next year, delivering ten times the data throughput of current 3G technologies. Others, including NTT DoCoMo in Japan, France Telecom,Vodafone in the UK, AT&T, and T-Mobile, have also said they will adopt LTE rather than WiMAX.
Meanwhile, Sprint, Clearwire, and Comcast in the U.S., UQ Communications in Japan, and Yota in Russia are all aggressively rolling out mobile-capable “4G” networks using the current version of WiMAX, 802.16e (2 to 10 Mbps), in urban markets where they will inevitably compete with 3G (and later, LTE) providers.
The WiMAX Forum claims that 504 operators in 145 countries have deployed WiMAX, but many use older 802.16d technology that cannot provide mobile services, and many are small operators in developing countries or rural regions.
How will the market unfold? Are LTE and WiMAX on a collision course? If so, which will prevail. Or will the two technologies co-exist, even complement each other? The answers are far from clear, and depend to a large extent on who you ask.

Tomato, tomato?

One thing most observers agree on: there isn’t much to choose between the technologies. Both grew out of the GSM air interface and use IP networking, an OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) RF modulation scheme and MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) smart antenna technology.
It’s hardly surprising they use many of the same building blocks, said Ciricia Proulx, senior product marketing manager for WiMAX at semiconductor giant Intel Corp., a major investor in WiMAX and WiMAX projects (Clearwire, UQ). There are only so many ways to deliver multi-megabit mobile throughput with seamless handoffs. Proulx estimated that WiMAX and LTE are “80% to 85% the same.”
Godfrey Chua, research manager in the wireless and mobile infrastructure group at IDC, agreed there are more similarities than differences, but pointed out that LTE “was designed with mobility in mind from the get-go, while 802.16 evolved from standards based on fixed wireless networking.” He conceded this mainly manifests in ways that users would rarely notice, but may still give LTE a slight technological advantage.
The technological differences between the two are a moving target, however.

Defining “4G”

The ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, is developing specifications for 4G mobile. Neither WiMAX, 802.16e, nor the current LTE standard, revision 8, meet basic preliminary objectives for 4G, said Phillip Redman, a vice president of research at consulting and analyst firm Gartner Inc.
Sprint and Clearwire’s use of the term 4G to describe their 802.16e technology does not reflect adherence to international standards, Redman pointed out. It refers to the fact that this is the fourth generation of mobile wireless technology deployed in North America.
How and when either camp will deliver a standard that does meet the yet-to-be-finalized ITU specs remains to be seen. It is anticipated that LTE will get there with revision 10 and WiMAX with a projected 802.16m. Estimates of when equipment based on these advanced standards will appear ranges from 2011 to 2015.
Despite the similarities of the two technologies, and despite suggestions from some that the two camps are notnecessarily on a collision course, discourse between and around them can get heated.    

In this corner

Redman wrote in a report last year, "WiMAX drives the hype for 4G, but LTE will be the dominant standard," A WiMAX skeptic and a perceived thorn in the industry’s side, he believes LTE’s dominance is not a question of technological superiority or even cost, but of market politics.
“Politics rules everything,” he said, explaining the reasons so many major mobile operators chose LTE rather than WiMAX as their upgrade path to 4G.
Those operators—Verizon, AT&T, NTT, et al—didn’t really choose the technology, Redman believes. They chose their suppliers: Ericsson and Nokia, tried-and-true Tier 1 mobile infrastructure equipment manufacturers that had decided not to back WiMAX.
If operators wanted to go with WiMAX, they had to bet on smaller Tier 2 suppliers, such as Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, and Alvarion. “It’s all about who you feel most comfortable with,” Redman said. Better the devil you know?
The Tier 1 suppliers, in turn, backed LTE over WiMAX because they saw that, for a variety of reasons, they could make more profit selling LTE. “In many cases, it was more a political decision than one based on technology or cost,” he said.
Redman has reportedly gone as far as urging businesses to hold off on investing in WiMAX, at least until the equipment ecosystem evolves to make dual-mode 3G-WiMAX devices more readily available.
This enraged some elements in the WiMAX camp. One Intel blogger characterized Gartner’s analysis of the market as “the most recent attempt at ‘drive-by kneecapping’” of the technology.
When we repeated to Proulx Redman’s suggestion that WiMAX vs. LTE might be analogous in some ways to the showdown between VHS and Betamax video cassette formats in the 1970s—with WiMAX taking the doomed Betamax role—her response was blunt.
“It’s a silly analogy and it’s unfortunate it’s been repeated so often,” she said. Proulx noted that Betamax was a proprietary technology, backed by one supplier (Sony) and was more expensive than its competitor—none of which is remotely true of WiMAX.
Proulx was similarly direct in responding to Redman’s suggestion that 802.16m is a more uncertain proposition than LTE Rev 10 and may not even be backward compatible to 802.16e. “From day one,” she said, “the first [design] requirement [for 802.16m] was that it be fully backward compatible. I think you’ll see evidence of that very soon.”
Chua apparently does not raise the ire of the WiMAX community to the same extent as Redman, but his perspective is not so different.
IDC believes operators rarely have made or will make either/or choices between LTE and WiMAX. More often, decisions will be made for them because only one technology or the other can meet all their needs—given time-to-market, desired business model, and other considerations.
“We characterize WiMAX and LTE as two circles that overlap,” Chua said. “Inevitably there will be some competition, but competition is not the overriding market scenario. It’s not what defines those two markets.”

Going to market

That said, he too believes WiMAX will have a tough time overcoming market factors arrayed against it. He argues that LTE will be building from a customer base of 4.6 billion mobile users worldwide, while WiMAX mainly has appeal as a replacement for DSL, especially in developing markets where wireline broadband technologies are not available. It will be building from a much smaller base: fewer than a billion customers worldwide.
IDC will publish a forecast later this year showing sales of LTE equipment surpassing WiMAX equipment sales some time in 2012.
But it  may not be as simple as 3G mobile users in developed markets sticking with their current providers and waiting for LTE, while WiMAX is relegated to a niche role delivering portable rather than mobile service in developing countries and rural regions.
For one thing, the WiMAX camp believes the momentum it’s currently building in those developing markets will drive development of an ecosystem, help harden the technology—and put it in good position to be a full competitor in the 4G mobile market down the road.
Indeed, the fact that WiMAX lets operators in those markets start small and build businesses organically without investing billions of dollars is one of its key advantages over LTE, Proulx said. Operators may start by providing DSL replacement services, but can easily evolve to offering true mobile services when they have the breadth of coverage and market demand.
And then there are the implications of exceptional initiatives in more developed markets—Clearwire in the U.S., Yota in Russian, UQ in Japan. Yota is currently signing up 2,000 new subscribers a month in St. Petersburg and Moscow and already has 200,000 since launching last fall, Proulx said.
While Clearwire has been slow to introduce WiMAX-powered phones or dual-mode 3G-WiMAX phones that would help it attract customers away from 3G providers, Yota is already building much of its marketing around a dual-mode device from HTC.
Most observers agree that the winners in the 4G market will be those that offer the widest coverage, the most reliable service and the best choice of devices. Redman is skeptical Clearwire can build its network out quickly enough to give it the breadth of coverage needed to attract 3G customers. The company will need another big infusion of capital next year just to continue its current pace, he added.
But Proulx believes WiMAX can compete with 3G operators, if not immediately in the U.S. then soon—and perhaps sooner in Japan. There, she said, UQ expects to have 90% of the Japanese population covered by its network by the end of 2010. If true, that would be before NTT is even out of the gate with LTE.
Redman and Chua may be underestimating the market strength of WiMAX—or not. Either way, no one is seriously suggesting it will be blown out of the water by LTE. The two will co-exist, whether or not peacefully remains to be seen.

WiMAX: Broadband Wireless Access

By Xiaole Song

September 24, 2004

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is the IEEE 802.16 standards-based wireless technology that provides MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) broadband connectivity. WiMAX is an Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems, also known as the IEEE WirelessMAN air interface. WiMAX-based systems can be used to transmit signals as far as 30 miles. So far, WiMAX can offer a solution to what is normally called the "last-mile" problem by connecting individual homes' and business offices' communications.

Cable/DSL Broadband Access

Currently, there are cable and DSL broadband access services in the marketplace. But, their practical limitations in features and deployment have prevented them from reaching many potential broadband Internet customers. The wired broadband connection provided by cable and DSL is an all-consuming and expensive process. A large number of areas throughout the world currently are not able to access broadband connectivity. Traditionally, DSL can only reach about 18,000 feet (three miles) from the central office switch, and this limitation means that many urban and suburban locations may not be served by DSL connectivity. The limitation of cable is that many older cable networks have not been equipped to offer a return channel, and converting and deploying these networks to support high-speed broadband can be expensive.

Wireless Standards

Drawing on hundreds of experts in the telecommunications industry, the IEEE has established a collection of wireless standards that include IEEE 802.15, also known as Bluetooth, for the Personal Area Network (PAN); IEEE 802.11, also known as WiFi, for the Local Area Network (LAN); 802.16 for the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and IEEE 802.20 for the Wide Area Network (WAN).
Unlike WiFi, WiMAX's range is typically measured in miles rather than feet. The main distinction of the difference between the two standards means that WiFi is focused on a local-area networking (LAN) technology and that WiMAX is a MAN technology.
The 802.16d standard of extending 802.16 supports three physical layers (PHYs). The mandatory PHY mode is 256-point FFT Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The other two PHY modes are Single Carrier (SC) and 2048 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) modes. By the way, the corresponding European standard—the ETSI HiperMAN standard—defines a single PHY mode identical to the 256 OFDM modes in the 802.16d standard.

Why WiMAX?

WiMAX covers a couple of different frequency ranges. Basically, the IEEE 802.16 standard addresses frequencies from 10GHz to 66GHz. The 802.16a specification, which is an extension of IEEE802.16, covers bands in the 2GHz-to-11GHz range. WiMAX has a range of up to 30 miles with a typical cell radius of 4–6 miles.
WiMAX's channel sizes range from 1.5 to 20MHz as well, and offer a WiMAX-based network the flexibility to support a variety of data transmitting rates such as T1 (1.5Mbps) and higher data transmitting rates of up to 70Mbps on a single channel that can support thousands of users. This flexibility allows WiMAX to adapt to the available spectrum and channel widths in different countries or licensed to different service providers.
WiMAX supports ATM, IPv4, IPv6, Ethernet, and VLAN services. So, it can provide a rich choice of service possibilities to voice and data network service providers. In addition, WiMAX provides an ideal wireless backhaul technology to connect 802.11 wireless LANs and commercial hotspots with the Internet.
The WiMAX-based solution is set up and deployed like cellular systems using base stations that service a radius of several miles/kilometers. The most typical WiMAX-based architecture includes a base station mounted on a building and is responsible for communicating on a point to multi-point basis with subscriber stations located in business offices and homes. The customer premise equipment (CPE) will connect the base station to a customer as well; the signal of voice and data is then routed through standard Ethernet cable either directly to a single computer, or to an 802.11 hot spot or a wired Ethernet LAN.
WiMAX-based solutions include many other advantages, such as robust security features, good QoS (Quality of Service), and mesh and smart antenna technology that will allow better utilization of the spectrum resources. Also, the WiMAX-based voice service can work on either traditional Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) voice or IP-based Voice, also known as Voice over IP (VoIP).

WiMAX Connectivity and Solutions

WiMAX allows equipment vendors to create many different types of IEEE802.16-based products, including various configurations of base stations and customer premise equipment (CPE). WiMAX also allows the services provider to deliver many types of wireless access services. The WiMAX can be used on a variety of wireless broadband connections and solutions:

• "Last Mile" Broadband Access Solution—Metropolitan-Area Networks (MAN) connections to home and business office, especially in those areas that were not served by cable or DSL or in areas where the local telephone company may need a long time to deploy broadband service. The WiMAX-based wireless solution makes it possible for the service provider to scale-up or scale-down service levels in short times with the client request.
• Backhaul networks for cellular base stations, bypassing the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN); the cellular service providers can look to wireless backhaul as a more cost-effective alternative. The robust WiMAX technology makes it a nice choice for backhaul for enterprises such as hotspots as well as point-to-point backhaul solutions.
• Backhaul enterprise connections to the Internet for WiFi hotspots. It will allow users to connect to a wireless Internet service provider even when they roam outside their home or business office.
• A variety of new business services by wireless Internet service provider.

Who Are Working on WiMAX?

The WiMax Forum is a non-profit organization formed in 2001 by Nokia Corp. and Ensemble Communications Inc., etc. Right now, the WiMAX Forum has more than 110 members of equipment, semiconductor suppliers, and services providers such as Alcatel, AT&T, Fujitsu, Intel, Nortel, Motorola, SBC and Siemens, and so forth. The WiMax Forum aims to support wireless metropolitan-area networking products based on IEEE 802.16, like the Wi-Fi Alliance has done for wireless LANs and IEEE 802.11. The WiMAX Forum has most recently been working to promote the adoption of IEEE 802.16-compliant equipment, certification, and interoperability testing. In 2003, Intel Corp. became a major supporter of the WiMax Forum.
In order to bring interoperability into MAN, the WiMAX Forum is focusing its efforts on establishing a baseline protocol that allows equipment and devices from multiple vendors to interoperate and that also provides a choice to buy equipment and devices from different suppliers.
Currently, there are no WiMax-certified products yet available in the market, but the race is already on. At the Intel Developer Forum in September 2004, Intel showed off its first samples of a WiMAX chipset that has been named Rosedale. Intel is planning to offer WiMax transmitters by 2005, and expects to ship WiMax devices for the home and office to take off by 2006. Also, Intel hopes that notebooks will begin to incorporate WiMAX technology during 2006, and by 2007, handsets for mobility will be available. Intel has already signed up Proxim and Alcatel to develop WiMAX base-station and CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) kits. Fujitsu Microelectronics America Inc. in early 2005 expects to introduce a new WiMAX-based single-chip solution for deployment in base stations and subscriber stations as well; the product integrates both PHY and MAC functionality. Siemens Information and Communication Mobile also plans to build complete WiMAX-based solutions for establishing fixed, broadband speed metropolitan area wireless radio networks.